Racial segregation on the rise in the United States

It has been almost 67 years since the landmark 1954 Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court judgment that outlawed racial segregation in the United States. However, recently, it seems that the fight for equality is not yet over, as the media confronts the fact that segregated schools are not remnants of history.

For example, in Block highschool located in Catahoula Parish in Louisiana, one of the poorest parishes, there are teachers that are not certified that are teaching multiple subjects that they don't even know. Jonesville, where Block high school is located, is one of the poorest parts of Catahoula Parish. Nearly 70% of seniors are black and about 60% of the students do not go on to college after graduation.

However, 13 miles there is another school in the same school district that looks much different. Nearly 90% of the senior class are white and they perform better academically and enroll in college at a much higher rate. According to "Now This News", it said that there is a clear notable difference in how the school looks compared to Block highschool.

Dr. Belinda Davis, a public policy professor in education at Lousiana State University commented that many schools are economically segregated and that the entire school board at Catahoula Parish should be ashamed that they have a school in that district that is in that kind of shape.

According to Tomiko Bloodsaw, a Block high school graduate who works as an account at a local sheriff's office, if you look at the school district budget shows how unequal education really is in Catahoula Parish. In Harrisburg, one school receives $20,000 CAD whereas, in Jonesville, Block highschool only receives approximately $7000 CAD.

It is not just in Catahoula Parish, multiple high schools in the countryside located in the southern United States has been also experiencing modern-day segregation. In a 2014 report, researcher John Kucsera from UCLA’s The Civil Rights Project details:

New York has the most segregated schools in the country: in 2009, black and Latino students in the state had the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools (less than 10% white enrollment), the lowest exposure to white students, and the most uneven distribution with white students across schools. Heavily impacting these state rankings is New York City, home to the largest and one of the most segregated public school systems in the nation.

The US is continuously experiencing a simultaneous rise in the percentages of racial minorities as well as an increase in multi- and bi-racial children. It has now come to a point where hundreds of schools in the United States are unofficially segregated.

“The school's black children attend today, in North and South, East and West, are segregated mostly because their schools are located in segregated neighborhoods,” explains Richard Rothstein, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute.