550197
research-article2014
EAQXXX10.1177/0013161X14550197Educational Administration QuarterlyGooden and Thompson Dorsey
Article
The Distorted Looking
Glass: Examining
How Housing Identity
Privilege Obviates the
Goals of Brown v. Board
of Education at 60
Educational Administration Quarterly
2014, Vol. 50(5) 764­–782
© The University Council
for Educational Administration 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0013161X14550197
eaq.sagepub.com
Mark A. Gooden1 and Dana N. Thompson Dorsey2
Abstract
Background: In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education case involved four
states and their school segregation laws and policies. During that period,
de jure and de facto segregation were a way of life in America. Sixty years
later, as most schools across the country have resegregated, the authors ask
the question of whether we should be focused on eradicating segregation?
Purpose: The purpose of this article is to propose the concept of housing
identity privilege and explore how it impairs our ability to create a new
vision for addressing school segregation. Conceptual Argument: Housing
identity privilege is defined as a historically supported system of advantages
that is based on how much housing one can afford, and it is correlated
directly with educational choices. Individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity,
or color, can attain housing identity privilege, which is a type of economic
privilege. The authors argue that despite some progress, schools are
essentially still segregated by race and class, and housing identity privilege
1The
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
2University
Corresponding Author:
Mark A. Gooden, The University of Texas at Austin, 1912 Speedway, D5400, Austin, TX
78712, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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Gooden and Thompson Dorsey
765
has worked against the original goals of Brown. Implications: The authors
conclude that until we address housing identity privilege directly, we will see
a continued system of school resegregation.
Keywords
Brown v. Board of Education, segregation, race, equality, housing identity
privilege
A recent report, “Brown v. Board of Education at 60,” contained surprising
and somewhat disturbing data about the current progress in education. For
example, there were new national statistics demonstrating a dramatic and
large transformation of the nation’s school population since the civil rights
era, resulting in an almost 30% drop in White students attending public
schools. Additionally, the report showed an uptick of close to quintupling the
Latino student population in schools. The South, which now has more Latinos
than Blacks, still remains the least segregated region in the United States,
despite the retrenchment of progressive desegregation practices put in place
after 1967 (G. Orfield, Frankenberg, Ee, & Kuscera, 2014). The report questioned how different segregation today is from 60 years ago, when the focus
was clearly on race.
According to the report, Black and Latino students together often attend
some of the lowest performing schools, whereas White and Asian students
are more likely to attend together middle-class schools, thus highlighting
race. However, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Parents Involved in
Community Schools v. Seattle School District (2007; hereinafter Parents
Involved) showed a clear deemphasizing of race in K-12 education (Daniel &
Gooden, 2010). According to this report, Black students were most likely to
end up in underresourced schools with substandard facilities (G. Orfield et
al., 2014). How did we get here when the Brown case began with so much
hope and promise for the future of Black children?
In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education case involved the four states
of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware and the battle over the
constitutionality of segregated schools in their respective states. The fact
that these were not just southern states in this lawsuit indicated that de jure
segregation was not restricted to the South but was a deep-seated American
principle. Though the four cases were premised on distinctive fact patterns
and different respective local conditions, they were consolidated under a
common legal question in what would become one of the most famous
opinions in education and arguably legal history. The essential issue was
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whether the segregation of children based solely on race deprives Black
children of the equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the fourteenth
amendment of the U.S. Constitution (Brown, 1954). As we reflect on the
past 60 years since the groundbreaking Brown decision overruling the legal
stronghold that the separate-but-equal doctrine had on education and
America’s children, it is impossible to ignore the present-day reality of
school segregation in this country. With more than 40% of Black and Latino
students attending schools that are 90% to 100% minority (G. Orfield,
Kucsera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012; Aud, et al., 2012), public schools are
more segregated today than they were in the mid-1960s prior to the federal
implementation of desegregation orders (Thompson Dorsey, 2013). Surely,
even the staunchest opponent of school desegregation could have imagined
that Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity for all students,
regardless of race, via school integration measures would have been
achieved in more than a half-century’s time, but that is not where America
stands currently. We stand with more questions than answers, and more
perplexity than understanding of the complex society that has led to continued school segregation. Indeed, this article and this Educational
Administration Quarterly volume add to the plethora of pages that have
been dedicated to Brown over the years commemorating the landmark case,
but we are also implicitly asking why we have yet to realize school integration after 60 years of mandatory school desegregation orders? The answer
may be literally in our backyards, but only if one can afford to have a backyard in the neighborhood in which he lives. The primary purpose of this
article is to consider whether Black children are still being deprived of
equal protection of the laws due to individual housing choices resulting in
residential segregation and ultimately school segregation.
The Approach
Below we briefly review the background of the Brown case, and some of its
progeny, and present an argument bolstered by relevant cases for why we are
here now. In this analytical discussion, we introduce and explore a new conceptual idea of housing identity privilege, a personal benefit of residential
choices that is highly correlated with one’s educational options. We argue
that housing identity privilege, which stems from residential segregation
policies, has frustrated the goals of Brown and thus hindered the efforts of
equal educational opportunity. Finally, we conclude with some ideas to consider over the next 40 years if we want to equalize opportunities, and we
hypothesize about what education in this country will look like if America
decides not to turn toward eradicating inequities.
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Background
Legal and education policy scholars in America offering diverse commentary
on Brown have argued that the noble goals envisioned six decades ago have
yet to be reached. Several scholars have questioned the strategy selected by
the Brown legal team to achieve equality in schools, a feat made easier by the
benefit of looking back on several decades of history (Bell, 2004; Eckes,
2004; Ogletree, 2004), which is a luxury that the attorneys did not have
60 years ago. Those scholars have instead argued that the focus should have
been on fighting for equalizing resources and diversifying boards of education instead of on fighting for racial balancing (Bell, 1987). A second set of
scholars have not questioned the merits or the aims of the attorneys, but have
reminded us that the original objective of integrating schools is a dream
unfulfilled as we return to more segregated schools, even as America’s population of poor children of color increases (Blanchett, Mumford, & Beachum,
2005; Carroll, Fulton, Abercrombie, & Yoon, 2004; G. Orfield et al., 2014).
Indeed, G. Orfield et al. (2014) argued that schools in America, which at one
time were desegregating at a healthy clip, have started to resegregate again.
Looking at average Metropolitan Statistical Area dissimilarity indices,
Frankenberg (2013) found that non-South averages from 2000 to 2010 all
remained above 70 for Black segregation from Whites. A dissimilarity index
above 60 indicates extreme segregation. Similarly, average dissimilarity indices for the South hovered at or below 60 for this same period for school and
neighborhood segregation.
Finally, there are critical race theorists and other scholars who argue that
the favorable Brown decision was only due to the concept of interest convergence (Bell, 1980, 2004). Interest convergence represents the belief that the
Brown decision landed on equal educational opportunity only because there
was an equal benefit for elite Whites in power, and because there was an
international interest in promoting racial tolerance in the United States.
Hence, the fact that many schools are in a current state of inequity is largely
not a surprise as the true aim was not equalizing educational opportunity or
providing educational equity. Of course, there is a range of arguments that are
wedged between these three major ones. In considering all arguments, and
specifically the three major ones delineated here, they all have one clear point
in common. That is, the intention of Brown to achieve educational opportunity on an equal basis is unfulfilled and unrealized, as evidenced by the
results we see in public schools today, especially for poor children of color
(Blanchett et al., 2005; Milner & Howard, 2004; Ogletree, 2004). In these
contemporary times when resegregation is so pervasive in American schools,
we ask, should school desegregation still be the tool for achieving
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Educational Administration Quarterly 50(5)
educational equity? Was school desegregation a reasonable goal to achieve
equality of education for Black children in 1954? To facilitate exploration of
that question, we turn to why we are here now.
Why We Are Here Now
Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court’s belief that the best option for dismantling de jure segregation was to rely on protecting Black children from
the intangible effects of stigma made desegregation rather than educational
equity the ultimate focus (Guinier, 2004). We see that the effects of the
Court’s gamble on that belief has not panned out, with Black students’
achievement lagging behind every other racial and ethnic group, as well as
students losing out on the social, emotional, and academic benefits of having
Black teachers in their schools and in their communities when teachers lost
their jobs after Brown (Milner & Howard, 2004). As Tillman (2004) explained,
the demise of most African American schools, including the employment loss
for many African American teachers and administrators due to school desegregation, was an unintended consequence of Brown from which teachers,
schools, students, and communities have never recovered. Tillman (2004)
was careful to acknowledge that firing these educators was part of an intentional backlash led by White school board members who were resistant to
orders to desegregate. Equal educational opportunity for all children, especially those who have been marginalized because of race and socioeconomic
status, is necessary and not optional if the United States plans to seriously
compete with citizens educated for a global society. High-quality public education and access to it, which are often correlated to housing values, cannot
become so exclusive that it is reserved only for those who can afford to buy
a home in a particular neighborhood or have the ability to expend private
school funds.
Considering the racial climate 60 years ago, it is easy to conclude that the
attorneys were pursuing equal educational opportunities for Black children in
this country, a group that had been denied this right in various forms in the
South and other parts of the country like Delaware, though not always to the
same extent (Eckes, 2004; Gooden, 2004; Ogletree, 2004; Smith, 2005).
Blacks had been denied education access at the higher education level
(McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 1950) and at the professional school
level (Sweatt v. Painter, 1950), but the lawyers from the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had made significant
inroads in these areas prior to Brown. This deprivation, coupled with years of
social inequalities and slavery, ensured that Blacks remained at an economic
and social disadvantage and existed in a society where they faced material
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social gaps in housing, health care, legal services, education, and employment, among others (Jaynes & Williams, 1989; O’Neill & O’Neill, 2012).
Given what we have come to understand about the aims of the decision, it
is worth analyzing why the original intent has not been realized. Change has
been so slow because strategies such as maintaining two race-based schools
and implementing lethargic plans that desegregated one grade per year,
among others, halted progress and sometimes did not lead to change at all
(Gooden, 2004). There have even been periods of regression of the desegregation goals of Brown, with the Supreme Court’s decision in Milliken v.
Bradley (1974; Green & Gooden, 2014) and in the recent era of resegregation
(G. Orfield et al., 2014).
Brown, which was about school desegregation, should not be analyzed
separate from residential segregation or the broader context of neighborhoods. School segregation is inextricably tied to housing segregation, which
stems from a history of housing discrimination. Whereas housing and school
segregation are related and driven by privilege and property rights, racial
segregation and discrimination, though arguably declining, “are substantially
more important than economic segregation and class divisions when shaping
the lives of people in our metropolitan areas” (Dreier, Mollenkopf, &
Swanstrom, 2004, p. iv). Thus, racial differences are a significant factor in
producing and reproducing metropolitan spatial inequalities.
There are two ideals entrenched in the American policies and politics that
served to impede the efforts of Brown at its inception. First, integration or
racial equality oftentimes is in conflict with the general right to associate or
to avoid associating. As Bell (1980) notes, “[I]t is clear that racial equality is
not deemed as legitimate by large segments of the American people, at least
to the extent that it threatens to impair the societal status of whites” (p. 523).
It is important to note that civil leaders thought of desegregating schools as a
step toward the broader societal goal of integration (Gooden, 2004). Although
the terms desegregation and integration are often used interchangeably in
school segregation literature and legal cases, the two words mean very different things conventionally and legally (The Law Dictionary, n.d.). In one of
the companion cases in Brown, the lower court emphasized that desegregation simply means the state cannot deny students the opportunity to attend
state-run public schools on account of race, but integration is not required by
the U.S. Constitution (Briggs v. Elliott, 1955). Title VI of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 supported this notion by not defining integration and instead unmistakably defining “desegregation” as the assignment of students to public
schools without regard to race or color. Integration is a much more grandiose,
utopian idea: It is the process of functioning as a unified whole and the bringing together of groups as equal members in society (Black’s Law Dictionary,
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2014). When the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown I and II failed to provide a
clear distinction between the two different concepts of desegregation and
integration, as well as neglected to unambiguously operationalize the two
terms, the High Court left plenty of room for interpretation in later court
decisions.
Second, the court’s suggestion that de jure and de facto segregation somehow led to different outcomes clouds our ability to focus on a viable solution.
It also led to a failure to acknowledge that de jure and de facto segregation
both stemmed from discrimination and that each hampered Brown’s ultimate
goal of equal educational opportunity. Of course, the Brown decision struck
down de jure or legally sanctioned segregation, though the decision met with
decades of resistance (Gooden, 2004). Subsequent lower court decisions took
the liberty of distinguishing de jure segregation from de facto segregation by
explaining de facto segregation as caused by housing patterns and private
choices stemming from individual residential preferences, which is constitutionally permissible; thus, the state does not have to act to ameliorate the
racial segregation in schools (Bell v. School City of Gary, 1963; Deal v.
Cincinnati Board of Education, 1971; United States v. Jefferson County
Board of Education, 1966). Importantly, housing patterns and private choices
both contain discriminatory intent, with the former being supported and promulgated by the federal government at one time (e.g., the Federal Housing
Administration’s policies) and the latter by private individuals’ actions (e.g.,
racial covenants). Hence, de facto segregation, like de jure segregation, is not
outside discriminatory practices.
By taking a stance that ignores the discriminatory history, the courts sent
a message to resistant White residents, school boards, school district administrators, and state legislatures that school desegregation may be the law of
the land, but the broader relationship between housing and schooling created
an opportunity for continued discrimination. In other words, the opportunity
for school access is created where one has a myriad of housing options based
on financial privilege, which may also serve as a barrier to school access and
educational opportunity for those who do not have the same financial privilege. Thus such financial differences may hide behind the legally permissible disguise called de facto segregation, but it is still indeed segregation. An
underlying result of this approach by the courts was it insulated many Whites
from the threat of true integration of schools, and it created a new privileging scheme. In essence, the action of the courts served to strike down legal
segregation, but left unaddressed years of private and public housing discrimination that created residential segregation. Accordingly, the court left
White privilege undisturbed, which included for many Whites the unrestricted right to choose their home and neighborhood, thereby securing the
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school of choice. That choice has historically been desirable only to the
extent that it ostensibly met criteria like homes that were connected to “good
schools,” were in “safe neighborhoods,” and would appreciate in value.
During the years following the Brown opinion, the message from the courts
generally exemplified Harris’s (1993) concept of Whiteness as property,
playing out to relentlessly protect White privilege. But eventually the message and “inaction” or ineffective action by policy makers to change this
course would become the “divided” educational systems that are present in
many urban and suburban American communities today (Dreier et al., 2004;
M. Orfield, 2002).
Housing Identity Privilege
We define housing identity privilege as a historically supported system of
advantages in America that is based on how much house one can afford, and
it is correlated directly with the degree of educational choices one can afford.
Individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, or color, can attain or receive housing identity privilege, which is a type of economic privilege. Housing identity
privilege is the result of residential segregation policies and private discrimination, which we discuss below. Housing identity privilege, which also provides unearned advantages from society for being securely housed also
unquestionably produces benefits like school choice. Due to historical realities of housing discrimination, individuals are most likely to be disadvantaged and completely displaced when it comes to access to housing if they are
poor and of color. Therefore, they have little or no housing identity privilege.
Housing identity privilege, like other privileges, can create blind spots for
those who have it.
Bell (1992) has argued that racism permeates all facets of American life.
This racism is apparent in residential segregation and supported by Dreier et
al. (2004), who argued that early “federal home ownership policies were
shamefully racist” (p. 118). As Blacks as well as other racial and ethnic
minorities migrated from the South to the North in the early 20th century,
mainly between 1910 and 1970, the federal government, in concert with private banks and mortgage companies, real estate agents, developers, and home
sellers encouraged segregation by implementing housing policies to control
where minorities lived and to exclude minorities from purchasing and renting
homes in certain White neighborhoods around the country (Glaeser & Vigdor,
2012; Voborníková, 2014). For instance, the Federal Housing Administration
practiced redlining1 and insured mortgages for Whites receiving low mortgages through the Veterans Administration’s GI loan programs, while refusing to insure most Black people seeking to obtain mortgages. As a result, less
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than 2% of federal mortgage assistance was available to Blacks between
1946 and 1959 (Roisman, 2002). The federal government also provided public housing in select urban communities to poor racial and ethnic minorities
(Voborníková, 2014) creating ghettos2 where racial and ethnic minorities,
namely Blacks, had little housing choices or opportunities (Seicshnaydre,
2012). Real estate agents, developers, and home owners joined forces to create and maintain segregated neighborhoods through blockbusting and steering practices3 (Voborníková, 2014). Simultaneously, White suburban enclaves
proliferated outside of the inner cities. These new political subdivisions
established zoning policies that prohibited the building of multifamily residences and capped the number of low-income housing units that could be
built (M. Orfield, 2006; Wilson, 2011).
Because of the above, the values in the new predominantly White suburban area homes increased, whereas the home values in the central city, areas
occupied mostly by Blacks, decreased. Even as home values decreased in the
cities, additional practices ensured that Blacks and other minorities were confined to living in rental units or homes in city areas with declining values,
thus blocking them out of the great suburban migration. For instance, racial
covenants, which prevented Blacks from moving into many predominantly
White communities, were not outlawed until 1948 (Dreier et al., 2004). Race
and racism then are tied to economics and property rights. The end result is
that housing options, which have been historically limited and confined to
certain neighborhoods for Blacks in this country, are directly correlated in
several ways with educational opportunities, which we discuss below.
Neighborhoods are particularly important in determining educational
opportunity. Segregated neighborhoods often mean stratified school districts
in which the schools located in low-income, high–racial minority neighborhoods are besieged by high student poverty, high student turnover, less experienced and noncredentialed teachers, limited resources, overcrowded and
unruly classrooms, and below-par achievement levels (Briggs, 2005;
Seicshnaydre, 2012). Harding’s (2011) research suggested that neighborhoods have a significant impact on the realization of both attending and completing college. Furthermore, individuals living in high-poverty,
minority-segregated communities have little contact with beneficial social
networks, and as such, they fail to acquire the social and cultural capital,
which may negatively affect student achievement (Wood, 2003) and limit
employment opportunities, economic prosperity, and ultimately home-ownership (Anderson, 2011).
Wood (2003) further discussed how the lack of safe places to play and
fewer resources to allow students to participate in extracurricular activities
affect the health of those living in poor neighborhoods. Bennett (2011)
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773
discussed how poor neighborhoods lack the resources, in terms of revenue
from property taxes and others, to provide the highest quality schools. This
she says disparately affects majority-Black neighborhoods. Duncan and
Magnuson (2005) submit that disadvantaged neighborhoods negatively affect
students through “increased stress, . . . social disorganization, . . . a lack of
institutional resources, . . .” (p. 44). Finally, Sharkey and Elwert (2011)
showed that persistent exposure to poverty through living in certain neighborhoods has the ability to affect “parent’s educational attainment, occupational choices, income, marriage partner, and mental health” (p. 1970), all of
which have been shown to negatively affect student achievement. Though we
are careful not to promote the dangerous logic that Black people have ties to
poor neighborhoods, we must acknowledge that there is historical relegation
by race to certain neighborhoods, many of which are poor, and this has not
changed.
Even though unfair lending and other practices are no longer overtly
employed, research has shown that residential segregation still exists at
alarming levels, particularly for Blacks (Frankenberg, 2013). Frankenberg
has also cited several studies that show the strong relationship between housing and school segregation. Though Frankenberg has noted the impact of the
underresearched influence of residential segregation on school segregation,
she has also pointed out that schools can sway developing or changing residential patterns.
The work of the courts precluded ever truly disrupting the then-current
power structure that supported housing and school segregation. In Deal v.
Cincinnati Board of Education (1971), the court concluded that neighborhood schools in Cincinnati were segregated solely because of de facto segregation, that is, due to individual housing decisions. Ignoring residential
segregation and a history of discrimination, the Sixth Circuit pretended that
private choice was available equally to everyone. Because there was no legal
segregation, the court reasoned that White and Black parents (by implication)
had “free choice” to move to neighborhoods where their children could attend
more integrated, better resourced schools.
In this situation, while a particular child may be attending a school composed
exclusively of Negro pupils, he and his parents know that he has the choice of
attending a mixed school if they so desire, and they can move into the
neighborhood district of such a school. (p. 60)
The Deal court’s analysis does not recognize how housing segregation,
socioeconomic status, and ultimately race affect where one lives. Hence, the
de facto housing segregation served then as an acceptable gatekeeping
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mechanism preventing many Blacks’ access to a high-quality public education (Dreier et al., 2004).
Of course, the challenge with the Deal court’s logic in 1966 is that it
ignored the historical and well-documented discrimination in housing discussed above. Incidentally, Justice Douglass pointed this out in his Milliken
dissent noted below. Years later, the Deal decision can now be criticized for
minimizing the influence of socioeconomic status on the ability to purchase
a home in a more desirable location and therefore increasing the chance to
select better resourced schools. However, our current approach to making
high-quality educational options available leaves this same logic squarely in
place failing to recognize the symbiotic relationship between residential segregation and influence on school desegregation. None of the current reforms
to date challenge this approach to selecting a school, which is premised on
housing privilege.
The Supreme Court articulated this identical position in Milliken v. Bradley
(1974) when it denied the city of Detroit’s plan to desegregate by implementing a multidistrict remedy that would have permitted the predominantly
Black urban school district to extend its attendance zones into neighboring
predominantly White suburban and metropolitan school districts. Justice
Douglass wrote a dissent in Milliken, in which three other Justices joined,
which stated,
There is so far as cases go no constitutional difference between de facto and de
jure segregation. Each school board performs state action for Fourteenth
Amendment purposes when it draws the lines that confine it to a given area,
when it builds schools at particular sites, or when it allocates students. The
creation of the school districts in Metropolitan Detroit either maintained
existing segregation or caused additional segregation. Restrictive covenants
maintained state action or inaction build black ghettos. It is state action when
public funds are dispensed by housing agencies to build racial ghettos. (p. 761)
Justice Marshall followed with his own written dissent and warned the
Milliken majority that desegregation was never expected to be easy, and
while
it may seem to be the easier course to allow our great metropolitan areas to be
divided up each into two cities—one white, the other black—but it is a course,
I predict, our people will ultimately regret. I dissent. (p. 815)
Justice Marshall and the other dissenters were right. Our country has allowed
great metropolitan areas to become a tale of two cities—one composed of the
Black and ethnic minority ghettos with underfunded, failing schools, the
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other composed of Whites and Asians, who are often seen as the acceptable
high-achieving minority, with well-resourced schools in the suburbs.
Conclusion
powell (2009) argued that “Blacks suffer from cumulative causation or
mutual reinforcing restraint” (p. 796), and that poor Blacks and poor Whites
are not similarly situated in American society. powell points out that Blacks
will have more constraints that stack on one another, and removing two for
them does little to equalize opportunities, even though it could do more for
poor Whites.
In 1952, it was noted in Delaware that “Negro schools were inferior with
respect to teacher training, pupil-teacher ratio, extracurricular activities, physical plant, and time and distance involved in travel” (Brown, p. 487). Such historical constraints on schools predominantly occupied by poor children of color
remain and have expanded in 60 years to include reduced advanced placement
courses (Klopfenstein, 2004; Ndura, Robinson, & Ochs, 2003), overrepresentation in special education (Artiles, Harry, Reschly, & Chinn, 2002; Ferri &
Connor, 2005), high turnover of teachers (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004),
and perhaps biggest of all, historically undervalued housing stock, a result that
was exacerbated by the federal government’s housing discrimination (Massey
& Denton, 1993). Poor Blacks, and to some extent poor Latinos, are historically situated differently from Whites and Asians who currently attend middleclass schools, which have stronger curriculums, better facilities, and so on
(Kozol, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 2007; G. Orfield et al., 2014).
Brown (1954) was argued to strike down the “separate-but-equal” principle, hoping to bring about equal educational opportunity for Black children.
However, the attorneys may have underestimated the cumulative causation
effect or the power of mutual restraints, as we discussed above. These
restraints and the complex inner workings of the educational system must be
taken into account before any serious reform is proposed (powell, 2009). In
going forward, we must propose solutions that remove more of these restraints
if we intend to make schools more equitable. Otherwise, we will do little to
change the status quo. Finally, and more importantly, we must address the
historically race-based discriminatory policies that advantage those who
move to the affluent suburbs, even as central cities and older suburbs languish (M. Orfield, 2002). Indeed, the current U.S. policy blatantly advantages affluent suburban districts over the central-city and older suburban
neighborhoods. For example, Dreier et al. (2004) noted that since 2001 more
than $1.7 trillion in federal funds went to suburban districts, whereas only
$460 billion went to the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
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Educational Administration Quarterly 50(5)
thus supporting housing identity privilege. Because of a history of discrimination in housing policy, and a range of other discriminatory actions, Brown
cannot be fully realized in the current climate of cumulative constraints.
Failing to address these issues will confirm that we will have the same inequities in the next 10 years and beyond.
As we see it, Justice Douglass’s Milliken dissent made an excellent point.
There is no difference between de jure and de facto segregation if lines are
drawn and students are assigned, with the state or school district knowledge
and support, based on racially and economically identifiable neighborhoods.
The 2007 decision in Parents Involved further drives this point home in its
plurality decision and legal reasoning.
In Parents Involved (2007), the Supreme Court held student assignment
policies in public school districts in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville,
Kentucky, were unconstitutional because the policies were not narrowly tailored to meet the compelling state interest of racial diversity, and race was the
determinative factor to achieve racial balancing. Both respondents in this
case, Seattle School District and Jefferson County School District (Louisville),
established voluntary student assignment plans in which race was just one
factor that was considered in the districts’ assignment policies. The primary
reason the school districts created the student assignment policies to achieve
racial diversity was the racially identifiable housing patterns, which maintained segregated schooling environments.4 Nevertheless, the plurality and
Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion indicated that the school districts’ policies were simply racial balancing disguised as racial diversity and racial integration (Parents Involved, 2007).
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas went on to say that racial imbalance can occur by innocent private choices, such as housing preferences, which
is not unconstitutional segregation (Parents Involved, 2007). Justice Roberts’s
plurality decision reflected an even more dismissive attitude and naïveté of
housing identity privilege and its affect on school segregation and educational
inequality when he stated, “[T]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of
race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (Parents Involved, 2007, p.
788). Clearly, Justices Roberts and Thomas do not understand the interconnection between race, housing, and education, much like the Deal court.
Justice Breyer responded to the plurality in a dissent, in which three other
justices joined, by censuring the plurality for misapplying constitutional principles and announcing legal rules that will impede state and local governments’
efforts “to deal effectively with growing re-segregation of public schools, . . .
and it undermines Brown’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality” (Parents Involved,
2007, p. 803-804). Like Justice Douglass in the Milliken case, Justice Breyer
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indicated that the distinction between de jure and de facto segregation was
meaningless in this case because it was housing patterns (aka de facto segregation) that were among the state-mandated and school-implemented policies
that legally maintained racially segregated schools (aka de jure segregation) in
the first place. Nevertheless, our public schools have basically come full circle—resegregation has reared its ugly head across the country.
The desegregation cases leading up to the Parents Involved decision
began chipping away at Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunities for children of color, but arguably the Parents Involved plurality decision has effectively attempted to erase that promise. School integration will
have to be achieved with other diversity considerations besides race,
namely, poverty and housing privilege. We believe that housing identity
privilege is preventing Brown from reaching its full school integration
potential. Thus, the difference between desegregation and integration is
where the most interested and affected parties (e.g., schools, students, parents, community members, etc.) begin this process and ultimately end up.
The process was supposed to begin with Brown I, which was initially about
states desegregating racially identifiable schools by creating policies and
practices that eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination to the extent
practicable (Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools,
Independent School District No. 89 v. Dowell, 1991). However, as a society,
we have yet to reach the end goal of integration, which is the bringing
together of groups as equal members in society, where people’s differences
are respected and valued in an education context or at least educational
equity and equality are achieved. Even with legal mandates to desegregate,
rights to associate for Blacks is defeated by the White majority’s rights to
avoid associaton through true integration (Bell, 1980). Housing identity
privilege, though no longer exclusively race-based, continues to stand in
the way of progress of true racial equality. If we expect to reach the ultimate
goal of equal educational opportunity as the Brown Court may have envisioned 60 years ago, the road to reach the goal has to begin with an acknowledgment that housing segregation and school segregation are inextricably
intertwined. Unfortunately, unless we as a society address the discriminatory policies and practices that maintain rights for the privileged and ignore
those who are less fortunate, the road to educational access and success will
continue to be paved for those who can afford to buy the housing identity
privilege with the most schooling options at the end of the road.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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778
Educational Administration Quarterly 50(5)
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. Redlining was a practice used by the Federal Housing Administration and other
insurance companies and banks to identify the neighborhoods where mostly
Black people resided by marking the areas in red on a map, so that Whites
would not buy in those areas and Blacks would buy (Gotham, 2002, as cited in
Voborníková, 2014).
2. For the purposes of this article, ghetto is defined as “an involuntarily spatially
concentrated area used by the dominant society to separate and to limit” certain
racial and ethnic groups deemed inferior by the dominant group (Marcuse, 2002,
p. 111).
3. Blockbusting was a practice used by interested parties who wanted to make a
profit by exploiting the changing racial composition of urban neighborhoods,
while also encouraging residential segregation. Real estate agents and developers would hire Black people to walk through White neighborhoods in order to
get home sellers to sell their home quickly and at below market price. The agents
and developers would then resell the homes at an inflated price to Blacks (von
Hoffman, 1998, as cited in Voborníková, 2014). Steering was a practice in which
real estate agents treated Black and White clients differently: Black clients were
shown homes to rent or buy in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and Whites
were shown homes in predominantly White neighborhoods (De Leeuw et al.,
2008, as cited in Voborníková, 2014).
4. Seattle School District allowed ninth graders to select their high schools. The
school district had several schools that were consistently oversubscribed each
year, which were located in the predominantly White section of the city, and the
student assignment policy addressed this issue. Jefferson County School District
in Kentucky had been recently released from a desegregation order after 15 years.
The Kentucky school district was honoring its desegregation plan, which got
them granted unitary status by a court, by acting in good faith and continuing to
commit to the plan as the law requires (see Board of Education of Oklahoma City
Public Schools, Independent School District No. 89 v. Dowell, 1991; Freeman v.
Pitts, 1992). Without the student assignment plan, the Jefferson County Schools
will resegregate due to the racially identifiable housing patterns.
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Author Biographies
Mark A. Gooden, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Educational
Administration at The University of Texas at Austin. He also is director of the principalship program. His research interests include the principalship, issues in urban educational leadership and legal issues in education. He currently serves as President of
the University Council for Educational Administration.
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Dana N. Thompson Dorsey, JD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of
Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her research interests include education law, policy, and critical race theory in education. Her research primarily focuses on critically examining laws and public policy as
they relate to P-20 educational equity, student access, and educational reform efforts.
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