After the federal government began calling in the National Guard to protect black students and escort them to school, the white opposition feared that they would no longer be able to keep blacks out of their schools. This perceived threat led to a loophole in the Brown v Board case that allowed whites to preserve their educational segregation. This loophole was private schools. Under Brown v Board, the federal government only has power to integrate schools funded by the federal government, which excludes private schools. The privatization of schools led to further racial divide in education and opened up the issue of class inequality in education. In 1956, “The Virginia legislature calls for ‘massive resistance’ to school desegregation and pledges to close schools under desegregation orders,” this was a closing of all public schools so that black students would be unable to receive any type of education (Tolerance, issue 25, 2004). Without public schools, black people would be unable to attend school because they could not afford the high costs of a private education. White people knew this to be the case and purposely chose to take their students out of public schools and put them into private schools to avoid black students. After the court ruled in 1958 “that fear of social unrest or violence, whether real or constructed by those wishing to oppose integration, does not excuse state governments from complying with Brown,” segregationists had no other choice but to move their children to private schools where integration laws did not apply. However after this ruling, come counties still continued to close their public schools for everyone. In 1959, “Prince Edward County, Va., officials close their public schools rather than integrate them. White students attend private academies; black students do not head back to class until 1963, when the Ford Foundation funds private black schools,” (Tolerance, issue 25, 2004). The closing of public schools had detrimental affects on the education of black students because they were no longer able to attend school for a long period of time because they did not have the funds to send their kids to private schools. This allowed the gap between white student’s education levels and black student’s education levels to quickly grow and put white students at an extreme advantage.
The shift towards private schools was marked by many whites fleeing cities and moving into the suburbs, marked as the ‘White Flight.’ By moving out of cities and into suburbs that were majorly white, the housing market went up which was good for real estate. This was good for the economy, as well. Real estate agents would have a better margin on which to sell their suburban properties: ‘safety’, ‘good public schools’, ‘larger houses’. All of those selling points excluded black people but proponents of the ‘White Flight’ would signal that property values in the suburbs increased, therefore tax revenue increased which is why their public schools were better. However, it is clear to see that the motives were completely racial and unintentionally classist. The Kerner Report released under the Johnson presidency, whites were castigated for “fleeing to suburbs, where they excluded blacks from employment, housing, and educational opportunities,” proving that their move away from cities was a direct result of racism (Semuels, 2015). While the Kerner Report came out in the 1960s, the issues of racial and class exclusionary practices by whites has persisted today, especially with school zoning. In a New York Times article, it highlighted that “moving to a particular neighborhood in order to land a seat at a coveted public school has long been the middle-class modus operandi for obtaining a high-quality education,” (Higgins, 2013). This is because neighborhoods with higher income tax revenue tend to have better public schools because there is more funding. School zoning has only widened the gap in education among the classes and races. Now, this is not only a suburban problem, “the practices derided by the Kerner Commission, including white flight, exclusionary zoning, and outright prejudice, are continuing to create black areas and white areas, but this time around, those areas exist in both the cities and the suburbs,” (Semuels, 2015).
References:
BROWN V. BOARD: Timeline of School Integration in the U.S. (2017, August 02). Retrieved
March 09, 2018, from
Higgins, M. (2013, May 03). Your Address, as Get-Into-School Card. Retrieved March 09, 2018,
from
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/realestate/your-address-as-get-into-school-card.html
Semuels, A. (2015, July 30). White Flight Never Ended. Retrieved March 09, 2018, from
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/white-flight-alive-and-well/399980/
