Prior to a grand jury failing to indict the officer who shot
Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri this summer, Richard Rothstein released an important
report examining the broader structural contexts that make Ferguson, like
many inner-ring suburbs, likely to provide limited opportunities for its young people.
His work connects nicely with more contemporary work I’ve done examining the
opportunity of students of color in suburban schools and districts that are
rapidly changing—which
in many instances are expanding the geographic scale of central city segregation.
Rothstein stresses—and my own reading and research
on this topic concur—that this is not unique to Ferguson or St. Louis, but is
systematic and similar across metro areas in the country.
Rothstein’s report is especially useful because it
illustrates how much of the existing patterns of segregation within
metropolitan areas are a result of state action, not simply private prejudice. He provides an array of examples of
policy tools used by jurisdictions outside of St. Louis to destabilize what
integrated neighborhoods existed, pushing out black residents due to zoning
policies, annexation or other means.
Moreover, two important points are (1) the myriad of ways in which the
federal government not only condoned but indeed subsidized the discrimination
against African Americans in suburbia, but also (2) the comprehensive nature
with which racial discrimination permeated policies at all levels, reinforcing
private action (including through government regulation of professional
practice). Thus, a lesson from this is that even when the Supreme Court, for
example, prohibited certain actions as unconstitutional or the Fair Housing Act
became law, they were somewhat limited in changing outcomes on the ground
because of the reinforcing and perpetuating effect of existing policies and
practices. Indeed one of the conclusions Rothstein draws is that “the lesson of
Black Jack [suburb that resisted a proposed integrated housing development] was
that winning a lawsuit is not the same as winning the fight for integration”
(p. 21).
What’s also important to understand is the way in which this
has a perpetuating effect. The exclusion
of African-Americans from further out suburbs in St. Louis County means that
they were not able to reap the advantages of rapidly rising home values. As
African-Americans were increasingly relegated to central city neighborhoods,
there was a rise in mismatch from employment opportunities and combined with
limited public transportation opportunities, this made it difficult for Black
residents to keep what good jobs were available to them (Rothstein also
recounts employment discrimination in the metro).
Layered onto housing segregation and inequality is school
quality and fragmentation. In St. Louis
city and county, there are nearly two dozen districts that have three or more
schools. Given the differences in present day values due to the discrimination
in the housing market Rothstein recounts, it is likely that students have
vastly different opportunities, including due to segregation. The
current governor as Attorney General two decades ago tried to end the
long-lasting interdistrict desegregation program that sought to create more
integrated experiences for students in the metro. At a time in which the Supreme Court has
limited the ability of districts to pursue voluntary integration, the work
that Rothstein has done could potentially be the foundation for arguing that
schools should be responsible for remedying existing segregation due to the
multifaceted ways in which it resulted from governmental action.
