This is why I hate the NY Times

[vpkozel]

Please read the two articles, based on the same facts and you can see why I, as a native born southerner, dispise the northern press. I will not argue that the South has more than its fair share of racial problems, but I also believe that, on the whole, Southerners have more interaction with Hispanics and Blacks. No where in the the NY Times article does the author mention that New York schools are the MOST SEGREGATED. On the contrary, he tries to portray it as a Southern problem. Asshole.

From AP

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- Public schools are slipping back into racial segregation, according to a study by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Released on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the nationwide analysis of enrollments from the 2000-2001 school year found a growing number of black and Latino students attend schools where the majority of students are minorities. Similarly, white students are found increasingly likely to attend schools where most of their classmates are also white.

"Martin Luther King's dream is being honored in theory and dishonored in the decisions and practices that are turning our schools back to segregation,'' said professor Gary Orfield, co-director of The Civil Rights Project.

In the South, where civil rights legislation aimed at integrating schools had the most dramatic results in the 1960s and 1970s, the process of resegregation has been most rapid, the study showed.

"The South went from being the most segregated region in the country to being the most integrated,'' said researcher Erica Frankenberg. "Now the reverse is happening.''

In 1964, a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered all schools desegregated in Brown v. Board of Education, 98 percent of blacks in the South still attended totally segregated schools.
By 1988, 44 percent of black students in the South attended schools that were majority white. In 2000, however, just 31 percent of black students went to schools where whites made up more than half the enrollment.

"It doesn't mean that everyone in the South wants to go back to the way things were in 1963,'' says Frankenberg. "This is a more subtle form of segregation. In some ways that makes it more difficult to combat.''

The researchers blame the resegregation trend on a series of court decisions, beginning with the 1991 Supreme Court ruling Oklahoma City v. Dowell, which backed away from the court-enforced desegregation laws of the 1960s.

Although resegregation has been most rapid in the South, the study shows schools there remain far more integrated than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast, where socio-economic divisions between city and suburb create a different kind of segregation.

New York has the most segregated schools for black and Hispanic students, according to The Civil Right Project report. Just 13.3 of the state's Hispanic students, and 13.6 percent of its black students attend majority white schools.

Meanwhile, a growing number of white children across the nation are enrolled in schools that are overwhelmingly white, the study showed. The average white student in America attends a school where 80 percent of their classmates are also white.

[vpkozel]

From the NY Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 20 — Sanetra Jant still wonders where all the white kids went. Only last spring, they made up a quarter of her class, not to mention her friends. And then, poof, they were gone.

"I don't know why they left," said Sanetra, a fourth grader at Reid Park Elementary School.

Last year, before a federal appeals court ended three decades of judicial-supervised desegregation by the district, Sanetra's school was 68 percent black. Now it is almost entirely black, and the many white pupils who once rode in on yellow buses number one in a hundred.

"Maybe they didn't like it here," Sanetra said, knitting her brow in thought.

If there is any one place to witness the changing racial composition of the nation's public schools, perhaps it is here, in the city for which the Supreme Court first endorsed the use of busing to desegregate.

Dozens of Charlotte schools have basically changed color in the months since the appeals court lifted the desegregation order, and though few other places have seen swings so rapid, the city offers a time-lapse view of the steady transformation of the nation's schools.

According to a new study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, black and Latino students are now more isolated from their white counterparts than they were three decades ago, before many of the overhauls from the civil rights movement had even begun to take hold.

Nationally, the shift is a result of several factors: big increases in enrollment by black, Latino and Asian students; continuing white flight from the nation's urban centers; and the persistence of housing patterns that isolate racial and ethnic groups. But another big factor, the Harvard study found, has been the termination of dozens of court-ordered desegregation plans.

Spurred by Supreme Court decisions at the start of the 1990's, lower courts have lifted desegregation orders in at least three dozen school districts in the last 10 years. Little Rock, San Diego, Denver and Miami have all come out from under court supervision, and next month a federal judge will reconsider the integration plan in Chicago, the nation's third-largest school district.

A chief principle in the voiding of these orders is one established by the Supreme Court a decade ago: that school districts can be considered successfully desegregated even if student racial imbalances due entirely to demographic factors, like where children live, continue to exist.

Largely as a result, black students now typically go to schools where fewer than 31 percent of their classmates are white, the new Harvard study found. That is less contact than in 1970, a year before the Supreme Court authorized the busing that became a primary way of integrating schools.

Latino students, who have rarely been a focus of desegregation efforts, now attend schools where whites account for only 29 percent of all students, compared with 45 percent three decades ago, according to the study, which draws on Education Department data through the 2000-1 school year.

And while white children increasingly come into contact with minority students, mainly because of the tremendous population growth among races that had only marginal representation decades ago, they are still America's most segregated group, the study found. On average, white students, who make up about 61 percent of the nation's public-school population, go to schools where 80 percent of their classmates are white.

The consequence is a nation in which every racial group that is big enough to be described as segregated generally is: Blacks, though only 17 percent of public-school children, typically attend schools where they are in a majority. The same is true of Latinos, who are about 16 percent of the student population. Even American Indians, a mere 1 percent of public-school children, go to schools where nearly a third of all students are Native American.

Asians, the study says, are the most integrated group, attending schools where the races are somewhat more commensurate with their national representation. But they, too, are disproportionately grouped together, for though they are only about 4 percent of public-school children, they typically go to schools that are 22 percent Asian.

[Agent Smith]

Originally posted by vpkozel
Please read the two articles, based on the same facts and you can see why I, as a native born southerner, dispise the northern press.

I am a native born northerner and I dispise the northern press. There is too much liberal bias and press attempts to turn opinions into facts.

[Couz]

Originally posted by vpkozel
In 1964, a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered all schools desegregated in Brown v. Board of Education, 98 percent of blacks in the South still attended totally segregated schools.
By 1988, 44 percent of black students in the South attended schools that were majority white. In 2000, however, just 31 percent of black students went to schools where whites made up more than half the enrollment.

This to me seems like they are taking partial facts and twisting them to prove what they want them to mean.

1988 44% of blacks attended schools where: at least 51% white, 5% other minority

2000 31% of blacks attended schools where: at least 51% white, 18% other minority

Based on the above I would say that the 'other minority' category has grown and has altered the attendance of the schools that make up this difference.

How about this scenario:
1) 30% black, 40% white, 30% other minority
or
2) 30% black, 30% white, 40% other minority

The hispanic population in NC from 88 to 2000 was equivalent to a population explosion. This could also explain the above numbers.

Why does this report seemingly focus on blacks? Is it the report that is focused on blacks or is it just the article presenting it like that?

Civil rights are important. But in this case it looks to me like the media is 'selling copy' by stirring up the black population with incomplete facts.