Economic Segregation: “Plague on Our Public School Houses”

I’ll make this clear as I can. There isn’t overt racial segregation. Economic segregation is the new “red lining.”

Before I explain why, let me tell you about Adam Lambert. I taught him along with my wonderful colleagues at Mount Carmel High School — a public high school. He excelled for all four years. He did not transfer to one of the charter schools for the arts, nor did he attend a private school for the rich. His success came from a state that equalized funding to districts, a district that embraced diversity, and a faculty that worked their collective rear ends off. Remember that, please, as I tell you why this is the exception, not the rule.Author Jonathan Kozal made that clear in his landmark work Savage Inequalities, and Thurgood Marshall and William O. Douglas stamped it as de facto segregation in the 5–4 Milliken v. Bradley decision.

“Justice Thurgood Marshall’s dissenting opinion stated that:

School district lines, however innocently drawn, will surely be perceived as fences to separate the races when, under a Detroit-only decree, white parents withdraw their children from the Detroit city schools and move to the suburbs in order to continue them in all-white schools.[11]