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Integrating America seemingly started on May 17, 1954, when the Supreme Court declared in a unanimous decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that separate schooling of black and white children was inherently unequal. Over the next twenty years, civil rights laws were put into place to attempt to guarantee, for the first time in American history that no one will be restricted to access education, jobs, public spaces, voting, travel or housing because of race. Although integration happened over fifty years ago today America is now segregated by income rather than race.

According to Americanprogress.org 2017 report “segregation by income very often moves in tandem with segregation by race.” The report goes on to state that Black and Latino’s students are significantly more likely to attend high-poverty schools than their white counterparts. University of California, Los Angeles refers to this phenomenon as “double segregation.”

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The report also emphasizes economic rather than racial segregation for various reasons. One is over the past decade, “a growing number of schools and districts have integrated based on students’ socioeconomic status rather than by race or ethnicity.” Part of this shift is a recent U.S Supreme Court opinion that suggested it may not be constitutionally sound for schools and districts to integrate solely based on students’ race or ethnicity. Therefore, causing most school integration policies have shifted away from using race as a determining factor in student assignment.

Another example of modern day segregation is in 2016 “there were 28,181 reported complaints of housing discrimination” nationwide, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance 2017 annual report. Unfortunately, many experts agree that this number is probably higher because many housing discrimination cases go unreported or undetected.

Brown University sociology professor John R. Logan agrees, “we still have a very, very segregated society, in terms of housing and (by extension) schools.” Logan states although there have been pockets of improvement mostly in progressive urban neighborhoods, “there’s also been some backsliding” in enforcement at the federal and local level.

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Widening economic inequality has emerged, as an always present factor in housing discrimination. As the gap between rich and poor, African-Americans, who often times earn far less than whites not to mention already facing discrimination in the housing market are in danger of being left further behind.

According to Chief Economist at Redfin (national real estate brokerage) Nela Richardson “the mixture of class and race is hard to disentangle.” Richardson goes on to say “there are very few neighborhoods where there’s economic integration they’re either all rich or all poor. We don’t often see a plumber living next to a lawyer living next to a janitor.”About two months ago, The New York Times reported that the federal government is actively pulling back its directive to mandate fair-housing laws, not long after reports that Ben Carson, ordered the words “inclusive” and “free from discrimination” erased from HUD’s mission statement . Carson told the Times that the notion he’s backing away from enforcement of the Fair Housing Act is “absurd,” but some aren’t convinced. Providing equal housing opportunities to Black home-buyers and renters is more important, but allowing access to good-paying jobs, government resources, hospitals, parks and quality of political representation is the only way we will ever see significant change. Logan, the Brown University sociologist states “Segregation and integration was not just about people – it wasn’t just housing. It’s not about blacks and whites living next to each other. It was voting, schools, every aspect of life. It was in a sense, about integrating opportunity. It’s also always about resources.”

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