The Supreme Court not only has limited integration through the courts but has also hamstrung school districts that want to integrate on their own. In 2007, the court struck down school districts’ voluntary use of race in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 on the grounds that it discriminated against whites.

Integration has also fallen out of favor because many of its practices fail to adequately consider the needs of black communities. For example, scores of black teachers were fired in the wake of Brown v. Board because some white administrators refused to allow black people to teach white students. This segregated teachers, and it cut off a pathway to a good career and the middle class.

In addition, poorly designed school-desegregation policies have scarred black students by focusing too narrowly on removing legal barriers to integration rather than creating inclusive school environments that value the abilities and dignity of all children. As a result, new discriminatory policies that cater to white parents, like tracking, as well as other policies that target black kids for punishment, have emerged in schools that are supposedly integrated.

And so, school segregation endures. We can see its impact in poor academic and life outcomes and in the overlooked harms to white students who miss the chance to learn from and among black and Latino children. It’s also a major driver of inequity in metropolitan areas dominated by racial divides. Segregation often undermines property wealth in black and Latino communities because of the close relationship between the demand for housing and the perceived quality of local schools. This has the effect of limiting the pool of available tax revenue for funding local school districts.

Today, most people have come to assume that de facto segregation is “just the way things are” and that our society is destined to remain deeply divided by race and class — forever separate and unequal.