Truthout, July 20, 2019
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, has spoken about how she benefited from attendingBerkeley’s desegregated schools.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” Harris said in the first Democratic debate to candidate Joe Biden. “So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.”
School segregation is the separation of students into different schools by race. In 1954, the Supreme Court declared segregation was unconstitutional. Desegregation efforts since then have used a variety of tools to try to overcome patterns of segregation that persist.
Studies have shown that school desegregation has important benefits for students of all races. Recent research illustrates that its positive impact on the educational attainment, lifetime earnings and health of African American families persists for multiple generations.
Yet, despite years of government desegregation efforts and the proven benefits of integrated schools, our recently published research shows that U.S. school segregation is higher than it has been in decades, even if there are no longer overt laws requiring racially segregated schools.