Why School Desegregation Still Matters In The Digital Age

Forbes

3 days ago

School desegregation is an old topic and, frankly, one few people want to talk about. It forces us to confront uncomfortable memories of the past.
To discuss desegregation, you must acknowledge a system that, for more than a century, assigned Black students to separate schools based solely on their race. These schools were consistently equipped with older, outdated books, substandard facilities, and fewer supplemental educational services compared to predominantly White schools in the same districts. This led to fewer opportunities. Educational inferiority was institutionalized and permitted by law.
To suggest that desegregation remains relevant today is even more uncomfortable because it forces us to admit that more than 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, many of the conditions above still exist. To confound this situation further, the advance of education technology has caused an evolution in inequality that simply carries on the ugly legacy of segregation.
As of today, more than 100 school desegregation cases remain open in the federal court system. Nearly all are located in the southern United States. These open cases mean continued education inequality on the basis of race for far too many students..
But today's barriers to educational access reflect both the era we live in and the technologies that define it. In a society increasingly powered by the internet, access to Wi-Fi is a persistent challenge for many families in these districts. The shiny new laptops distributed to students in wealthier areas are a luxury many predominantly Black districts cannot afford. And in this digital age, poverty begets digital exclusion, which in turn begets more profound educational inequity.
The current Department of Justice's answer to these open desegregation cases is simple: deny their relevance and push for their closure.
I won't dispute that some of these federal court cases may be outdated and should be closed. At the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), we hope to see the day when they can all be closed because the conditions that required them have been corrected. That is the aspiration.
But for every situation where a court could rightfully close one of these desegregation cases, I believe there are others where the facts require continued federal court intervention. The calculus has changed.
From a thirty-thousand-foot view, the courts have already weighed in. When the U.S. Department of Education tried to terminate the grant that funds SEF's Equity Assistance Center–South, we challenged them in court. Why? Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandates the creation of what were originally called Desegregation Assistance Centers for the purpose of dismantling the Jim Crow system of segregation, specifically in public education. By mistakenly targeting the Desegregation Assistance Centers in its campaign against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Trump Administration is effectively eliminating a critical component of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The courts agreed with our position and issued a preliminary injunction against the Department of Education's continued termination of the grant to operate the desegregation assistance center. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Education reinstated our grant.
SEF is now conducting an in-depth analysis of several districts still under desegregation orders to develop technical assistance plans that will finally bring these systems into compliance with federal law. Once complete, we will present these plans to the courts to help close these cases in a way that centers on the students. Because these cases began forty or more years ago, before the coming of the digital age we are now experiencing, the new compliance plans must incorporate the new education technology that, unfortunately, is not effectively accessible to students in most of the school districts involved in these open federal court cases.
And so we return to the uncomfortable topic of school desegregation.
The Black community saw hard-fought gains during the era of busing in the 1970s and 1980s—gains that some might even call a form of reparations. Where integration was implemented successfully, academic outcomes improved for Black and White students alike.
But at the same time, we must also acknowledge what was lost. During desegregation, many White families fled rather than send their children to racially integrated schools. They were often followed by more affluent Black families. Black educators lost jobs, Black administrators were displaced, and many schools in Black communities were closed. What remained were large numbers of disadvantaged students attending increasingly under-resourced schools in disinvested communities.
The issue has grown more complex in recent years, as changing demographics and evolving definitions of opportunity have, at times, obscured the particular harm that desegregation efforts were meant to address. While I fully acknowledge the barriers faced by other marginalized communities in this country, it is essential to note that none were subjected to the uniquely brutal institution of slavery. Black people were the targets of Jim Crow segregation. Black people were the focus of the post-Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Black people fought for and were the focus of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and subsequently, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
So yes, school desegregation still matters. In many ways, it is more important than ever.
Today, the challenge is different. MacBooks have replaced textbooks. Spotty Wi-Fi access has become as harmful as a leaking roof. The digital divide, due to the sheer speed of technological advancement, can leave students behind faster than ever before. Without intervention, we risk reproducing the very inequities we set out to eliminate decades ago.
Our current Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has said she supports equality but not equity. Let's take her at her word. Let's ask whether students in these districts with open federal court desegregation orders truly have equal educational opportunity. In far too many places, the answer is no.