Opinion

65 Years After Brown v. Board of Education, We Risk Going Backward

Published

5 years ago

May 17, 2019

This week marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous Supreme Court decision that outlawed apartheid in America, declaring segregated schools “inherently unequal” and unconstitutional.

Today, the common sense of the Brown decision is under attack. For nearly three decades, our schools have been re-segregating, reversing the progress made under Brown, reflecting the deep racial and economic segregation of our communities. Worse, several of Donald Trump’s nominees to the federal courts refuse even to endorse Brown as unassailable law.

As the United States grows more diverse, we run the risk of becoming more separate and more unequal.

The decision in Brown was and is compelling. Racially segregated schools were and are inherently separate and unequal. They also were and are unequal in resources. In affluent, largely white suburbs, public schools are new and modern, with advanced facilities and courses and good teachers. In low-income, minority neighborhoods, schools tend to be old and dilapidated, with less experienced teachers, fewer resources and fewer advanced courses.

Research shows that integration works. Segregation injures the chances for achievement, college success, long-term employment and income of students of color. Integration raises those chances with no detriment to white students. Indeed, the experience of going to a diverse school better prepares students of all races for the world they will enter.

With neighborhoods largely segregated — a legacy of racially restrictive laws and covenants, of bank and real estate red lining and more — integration of public schools inevitably required busing. Busing, of course, is routine across America, a service to parents. But opponents of integration used “forced busing” to rouse fears and hatred. The question was never about busing, it was about where the bus delivered the students.

When the federal courts, packed by judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, retreated from desegregation orders, the schools began to re-segregate. Now, as Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA), chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor concludes: “After four decades without federal support for desegregation, we are right back where we started,” with schools that are increasingly separate and unequal.

A recent report, “Harming our Common Future, America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown,” by the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the Pennsylvania State University Center for Education and Civil Rights, detailed the bleak reality. As the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss summarizes, “Over the past three decades, black students have been increasingly segregated in intensely segregated schools (defined as 90 to 100 percent nonwhite).” By 2016, 40 percent of all black students were in segregated schools.

The worst states? The “blue” states of New York, California, Illinois and Maryland, with New York the most segregated for blacks and California the most segregated for Latinos.

This isn’t just an urban problem: our suburbs are increasingly divided by race, with African-American suburban students attending schools that are three-fourths nonwhite, and white students in the same suburbs going to schools that are, on average, two-thirds white. Charter schools — increasingly a profit-making venture rather than an educational one — are even more segregated than traditional public schools.

Schools are segregated because our neighborhoods are segregated. Without residential integration and without metropolitan-wide integration policies, segregation will intensify, even as the country grows more diverse. Yet requirements that communities pursue residential integration remain unenforced and programs to subsidize scattered affordable housing are weak at best.

Now 65 years later, we face a stark choice: the promise of Brown or a country torn apart by racial tensions. Sadly, as Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, reports, Donald Trump’s nominees to the federal bench increasingly refuse to endorse Brown v. Board as unassailable law. The Republican Senate is about to confirm three of these judges to lifetime appointments. Like the Voting Rights Act, gutted by five right-wing justices in the Shelby case, Brown v. Board of Education itself may be at risk.

Sixty-five years later, with our country more diverse than ever, we must once again decide if we will be one nation, with liberty and justice for all. That cannot be left to right-wing judges or timorous politicians. It is time once more for citizens of conscience to call this nation back to its better angels.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

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Activism

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Published

3 days ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

Oakland Post

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

Published

4 days ago

November 1, 2024

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

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Bay Area

In the City Attorney Race, Ryan Richardson Is Better for Oakland

It’s been two years since negotiations broke down between the City of Oakland and a developer who wants to build a coal terminal here, and the issue has reappeared, quietly, in the upcoming race for Oakland City attorney. Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Published

1 week ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Members of Oaklanders Defending Democracy political action committee with Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, center. Courtesy photo.

By Margaret Rossoff

Special to The Post

OPINION

Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Richardson has worked in the Office of the City Attorney since 2014 and is likely to continue current City Attorney Barbara Parker’s policies managing the department. He has committed not to accept campaign contributions from developers who want to store and handle coal at a proposed marine terminal in Oakland.

Retired Judge Harbin-Forte launched and has played a leading role in the campaign to recall Mayor Sheng Thao, which is also on the November ballot. She has stepped back from the recall campaign to focus on her candidacy. The East Bay Times noted, “Harbin-Forte’s decision to lead the recall campaign against a potential future client is … troubling — and is likely to undermine her ability, if she were to win, to work effectively.”

Harbin-Forte has refused to rule out accepting campaign support from coal terminal interests or their agents. Coal terminal lobbyist Greg McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committee “SOS Oakland” is backing her campaign.

In the 2022 mayor’s race, parties hoping to build a coal terminal made $600,000 in contributions to another of McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committees.

In a recent interview, Harbin-Forte said she is open to “listening to both sides” and will be “fair.” However, the City Attorney’s job is not to judge fairly between the City and its legal opponents – it is to represent the City against its opponents.

She thought that the 2022 settlement negotiations ended because the City “rejected a ‘no coal’ settlement.” This is lobbyist McConnell’s narrative, in contrast to the report by City Attorney Barbara Parker. Parker has explained that the City continued to negotiate in good faith for a settlement with no “loopholes” that could have allowed coal to ship through Oakland – until would-be coal developer Phil Tagami broke off negotiations.

One of Harbin-Forte’s main priorities, listed on her website, is “reducing reliance on outside law firms,” and instead use the lawyers working in the City Attorney’s office.

However, sometimes this office doesn’t have the extensive expertise available that outside firms can provide in major litigation. In the ongoing, high stakes coal litigation, the City has benefited from collaborating with experienced, specialized attorneys who could take on the nationally prominent firms representing the City’s opponents.

The City will continue to need this expertise as it pursues an appeal of the judge’s decision that restored the developer’s lease and defends against a billion-dollar lawsuit brought by the hedge fund operator who holds the sublease on the property.

Harbin-Forte’s unwillingness to refuse campaign contributions from coal terminal interests, her opposition to using outside resources when needed, as well as her uncritical repetition of coal lobbyist McConnell’s claim that the City sabotaged the settlement talks of 2022 all raise serious concerns about how well she would represent the best interests of Oakland and Oaklanders if she is elected City Attorney.