1 in 3 Black Americans says integration hasn’t helped Black students: Survey

Seventy years after the landmark Supreme Court decision to end segregation in schools, a majority of Americans believe more should be done to racially integrate schools. 

A new Washington Post-Ipsos survey found that 86 percent of U.S. adults support the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. Though 90 percent of White Americans support the decision, only 80 percent of Black Americans said the same. 

And while Brown v. Board led to the integration of schools, a third of Black Americans say integration has not improved the quality of education for Black students. 

In fact, segregation of schools remains an issue today, though 56 percent of U.S. adults believe schools are now less racially segregated than they were 30 years ago. Thirty percent of Black Americans said there has been no change over the past 30 years. 

Jalisa Evans, chief executive officer and founder of the Black Educator Advocates Network, told The Hill that as white students fled school districts to avoid integration, redlining continued to create segregated schools through housing. 

“Today, schools with large numbers of Black students are underfunded,” she explained. 

In December 2022, the Education Trust found that districts with the most Black, Latino, and Native American students receive significantly less state and local funding than districts with the fewest students of color. 

Districts with predominantly nonwhite students, the report found, receive more than $2,000 per student less than predominantly white districts.  In a district with 5,000 students, the report concluded, this would equate to $13.5 million in missing resources.

The Washington Post-Ipsos survey found that nearly 68 percent of Americans say more should be done to integrate schools. Nearly two in three White Americans say more needs to be done to integrate schools.

Though a majority of Black Americans support various proposals to reduce segregation in schools, including 79 percent who favor creating more magnet schools and 73 percent who favor redrawing school boundaries to create more diverse school districts, nearly 80 percent of white people say they support “letting students go to the local school in their community, even if it means that most of the students would be of the same race.”

Black Americans are more split, with 51 percent saying students should go to the local school even if most students would be the same race, while 45 percent said transferring students to other schools for more integration is better, even if it means travel.