Maybe you remember it from high school. Classes split by skin color. Blacks, whites and Latinos sitting in different sections in every room. Honors classes filled with whites in schools where whites are a minority. Schools that are 90 percent minority or 90 percent white. However it shows up, segregation still undeniably exists in America's schools. And the more things change, the more they stay the same.
De facto segregation is alive and well in the United States. It is held in place today not by racist laws and police with batons but with money. The racial situation at ASU is an excellent example of how blacks can be held down by a lower overall socioeconomic status.
At first glance everything seems to be looking good. Out of about 50,000 undergraduate students at ASU, 2,000 are black. This matches the percentage of blacks in Arizona at four percent. In fact, the ratio of black students to black residents in Arizona is slightly higher than the white student-to-resident ratio.
However, this doesn't tell the whole story.
Black households, on average nationally, make $32,000 dollars a year. That's $20,000 dollars less than a white household. It's also $20,000 that can't go toward an out-of-state school. In other words, a vastly higher proportion of black students than white students must stay in state for their education due to economic restrictions. That means fewer options, more competition and fewer blacks than whites going to undergraduate school.
If a black person does manage to get an undergraduate degree, his household income will increase by an average of $18,000, which would put him nearly level with whites with the same education.
This means that if blacks had the opportunity and money to attend college in the same proportion of their population as whites do, the socioeconomic disadvantages pushed upon blacks could be torn down.
To anyone who stands behind affirmative action, this is old news. And indeed affirmative action seeks to do just what is outlined above; that is provide opportunity and money to those who would otherwise never have it due to de facto racial discrimination.
Affirmative action has done amazing things for minorities in America in the years since its adoption. Minorities, especially blacks, are close to breaking the barrier of economic discrimination that has set them apart from whites for so long. However, just because affirmative action seems to have worked in creating gains for minorities does not mean it is done working.
There is a trend to remove desegregation and affirmative action laws because "racism is dead." While people aren't running around with pillowcases on their heads anymore, racism will not be dead until Harvard starts accepting black kids because they're rich, instead of because they're black.
