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The two big inside-the-Beltway decisions yesterday--not to change immigration laws (text link) and not to permit race-based integration (text link) of public classrooms--apply to ordinary people in the real world. CBS sent Byron Pitts to Charlotte NC to study the racial mix of its schools. NBC had Ron Allen compare communities on either side of Long Island Sound for its Whose America? report on immigrants living here illegally.
The high point for racial integration of public schools has already passed, Pitts pointed out. Since 1980, "it has dropped across the country" with the sharpest declines in NC, Nev, Del and Wisc. Charlotte NC ended its program of busing to integrate its schools six years ago and now the West Charlotte school district is 88% black and 1% white--compared with 40% black and 60% white 30 years ago. The resegregation has occurred through a city-suburban split: "Wealthier families moved their children to well-performing schools and poorer families, mostly black and Latino, stayed where they were, crammed into low-performing schools, where test scores have plummeted." Yet it was not the old-fashioned type of white flight: "White folks go in one direction--fast out of town--with middle-class black folks right behind them."
NBC's Allen followed up on his profile in March of the contrasting policies of Suffolk County LI and New Haven Ct. The former was pushing for anti-loitering laws to crackdown on immigrant day laborers; the latter declared sanctuary for those without papers. Since then New Haven has become the first city in the nation to institute a Resident Identification Card to integrate the undocumented into the community. And when Suffolk County's loitering crackdown was axed as illegal racial profiling, police turned to stiffer traffic enforcement instead, jailing motorists without ID. "New Haven fights to keep federal immigration officers out. Suffolk County has been pushing hard to get them here" so that those it jails can be deported immediately.
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