How White Parents Can Resist Modern-Day Segregation in Schools
School segregation is not just a part of history—it's the present. This segregation is reflected in the numbers: a 2019 EdBuild report found more than half of U.S. children are in racially concentrated districts and nonwhite schools receive $23 billion less than white schools. The school decisions white parents make for their kids are very much a part of the story of modern-day segregation.
"White communities want neighborhood schools if their neighborhood school is white," Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Black education journalist and MacArthur Fellow, pointed out in a 2017 interview with The Atlantic. "If their neighborhood school is black, they want choice…we have a system where white people control the outcomes, and the outcome that most white Americans want is segregation."
Integrated Schools—an organization mobilizing white parents, who've historically perpetuated school segregation, to actively integrate schools—believes that white parents can work toward equality in education by making different choices. The solution: get white families to enroll their children in schools where they are not the racial majority. Integrated Schools folks call these "global-majority schools," which is a way to reject the "minoritization" of Black, Indigenous, and people of color.