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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Gary Orfield

Aired January 19, 2003 - 07:23   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: As America prepares to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day tomorrow, a new study is being released that shows public schools are becoming more segregated. That raises the question: Is King's dream of integration fading?
The study is being released by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Joining us to talk about it this morning is professor Gary Orfield, one of the study's co-authors.

Good morning to you, sir, thanks for being here.

GARY ORFIELD, PROFESSOR/CO-AUTHOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Good morning.

COLLINS: Let's go ahead and begin with what the study found, just the basics.

ORFIELD: Well, what our study found was that the country became more integrated for -- during the 1960's, during the civil rights movement, for 20 years later. But for the last 12 years it has been going back in the other direction and resegregating, and it's particularly happening in the south, which was the most integrated region of the country following Dr. King's movement.

We also find that Latino students are even more segregated now than black students, and segregated by race, poverty, and increasingly by language, and that these schools that are segregated are deeply unequal in educational terms.

COLLINS: Tell us why you think that's happening, or what the study says to back that up.

ORFIELD: Well, what the study shows is that it shows that it is happening, and it shows that -- where it's happening, and where the dramatic changes are going.

Why it's happening is partly because the country is becoming less white, and we have a huge international immigration going on, and those Latino children are younger and larger families.

The other thing that's happening clearly in the south is that integration increased as long as the court orders were being enforced and desegregation plans were in place, and it -- after the Supreme Court changed the rules in the 1990's, and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) increasingly pressured school districts to end their desegregation plans, segregation spreading pretty fast. COLLINS: What about, you say that the northerners just don't get it. What do you mean by that statement in your study?

ORFIELD: Well, what we've found is that the north has never really desegregated, particularly the biggest cities of the Northeast and the Middle West, which are the centers of segregation, have been ever since we started these studies 25 years ago.

The only places in the country where whites are in schools with significant numbers of minorities are in the South and in the West. In the South, whites are really growing up much more integrated than in the Northeast, particularly, which our area is the center of segregation in the country.

COLLINS: Are you saying that our policy makers are responsible for this? And what's happened over, I believe, you said the last 12 years, or the last 30 years, which is what the study encompasses, right?

ORFIELD: Well, I believe in terms of policy, there's been a vacuum of leadership. There used to be a program to help integrated schools deal with race relations, improve opportunity for everyone. That was repealed during the Reagan administration and hasn't been restored.

We're creating thousands of new charter schools with no civil rights requirements at all in the federal law. So, we haven't had leadership, and we had negative leadership from our courts. The courts are now dominated by anti-civil rights majorities that were appointed over the last several administrations, and they are -- they are -- they're dismantling desegregation.

They have adopted a set of rules that make it very difficult even for communities that have had very successful desegregation to maintain it. We have a tremendous lack of leadership and understanding in the part of many of our courts these days.

COLLINS: What do you say to the people who would criticize that point, and maybe even live in the areas that you are pointing out in the North, or even in the South and see a different picture?

ORFIELD: What we say is that you should listen to the young people. We are actually surveying young people in schools, high schools around the country, and in colleges, and those who've been in interracial backgrounds deeply appreciate it. They believe that they're better able to understand each other. They believe that they've learned about each other's culture. They're comfortable working together; they look forward to living in the society that we're going to have, which is going to be half non-white in the middle of this century.

COLLINS: So, Mr. Orfield, let me just ask you, do you think that we are better off now than we were 40 years ago?

ORFIELD: Well, we're definitely better off -- and 40 years, back in the 1960's when Martin Luther King started this movement, 99 percent of black students in the South were in completely segregated schools. Now, only about an eighth are in absolutely segregated schools.

But we're going backwards, and it's -- the pace of it is accelerating. So, now we have about one sixth of the black students in the country in schools that we call apartheid schools, up to a fourth in the Northeast.

COLLINS: Gary Orfield with the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. We do appreciate your time this morning, sir.

ORFIELD: Well, it's my pleasure to be with you.

COLLINS: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 19, 2003 - 07:23   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: As America prepares to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day tomorrow, a new study is being released that shows public schools are becoming more segregated. That raises the question: Is King's dream of integration fading?
The study is being released by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Joining us to talk about it this morning is professor Gary Orfield, one of the study's co-authors.

Good morning to you, sir, thanks for being here.

GARY ORFIELD, PROFESSOR/CO-AUTHOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Good morning.

COLLINS: Let's go ahead and begin with what the study found, just the basics.

ORFIELD: Well, what our study found was that the country became more integrated for -- during the 1960's, during the civil rights movement, for 20 years later. But for the last 12 years it has been going back in the other direction and resegregating, and it's particularly happening in the south, which was the most integrated region of the country following Dr. King's movement.

We also find that Latino students are even more segregated now than black students, and segregated by race, poverty, and increasingly by language, and that these schools that are segregated are deeply unequal in educational terms.

COLLINS: Tell us why you think that's happening, or what the study says to back that up.

ORFIELD: Well, what the study shows is that it shows that it is happening, and it shows that -- where it's happening, and where the dramatic changes are going.

Why it's happening is partly because the country is becoming less white, and we have a huge international immigration going on, and those Latino children are younger and larger families.

The other thing that's happening clearly in the south is that integration increased as long as the court orders were being enforced and desegregation plans were in place, and it -- after the Supreme Court changed the rules in the 1990's, and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) increasingly pressured school districts to end their desegregation plans, segregation spreading pretty fast. COLLINS: What about, you say that the northerners just don't get it. What do you mean by that statement in your study?

ORFIELD: Well, what we've found is that the north has never really desegregated, particularly the biggest cities of the Northeast and the Middle West, which are the centers of segregation, have been ever since we started these studies 25 years ago.

The only places in the country where whites are in schools with significant numbers of minorities are in the South and in the West. In the South, whites are really growing up much more integrated than in the Northeast, particularly, which our area is the center of segregation in the country.

COLLINS: Are you saying that our policy makers are responsible for this? And what's happened over, I believe, you said the last 12 years, or the last 30 years, which is what the study encompasses, right?

ORFIELD: Well, I believe in terms of policy, there's been a vacuum of leadership. There used to be a program to help integrated schools deal with race relations, improve opportunity for everyone. That was repealed during the Reagan administration and hasn't been restored.

We're creating thousands of new charter schools with no civil rights requirements at all in the federal law. So, we haven't had leadership, and we had negative leadership from our courts. The courts are now dominated by anti-civil rights majorities that were appointed over the last several administrations, and they are -- they are -- they're dismantling desegregation.

They have adopted a set of rules that make it very difficult even for communities that have had very successful desegregation to maintain it. We have a tremendous lack of leadership and understanding in the part of many of our courts these days.

COLLINS: What do you say to the people who would criticize that point, and maybe even live in the areas that you are pointing out in the North, or even in the South and see a different picture?

ORFIELD: What we say is that you should listen to the young people. We are actually surveying young people in schools, high schools around the country, and in colleges, and those who've been in interracial backgrounds deeply appreciate it. They believe that they're better able to understand each other. They believe that they've learned about each other's culture. They're comfortable working together; they look forward to living in the society that we're going to have, which is going to be half non-white in the middle of this century.

COLLINS: So, Mr. Orfield, let me just ask you, do you think that we are better off now than we were 40 years ago?

ORFIELD: Well, we're definitely better off -- and 40 years, back in the 1960's when Martin Luther King started this movement, 99 percent of black students in the South were in completely segregated schools. Now, only about an eighth are in absolutely segregated schools.

But we're going backwards, and it's -- the pace of it is accelerating. So, now we have about one sixth of the black students in the country in schools that we call apartheid schools, up to a fourth in the Northeast.

COLLINS: Gary Orfield with the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. We do appreciate your time this morning, sir.

ORFIELD: Well, it's my pleasure to be with you.

COLLINS: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com