by Robin Landry

Created on: March 19, 2009

Throughout the history of the United States many attempts have been made to end segregation. The Fourteenth Amendment with its Equal Protection Clause first sought to ensure the rights of former slaves. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 attacked the problem of separate and unequal schools. When I was a child growing up on the 1970s I can clearly recall the controversy surrounding forced busing in the Boston school system in an effort to achieve racial integration.

However, despite all of these legislative efforts schools and neighborhoods in many areas of the country still remain highly segregated today. In some cases, it would seem that the laws intended to remedy the situation have in fact exacerbated the problem. I think the question is not, "Does segregation still exist?" because, in far too many communities it clearly does. The real question should be, "Why does segregation exist and is it a problem?"

The situations which led to the implementation of legal remedies such as the Fourteenth Amendment, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were clearly wrong. My 76 year old mother still recalls having to catch a city bus alone at the age of five and ride seven blocks to a black school even though there was a white school within sight of her home. Both my parents clearly recall "Colored Only" hotels, water fountains, restrooms and movie theater seating. They also knew which restaurants to avoid because they would not be served.

However, despite this blatant discrimination in public spaces my parents and grandparents also recalled living in racially mixed neighborhoods and having had relatively cordial relationships with their Caucasian neighbors. Likewise, Linda Brown-Thompson, the daughter of Oliver Brown, one of the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board of Education case recalled in a 2004 interview that her family lived in a very diverse neighborhood and that she had neighborhood playmates of various ethnic and racial backgrounds. It was only in school that they were separated.

Today, however, many schools and even some public spaces remain segregated, not as a matter of law or discrimination, but because people of different races simply don't live in close proximity to one another any longer. If we decide that this type of segregation is something that needs to be remedied then the integration of residential neighborhoods would probably provide the most natural solution.

Not all neighborhoods are highly segregated

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