Small residential minority increases greatly amplify into public school resegregation

Evidence

While Cobb and Gwinnett counties had been 96 and 95 percent white in 1970, for instance, their white majorities had thinned to 72 percent each by 2000. As had happened inside Atlanta, the suburbs found that small erosions in the general population’s white majority were greatly amplified in the enrollment at public schools. The school system in DeKalb County, which had been 94 percent white as late as 1969, was less than 12 percent white three decades later. In parts of the county, white abandonment of the public schools was even starker. In 2003, for instance, the posh neighborhood of Avondale Estates was 89 percent white, yet the public Avondale High School had a student population which was just 5 percent white. Surrounding suburbs looked even worse, according to a report by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Focusing on the country’s largest school systems, the project measured the changes in racial composition in schools between 1986 and 2000. Of 239 school systems nationwide, three of the top four rates of resegregation were found in suburban counties around Atlanta. Clayton County’s school system had the single fastest rate of school resegregation in the entire country, while Gwinnett and Cobb had the thirdand fourth-fastest rates of resegregation, respectively. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 588

Categorization

• SEED: The data point that Avondale Estates is 89% white yet its school is 5% white is a striking hook for an article on modern resegregation.
• XREF: connects to: White flight repeated itself from suburbs into 95-percent-white exurbs — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 589; White flight left empty schools while black students were crowded into half-day sessions — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 377; School segregation increased between 1976 and 1980 after early progress — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3350 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Outlawing explicit race measures resegregates schools through residential sorting #expands (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 394
• School segregation increased between 1976 and 1980 after early progress #corroborates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3350
• Small threatened minority presence favors assimilation rather than segregationist rule #complicates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1433
• Complete segregation emerges even when individuals only mildly avoid being a minority #expands (0.85) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 824
• US public schools are more segregated today than at any time since the 1960s #corroborates (0.80)