60 years since Brown vs. Board of Education, and only about 12 percent of African-American/Latino students in major cities have any exposure to white students. Um…

I don’t think you need to have seen The Wire Season 4 to understand this, but perhaps that would help a little depending on your specific background with education (and where you grew up):

The UCLA report notes that Latino students are the most segregated in the country. In major and mid-sized cities, where housing discrimination historically separated neighborhoods along racial lines, black and Latino students are often almost entirely isolated from white and Asian students—about 12 percent of black and Latino students in major cities have any exposure to white students. Half of the students who attend 91-100 percent black and Latino schools (which make up 13 percent of all US public schools) are also in schools that are 90 percent low-income—a phenomenon known as “double segregation.” And the Northeast holds the special distinction of having more black children in intensely segregated schools (where school populations are 90-100 percent minority) in 2011 than it did in 1968. In New York state, for instance, 65 percent of black students attend schools that are intensely segregated, as do 57 percent of Latinos students.

Here’s a link to that aforementioned UCLA report.

Then there’s this chart — look at the stunning growth after Brown vs. Board of Education, then look at where we’re at today:

This was a common theme to discuss as the Brown decision hit 60 years old, FYI: see here, here, here and here.

From a personal context, I taught in an inner-city public elementary school for two years about a decade ago; in a school of 500 or students, there was one — 1 — that anyone would classify as “traditionally Caucasian.” It was about 93 percent Hispanic and six percent African-American, so the quote above and the one in the headline of this post is essentially right. We integrated the schools, yes — and that’s a hallmark/landmark/other marks decision by the Supreme Court — but we didn’t really set up the culture around neighborhoods and options whereby the integration really meant anything. That’s the shame at 60.