According to an article from Huffington Post, schools in the state of New York are sought to be the most segregated in the United States. Racial segregation has been a big issue in the U.S with New York being the highest ranked in the nation. Research says it’s not an easy problem to solve, but has to be done. This problem has been around for a long time, even though laws have been passed against racial segregation, we still see this problem occurring in this day and age.

In 2009, “black and Latino students in New York, had the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools,” they are not only segregated by race but also by income (Resmovits). The issue of minorities making less money than white families, brings the problem of racial inequality among students. African American students are more likely to surround themselves with other African American students that are in the same income bracket. Students who tend to dress and look the same feel more comfortable around each other. They see that the people they talk to are on the same level as they are and don’t feel as left out. Because of lower incomes among minority groups, there is a higher chance of racial segregation. Students who live in these households who have lower income get less education. Less education leads to students not being able to attend college because they don’t have the amount of knowledge a graduating high school student should have. “Across the state, the typical African-American student attends a school where 69% of students are low-income.” For the typical Latino student, that number is 65 percent. For whites? Less than 30 percent” (Williams). Lower income versus higher income is a chief reason for segregation in New York schools. New York is also known to have many different ethnicities. The diversity of certain people is very important because after education, you are out in the real world dealing with many different people.. There is no way that there will only be working with one certain ethnic group. The color of your skin should not matter, everybody has the same learning abilities making each student equal. Students should get the same amount of education no matter what their race or income is. It’s not the child’s fault that their family income is low or that they can’t attend a better school.

Racial segregation in schools is truly wrong. The world is changing, it’s the 21st century and this shouldn’t be a problem that we should be facing now. The color of a person’s skin doesn’t describe them as a person. It doesn’t define who they are. As the famous saying says, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” Students shouldn’t be sent to a school where they’re racially segregated because of  their own ethnicity. Fixing the racial segregation in the state has been taken into consideration. The members of the New York City Council introduced legislation in the month of October of 2014 to draw attention and stop the racial segregation in schools. “We claim to be clear on the values of diversity of our kids and the necessity of not having a segregated system,” said Brad Lander, a democratic councilman from Brooklyn and the main sponsor of one of the bills. “Unfortunately, the reality is we have a deeply segregated school system that doesn’t deliver the benefits of diversity to most public schools” (Harris). There arethree different parts to this legislation. First, Mr. Lander’s bill would let the Education Department report real numbers for various measure of diversity in schools. The second bill, sponsored by Ritchie Torres, wants to make the Education Department make the school diversity a policy goal. Third, sponsored by Inez Barron, wants the State Legislature to let students come to school based on test scores that don’t identify their ethnicity. This seems like a good idea to make schools more diversified.

The racial segregation in the schools of the state of New York have been trying to improve themselves. The Education Department has been supportive in trying to make a change for the state. The effort taken to show a difference for young students has shown that there is possibility.

Sources Used:

“New York Council to Look at School Segregation”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/nyregion/new-york-city-council-to-look-at-school-segregation.html

“New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction and a Damaged Future”

http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/ny-norflet-report-placeholder

The Real Reasons New York has the Country Most Segregated Schools”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/31/the-real-reasons-new-york-has-the-country-s-most-segregated-schools.html

“The Nation’s Most Segregated Schools Aren’t Where You’d Think They’d Be”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/26/new-york-schools-segregated_n_5034455.html