New Jersey is often called the most diverse state in the nation, but the state's public school system is more segregated than the South, panelists said at a seminar at the NJSBA Annual Meeting and Convention on Wednesday.
"Modern Day School Segregation in New Jersey" was moderated by Carolyn Chang, immediate past president of ABWL-NJ. The program began with a short video presentation on how federal government endorsed and baked segregation into home-ownership in post-WWII America by recommending against insuring mortgages in communities where black families lived.
"White communities were simultaneously invested in at the same time that communities of color were disinvested in," said Elise C. Boddie, professor at Rutgers Law School.
"It's a shameful, shameful legacy," said Retired Justice Gary S. Stein who now is chairing a coalition of organizations that have brought a lawsuit against the state saying that New Jersey was operating one of the most segregated school systems in the country. The lawsuit challenges de facto segregation, Stein said, which New Jersey courts have ruled as unconstitutional.
Diverse classrooms benefit all students, the panelists said. "When people are isolated from one another, they tend to assume things about that other group. they think, those people over there are like this," Boddie said. "They base their understanding of groups they don't interact with on assumptions and stereotypes. We otherize people we don't know."
Christian Estevez, president of the Latino Action Network, talked about his experience in Plainfield compared to the whiter, more suburban Westfield school. Going to Westfield, he said, opened his mind up to what he could accomplish. "In our imagination, growing up, you start to believe the myth that white people are exceptional and there's something wrong with us. When you put us all in the same room together, the myth starts to break down."