With all of the controversy surrounding the Confederate flag as of late, it’s not surprising the candidates running for President of the United States have weighed in on the issue… as well as racism in America.
While speaking at a black church near Ferguson, Missouri recently… Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton said the issue of civil rights is far from here it needs to be. “Our schools are still segregated, in fact, more segregated than they were in the 1960s” Clinton said.
Our partners at PolitiFact Florida took a look at Clinton’s claim to see if it was accurate.
PolitiFact reporter Joshua Gillin says the statement rates MOSTLY TRUE on the Truth-O-Meter. He says she was basing her statement on a 2014 University of California, Los Angeles study that found integration had taken some steps backward since the 1960s. The important thing to note, however, is how she defines that time period. In Clinton’s case, Gillin says she was referencing 1968 when the United States Supreme Court started enforcing integration in schools.
“Integration was only really enforced in the South,” Gillin says. “Now, throughout the entire country, especially up north, we see a lot of schools because of a whole host of reasons… socioeconomic reasons. Poverty has really got a lot to do with this of course. A lot of those races… those kids are kind of stuck in schools where there is no integration.”
And it’s not one specific type of school.
Gillin says, “It’s all schools.” He went on to say, however, when taking a look at the statement in context of the year 1964 her statement would not hold up. “You need to keep in mind that 1968… that 1968 date that she is using has a lot to do with it.”
SOURCES: U.S. school segregation worsening?
- PolitiFact ruling
- Interview with Gary Orfield, Director of the Civil Rights Project at the UCLA Graduate School of Education, June 23, 2015
- Interview with Charles Clotfelter, professor of public policy, economics, and law at Duke University, June 24, 2015
- Email interview with Richard Rothstein, researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, June 23, 2105
- Email interview Josh Schwerin, spokesperson for Hillary Clinton, June 23, 2015
- Civil Rights Project, "Brown at 60," May 15, 2014
- Civil Rights Project, "E Pluribus ... Separation," Sept. 2012
- Charles Clotfelter, "Milliken and the Prospects for Racial Diversity in U.S. Public Schools," 2015
- Supreme Court of the United States, Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
- Supreme Court of the United States, Green v. County School Board of Kent, 1968
- Supreme Court of the United States, Milliken v. Bradley, 1977
- Supreme Court of the United States, Board of Education v. Dowell, 1991
- Supreme Court of the United States, Freeman v. Pitts, 1991
- Supreme Court of the United States, Missouri v. Jenkins, 1995
- Economic Policy Institute, "For Public Schools, Segregation Then, Segregation Since," Aug. 27, 2013
- Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, "Brown Fades: The End of Court-Ordered School Desegregation and the Resegregation of American Public Schools," July 3, 2012
- PBS Frontline, "A Return to School Segregation in America?", July 2, 2014
- ProPublica, Segregation Now, Aug. 14, 2011