Segregation

September 7, 1978 was my first day of sixth grade. I left my house in West Roxbury, which is a neighborhood of Boston, walked a few blocks to the bus stop, and got on the bus. I rode east into another neighborhood, Roslindale, and past the Washington Irving Middle School, where most kids in West Roxbury went — but we did not stop there. Instead we continued east into another neighborhood, Mattapan, to the Solomon Lewenberg Middle School.

You might wonder why I didn’t go to the closest school to my house, which was less than two miles away — or even the second closest, the William B. Rogers Middle School, which was three miles away. Why was I bused to the Lewenberg school, more than four miles away?

To understand that, you have to understand some Boston history. In 1974, federal judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that the Boston Public Schools had deliberately maintained racial segregation. Although Massachusetts had no laws requiring separate schools, Garrity found that the School Committee had intentionally drawn attendance zones, located new schools, and managed transfers in ways that kept many schools almost entirely White or almost entirely Black. Because the segregation was intentional — and not just the result of segregated housing patterns — it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

To remedy the violation, Garrity ordered a desegregation plan that reassigned students to different schools. For many children, including me, that meant riding a bus across the city to attend a school in a different neighborhood.

The first year of the plan was one of the ugliest episodes in Boston’s history, the desegregation busing crisis. On the first day of school, hundreds of protesters gathered outside South Boston High School, where buses carrying Black students from Roxbury were met by violent crowds. As police escorted students into the school, demonstrators threw rocks, bottles, and eggs. Several people were injured, and many protesters were arrested.

Throughout the school year, there were fights inside the schools, attacks on buses, and repeated confrontations between protesters and police. Anti-busing rallies drew thousands of participants and counter-protesters.

Conflict continued into the following year. In April 1976, a newspaper photographer captured a White teenager attacking a Black attorney with the staff of an American flag. The photograph, titled The Soiling of Old Glory, appeared in newspapers nationwide and became a symbol of the crisis.

After 1976, the protests and violence subsided. When I got on the bus in 1978, the desegregation plan was starting its fifth year, and for me the academic year was uneventful.

But Boston is still a highly segregated city, like many other cities in the United States. In this chapter, we’ll look at attitudes about segregation, how they have changed over the last fifty years, and how people experience segregation now.

School segregation and busing¶

Boston was not the first city to use busing to desegregate schools. Some of the first were Evanston, Illinois, in 1967 and Berkeley, California, in 1968. In 1965, in Charlotte, North Carolina, a group of Black families sued the Board of Education for failing to desegregate the schools. A federal court ordered the school district to implement busing. In 1971, the order was appealed to the Supreme Court, which unanimously supported the order. By then, federal courts had ordered busing as a remedy for segregation in several other cities.

Boston was also not the only city where busing was met with violence. In 1971 in Pontiac, Michigan, members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) bombed ten empty school buses.

So in 1972, the first year of the General Social Survey, busing was a national political issue. Presidential candidate George Wallace campaigned against it in the Democratic primaries, and President Nixon asked Congress to halt new busing orders.

This history is why the GSS included this question^[1]:

In general, do you favor or oppose the busing of Black and White school children from one school district to another?

The following figure shows the percentage in favor, for Black and non-Black respondents.

Among non-Black respondents, support for busing rose from 15% to 34% between 1972 and 1996. Among Black respondents, a majority supported busing throughout, rising from 53% to 61%.

The American National Election Studies (ANES) asked a similar question from 1972 to 1984. Over this shorter period, support did not increase among White respondents, and it might have decreased among Black respondents, but that change is statistically uncertain.

The GSS includes one other question related to segregated schools. From 1978 to 1996, non-Black respondents were asked:

Would you yourself have any objection to sending your children to a school where [a few / half / more than half] of the children are African-Americans?

Black respondents were asked about schools where the children are White. The following figure shows the percentage of non-Black respondents who said they would object.

The lines show results from the GSS. The circles show results from similar questions in other surveys: Gallup between 1958 and 1980, and a Washington Post poll in 2024.

Between 1972 and 1996, the percentage who would object to a school where a few of the children are Black fell from 7% to 3%; for a school where half are Black, from 26% to 18%; and for a school where more than half are Black, from 58% to 49%. In the Post poll from 2024, the corresponding percentages are 9% for a few, also 9% for half, and 18% for more than half. In summary, a large majority of White parents have no problem sending their children to a majority-Black school.

In the GSS, Black respondents were asked about schools where some of the children were White. Not many would object: 10% or fewer to a school where a few or half of the students were White, and 15-20% if the majority were White. Those percentages were mostly unchanged between 1978 and 1996.

In the Post poll from 2024, Black parents were more likely to object: 28% to a school where a few of the children are White, 18% where half are, and 27% where more than half are. There are small differences in the way the surveys were run, but it’s not clear why the results differ so much.

In most places, the reason schools are segregated is that neighborhoods are segregated. In the next section, we’ll see why neighborhoods are segregated.

Segregation was not an accident¶

Housing segregation has a long history in the United States, and even if we start in the 20th century, it’s more than I can present here. But as background, I will outline some important events of the last 100 years.

Before 1917, many American cities had laws that prohibited Black and White families from living on the same blocks. Such laws were struck down by the Supreme Court in Buchanan v. Warley, which held unanimously that the laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment by infringing on homeowners’ property rights.

But the decision did not prohibit discrimination by homeowners. After 1917, house-sellers often added to the deed of sale a “restrictive covenant” — a contractual requirement that the house could only be occupied by White residents. A typical covenant included language like:

“... hereafter no part of said property or any portion thereof shall be ... occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race, it being intended hereby to restrict the use of said property ... against the occupancy as owners or tenants of any portion of said property for resident or other purpose by people of the Negro or Mongolian^[2] race.”

In 1926, these covenants were challenged before the Supreme Court on the grounds that they were prohibited by the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments. In Corrigan v. Buckley, the Court rejected these arguments unanimously, holding that those constitutional protections restrict only government action, not individuals entering into private contracts.

After that, restrictive covenants became more common. In Chicago in 1947, covenants covered about half of the city’s residential sections, concentrated in the areas surrounding Black neighborhoods. They were even more common in new suburbs.

In 1948, covenants were challenged again, in Shelley v. Kraemer. This time, the plaintiffs’ lawyers took a different approach: People are free to make discriminatory agreements, they argued, but when a court enforces such an agreement, that enforcement is a state action.

The Court agreed, and held that state enforcement of a discriminatory contract is prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision was unanimous — again — but three justices did not participate in the decision. They didn’t explain why, but the historical consensus is that they recused themselves because their own homes were subject to racially restrictive covenants. So that gives you a sense of how pervasive they were.

The decisions in Corrigan and Shelley were almost directly contradictory, but they were both unanimous. So we might wonder what changed between 1926 and 1948.

One change was the composition of the Court: Franklin Roosevelt appointed eight justices to the Court between 1937 and 1943; seven of them were still sitting in 1948.

Also, Shelley was not an incidental case; it was part of the long-term strategy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). And the attorneys who argued the case were persuasive; one of them was Thurgood Marshall, who must have made a good impression, because in 1967 he became the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court.

Buchanan prohibited segregation by law, and Shelley prohibited state enforcement of discriminatory contracts — but nothing prevented discrimination by homeowners. Until 1968, it was still legal for a homeowner to refuse to sell to a Black family.

For years, Congress debated a law to prohibit this kind of discrimination. By March 1968, the Fair Housing Act had been passed by the House and Senate, but it was delayed by the Chairman of the House Rules Committee, William Colmer of Mississippi. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4 — and the violent unrest that followed — the committee finally acted. President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill on April 11.

For more about the government actions that created and reinforced racial segregation, I recommend Rothstein’s The Color of Law. Many of those government actions were supported by public opinion; now let’s see how those opinions changed over time.

Support for segregation has declined¶

In 1973, five years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act, the GSS asked this question:

Suppose there is a community-wide vote on the general housing issue. There are two possible laws to vote on: One law says that a homeowner can decide whom to sell his house to, even if that homeowner prefers not to sell to someone because of their race or color. The second law says that a homeowner cannot refuse to sell to someone because of their race or color. Which law would you vote for?

The following figure shows the percentage who chose the second law, which prohibits a homeowner from discriminating.

In 1973, only about 35% of non-Black respondents chose the open housing law, so it seems that the Fair Housing Act was ahead of public opinion. But not for long — support for open housing passed 50% in 1986, and by 2024 it was 81%. That’s an increase of 46 percentage points in 50 years; 16 due to generational replacement and 30 due to changing minds.

Among Black respondents, support was much higher from the start: 74% in 1978, compared to 39% among non-Black respondents. In 2024, the two groups were nearly the same: 83% and 81%.

The ANES and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), which runs the GSS, asked other questions related to segregation in public life:

1. GSS, 1972-1985, and NORC from 1942: Do you think White students and Black students should go to the same schools or separate schools? (percent saying separate schools)

2. NORC, 1944-1972: Do you think Black people should have as good a chance as White people to get any kind of job, or do you think White people should have the first chance at any kind of job? (percent saying White people should have the first chance)

3. NORC, 1942-1970: Generally speaking, do you think there should be separate sections for Black people in streetcars and buses? (percent saying yes)

4. ANES, 1964-1978: Are you in favor of desegregation, strict segregation, or something in between? (percent choosing strict segregation; the circles show the same question in the Southern Focus Poll, 1992-1999, which asked about “integration of the races” rather than “desegregation”)

The following figure shows support for segregation. The lines show percentages of non-Black respondents in the GSS and ANES; the filled circles show White adults in NORC surveys. The hollow circles show non-Black respondents in the Southern Focus Poll.

For all four questions, support for segregation declined.

• Support for separate schools (1) fell from 68% to 25% between 1942 and 1970 (White NORC respondents), and from 15% to 7% between 1972 and 1985 (non-Black GSS respondents).

• The percentage who said White people should have the first chance at a job (2) fell from 55% to 3% between 1944 and 1972.

• Support for separate sections on streetcars and buses (3) fell from 54% to 12% between 1942 and 1970.

• Support for strict segregation (4) fell from 25% to 7% between 1964 and 1978, and in the Southern Focus Poll it stayed between 2% and 4% through the 1990s.

NORC also asked whether Black people should have the right to use the same parks, restaurants, and hotels as White people. In 1963, 27% of White adults said no; in 1970, it was 12% — a drop of 15 percentage points in 7 years.

Very few Black people supported segregation. In the GSS, between 3% and 7% supported separate schools (1) from 1972 to 1985. In the ANES, between 2% and 7% favored strict segregation (4) from 1964 to 1978, and in the Southern Focus Poll, between 1% and 4% did in the 1990s.

The same surveys included these questions about segregation in neighborhoods:

1. Gallup, 1958-1997: Would you move if Black people came to live in great numbers in your neighborhood? (percent saying they might or definitely would)

2. GSS, 1972-2002, and NORC from 1963: Do you agree or disagree: African-Americans shouldn’t push themselves where they’re not wanted. (percent agreeing strongly or slightly)

3. GSS, 1972-1996, and NORC from 1963: Do you agree or disagree: White people have a right to keep African-Americans out of their neighborhoods if they want to, and African-Americans should respect that right. (percent agreeing strongly or slightly)

4. Gallup, 1958-1997: If Black people came to live next door, would you move? (percent saying they might or definitely would)

5. GSS, 1990-2024: [Would you be in favor or opposed to] living in a neighborhood where half of your neighbors were Blacks? (percent somewhat or very much opposed)

6. ANES, 1964-1976: Which of these statements would you agree with: White people have a right to keep Black people out of their neighborhoods if they want to, or Black people have a right to live wherever they can afford to? (percent choosing the first)

All six declined.

• The percentage who might or would move if Black people moved into their neighborhood (1) fell from 79% to 25% between 1958 and 1990 — but it was still 25% in 1997.

• Agreement that Black people shouldn’t push where they’re not wanted (2) fell from 74% to 40% between 1972 and 2002.

• Agreement that White people have a right to keep Black people out of their neighborhoods (3) fell from 60% to 47% between 1963 and 1970, and from 41% to 13% between 1972 and 1996.

• The percentage who said they might or would move if a Black family came to live next door (4) fell from 45% to 2% between 1958 and 1997.

• Opposition to living in a neighborhood that is half Black (5) fell from 44% to 12% between 1990 and 2024.

• In the ANES, the percentage who said White people have a right to keep Black people out (6) fell from 39% to 11% between 1964 and 1976.

NORC also asked White adults whether it would make any difference to them if a Black person with the same income and education moved into their block; the percentage that said so fell from 35% to 14% between 1963 and 1972.

The cohort components of these changes decline consistently — that is, each generation supports segregation less than the one before. For all of these questions, generational replacement explains less than half of the change, and for most it’s less than a third; the rest is changing minds.

Few Black people supported segregated neighborhoods. In the ANES, the percentage who said White people have a right to keep Black people out (6) was 3% in 1964 and 1% in 1976. In the GSS, agreement with a similar statement (3) fell from 13% to 7% between 1980 and 1996.

A substantial minority agreed that Black people shouldn’t push where they’re not wanted (2), although that declined, too, from 42% to 33% between 1980 and 2002. For Black respondents, that might reflect a disinclination to go where they’re not welcome, rather than a preference for segregation.

In summary, support has declined for segregated neighborhoods, schools, social spaces, and workplaces.

Geographical segregation has declined¶

Most people don’t want to live segregated lives. Now let’s see how that preference is reflected in reality.

We’ll look at two groups of questions: the first measures geographical segregation — whether Black and White Americans live, study, and work in the same places; the second measures social distance — whether they mix in churches, clubs, and friendships.

Here are six questions about geographical segregation, as posed to non-Black respondents.

1. ANES, 1964-1976: Is this neighborhood you live in all White, mostly White, about half and half, mostly Black, or all Black?

2. GSS, 1972-1993: Are there any African-American families living close to you?

3. ANES, 1964-1976: Is the grade school nearest you all White, mostly White, about half and half, mostly Black, or all Black?

4. ANES, 1964-1972: Is the high school nearest you all White, mostly White, about half and half, mostly Black, or all Black?

5. GSS, 1972-2024: Are there any Blacks living in this neighborhood now?

6. GSS, 1990-2022: Are the people who work where you work all White, mostly White, about half and half, mostly Black, or all Black? (asked of people with jobs)

For Black respondents, questions (2) and (5) asked about White neighbors.

The following figure shows responses from non-Black respondents that indicate all-White neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces.

All six indicators of segregation declined:

• The percentage living in an all-White neighborhood (1) fell from 80% to 61% between 1964 and 1976.

• The percentage with no Black family living close by (2) fell from 74% to 58% between 1972 and 1993.

• The percentage whose nearest grade school was all White (3) fell from 56% to 35% between 1964 and 1976, and for the nearest high school (4), from 43% to 27% between 1964 and 1972.

• In the longest series, the percentage with no Black people in their neighborhood (5) fell from 62% to 22% between 1972 and 2024.

• And the percentage of workers whose workplace was all White (6) fell from 37% to 14% between 1990 and 2022.

The following figure shows responses from Black respondents that indicate all-Black neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces.

The percentage of Black people living in all-Black neighborhoods (1) was about the same in 1964 and 1976, 28% and 29%. The percentage with no White family close by (2) was also unchanged: 36% in 1978 and 35% in 1993.

But the percentage whose nearest grade school was all Black (3) fell from 36% to 12% between 1964 and 1976, and for the nearest high school (4), from 33% to 13% between 1964 and 1972.

The percentage with no White people in their neighborhood (5) fell from 26% to 7% between 1978 and 2024, and the percentage of workers whose workplace was all Black (6) fell from 12% to 5% between 1990 and 2022.

In summary, geographical segregation has decreased. Compared to the 1970s, far more Americans now live, study, and work in integrated places.

Social segregation has declined, too¶

A second group of questions asks about social segregation: some are about preferences; others are about experiences.

1. GSS, 1973-2006: During the last few years, has anyone in your family brought a friend who was an African-American home for dinner?

2. GSS, 1978-1994: Do African-Americans attend the church that you, yourself, attend most often, or not?

3. GSS, 1977-1994: If you and your friends belonged to a social club that would not let Blacks join, would you try to change the rules so that Blacks could join?

4. GSS, 1972-1985, and NORC from 1963: How strongly would you object if a member of your family wanted to bring a Black friend home to dinner? Would you object strongly, mildly, or not at all?

The following figure shows the percentage of responses that indicate social distance. The lines show non-Black respondents in the GSS; the filled circles show White adults in NORC surveys.

All four declined, but most of the changes are modest:

• The percentage saying no one in their family had brought a Black friend home to dinner (1) fell from 78% to 61% between 1973 and 2006.

• The percentage whose church had no Black members attending (2) fell from 62% to 53% between 1978 and 1994.

• The percentage who would not try to change the rules of a club that excluded Black people (3) fell from 57% to 31% between 1977 and 1994.

• The percentage who would object to a Black dinner guest (4) fell from 47% to 33% between 1963 and 1970, and from 29% to 19% between 1972 and 1985.

For Black respondents, the same questions ask about White friends, churchgoers, and club members. The following figure shows responses that indicate social distance.

These measures of social distance are generally lower. Black respondents are more likely to say a family member brought a White friend to dinner — the percent saying they had not (1) fell from 50% to 45% between 1980 and 2006. The percentage whose church had no White members attending (2) fell from 61% to 46% between 1978 and 1994.

Few Black respondents would object to a family member bringing a White friend to dinner (4): 5% in 1980 and 2% in 1985. However, the percentage who would not object to a club that excluded White people (3) increased moderately, from 16% to 21% between 1985 and 1994.

On the whole, social segregation has decreased, but not as quickly as the changes in attitudes about segregation. Now let’s consider a social interaction even closer than bringing a friend to dinner.

Interracial marriage¶

If you think a law is unconstitutional, you can’t just ask the Supreme Court to invalidate it — you have to show that the law causes actual harm. So if you are an ambitious lawyer who wants to challenge a law, you have to find a plaintiff the law has hurt. And if you work for an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), you are always on the lookout for the right case. In the previous chapter, we saw how Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the ACLU challenged laws that discriminated by sex — by deliberately choosing a case where the victim of discrimination was male.

With that in mind, imagine you are Bernard Cohen, a lawyer in Virginia who was 29 years old in 1963, when he got a letter from the ACLU. It asked if he would represent a married couple who were arrested and charged with violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between White and non-White people. In 1959 they pleaded guilty; the judge sentenced them to a year in prison, with the sentence suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. They wanted to overturn their conviction so they could return to Virginia and live together without going to prison.

If you were Cohen, you might think it was a good case to challenge the Virginia law. Now imagine his reaction when he saw the couple’s surname: Loving. That was the origin of the most aptly named case in the history of the Supreme Court, Loving v. Virginia.

After several hearings and appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court in April 1967. Cohen presented it along with Philip Hirschkop, another lawyer with the ACLU. They argued that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment twice over: it violated the Equal Protection Clause because it discriminated on the basis of race, and the Due Process Clause because it interfered with the fundamental freedom to marry.

The Court agreed unanimously^[3]; their decision invalidated the Virginia law and similar laws in 15 other states. Loving wins, 9-0.

Now let’s see what people thought about interracial marriage while all that was going on. Between 1958 and 2024, surveys asked three related questions:

1. Gallup, 1958-2021: Do you approve or disapprove of marriage between Black people and White people?

2. GSS, 1990-2024: What about having a close relative marry a Black person? Would you be [in favor or opposed]?

3. GSS, 1972-2002, and NORC from 1963: Do you think there should be laws against marriages between African-Americans and Whites?

The following figure shows the percentage of opposition to interracial marriage. The lines show non-Black respondents in the GSS; the filled circles show White respondents in NORC surveys; and the hollow circles show White respondents in Gallup surveys.

In the Gallup survey (1), the percentage who disapproved of interracial marriage fell from 94% to 5% between 1958 and 2021 — a complete reversal.

In the GSS, opposition to a relative marrying a Black person (2) fell from 63% to 6% between 1990 and 2024.

Support for laws against interracial marriage (3) fell from 37% to 11% between 1972 and 2002, when the question was dropped.

The following figure shows responses from Black respondents for the same questions, except that question (2) asked about a relative marrying a White person.

Opposition among Black respondents was lower throughout, and falling. In Gallup surveys, the percentage who disapproved of marriage between Black and White people (1) fell from 33% to 3% between 1968 and 2013. Opposition to a close relative marrying a White person (2) fell from 12% to 5% between 2000 and 2024, and support for laws against interracial marriage (3) fell from 11% to 4% between 1980 and 2002.

In 1958, when Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested, a majority of White Americans thought there should be laws against interracial marriage. In 1963, when Bernard Cohen took their case, 62% did. And in 1967, when the Supreme Court announced their decision, 57% still did. So the Supreme Court was ahead of public opinion — but not for long. Support for those laws fell below 50% in 1970, below 40% in 1973, and below 30% in 1977 — that’s 28 percentage points in 10 years, one of the fastest changes in this book.

Separate is inherently unequal¶

Whites and Blacks do not suffer equally from racial inequality, but I propose that we all suffer from segregation. Imagine if races were equal in every way but lived in perfectly segregated communities. This is the “separate but equal” scenario the Supreme Court considered in Brown v. Board of Education — which they famously rejected on the basis that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”.

What did they mean by that? It sounds like it is based on a lofty principle, but when we look closely at this decision, it is more mundane than it seems — it is specifically about educational facilities, and it is based on particular unequal harms.

For example, part of the evidence presented to the court was an experiment conducted in the 1940s by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, who studied how racial discrimination affected children’s perceptions of themselves. They showed children dolls that were identical except for their skin color and asked questions like “Which doll is the nice doll?” and “Which doll looks bad?” Most of the children preferred the White doll and associated it with positive qualities. Many Black children described the Black doll negatively, even though they recognized that it looked more like them. These results suggested that they had internalized negative stereotypes.

In its unanimous decision, the Supreme Court concluded that separating children by race could produce a “feeling of inferiority [...] that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”

But again, the decision was specifically about schools, not society more broadly. This judicial minimalism is intentional: Supreme Court decisions are supposed to decide no more than necessary to resolve the case, and they should be based on interpretation of the law, not the kind of society the justices prefer.

I am not restricted by Supreme Court jurisprudence, so I will go farther: a segregated society is inherently worse because it denies us the opportunity to meet and know each other. I think that lost opportunity is an intrinsic harm to everyone.

Would you choose now?¶

Some of the changes in this chapter are striking. Among White adults between 1958 and 2021, disapproval of interracial marriage dropped from 94% to 5%. Between 1990 and 2024, opposition to living in a neighborhood that is half Black fell from 44% to 12%. And between 1973 and 2024, support for open housing laws increased from 35% to 81%. These changes are not just the result of generational replacement — they are primarily due to changing minds.

As support for segregation has declined, so has the experience of segregation. Between 1972 and 2024, the percentage of non-Black respondents with no Black people in their neighborhood fell from 62% to 22%. Over roughly the same period, the percentage of Black respondents with no White people in their neighborhood fell from 26% to 7%. But overall, the change in experience has been slower than the change in attitude.

Some of the questions in the earliest surveys are jarring. Until 1970, NORC asked if buses should have separate sections for Black people. Until 1972, they asked if White people should have the first chance at a job. Most questions like these were dropped from the surveys when the responses became too one-sided. It’s a sign of progress when we can stop asking about issues that have moved from the mainstream to the fringe. But it can make progress harder to appreciate if we don’t remember how mainstream they were, and how recently.

So, would you choose now? The evidence in this chapter shows that we have made progress toward integration and tolerance. None of this work is done — West Roxbury is still mostly White, and Mattapan is still mostly Black, and many Americans still live, work, and socialize in spaces that are regrettably segregated. But the trends are toward integration, so maybe you would choose the future, but probably not the past.