Students, schools fear end of racial diversity - washingtonpost.com: The fact that many U.S. schools remain starkly divided by race despite integration attempts is mostly the result of America's starkly divided neighborhoods, said John Powell, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Ohio.
He said many blacks are shut out of better white neighborhoods by systemic housing discrimination and since U.S. school funding is based on local tax receipts, poor neighborhoods beget poor schools.
'Blacks still overwhelmingly support integration,' Powell said. 'How do you train people to live in a diverse world when they're completely isolated growing up? Clearly it's harmful.'
Using income levels as an end-run around the race question has been implemented in some 40 districts across the United States, with mixed results. In small districts, all the children might be poor, making integration impossible.
The threat of lawsuits has convinced other schools to give up on diversity altogether -- a prospect Hardesty rejects.
'The board is not interested in a plan that would resegregate our schools but obviously we have to work within confines of the decision that we have,' he said.
