“Residential segregation clearly contributes to minorities’ unequal educational attainment and hence to their disadvantaged position in the evolving labor market,” they write in “Segregation.”
“Black high school graduation rates, employment rates, and wages are all negatively affected by the level of black-white segregation in a city. Other things being equal, high levels of segregation have shown to increase high school dropout rates among blacks, reduce employment among blacks, (while increasing the white employment rate), and widen the gap between black and white wages.”
The struggle to create a color-blind republic with a level playing field has been underway in earnest ever since returning black World War Two veterans decided “we aren’t going to take it anymore.” Significant gains have been made over stubborn opposition, gains that Rev. Martin Luther King and others paid for with their blood, yet equal opportunity remains America’s unfinished business.
If injustice continues to breed poverty and crime, we may soon be sending our kids to school in bullet-proof vests, just like the flak jackets Commander-in-Chief Bush’s embassy workers must wear in Baghdad’s Green Zone. #
(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant and reporter. During the 1960s he worked in an executive capacity in the civil rights movement. Disclosure: Steve Mariotti cited in this article is a former business associate of this writer. Reach Ross at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)
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