Survey of black students finds racism prevalent in suburbs

BRIGHTON, N.Y. – Elijah Goldberg thought he could handle precalculus in 11th grade. His guidance counselor, he said, did not. “It seemed like they were scared I would fail a class and it would make the district look bad,” he said. “It was a big argument – I had to get my mom involved.”

Frustrated, he took the class in the evening at a community college near his home outside Rochester, New York, and earned an A minus. He took the transcript back to his high school in the wealthy suburb of Brighton to prove to the staff he had been correct about his own ability.

“I felt like the administrators didn’t believe in me – I was definitely discouraged from taking AP (advanced placement) classes and getting ahead,” said Goldberg, who graduated in 2016. “In my AP classes, there weren’t a lot of us, and we definitely weren’t encouraged. It was more just ‘Get through, and don’t fail.’ ”

For black students across the USA – the “us” he referenced – Goldberg’s experience is a common one.

Even in generally high-performing suburban school districts, students of color, particularly black students, say they face pervasive prejudice when it comes to access to advanced coursework, academic achievement and discipline.

Figures from the most recent federal Civil Rights Data Collection show disparities in every part of the country.

❚ In the wealthy Phoenix-area school district of Paradise Valley, white students are about twice as likely as black and Hispanic students to be enrolled in at least one AP class.

❚ In Collier County, Florida, black students are 2.7 times more likely to be suspended.

❚ In Franklin, Tennessee, black students are 21⁄2 grade levels behind white students, on average.

As suburban areas diversify, the Education Department under Secretary Betsy DeVos is rolling back regulations meant to prevent unequal discipline for students of color.

Black families were excluded from the midcentury suburban housing boom. “Racism is often perpetuated by the very nice, very kind people who decided to move out to (the suburbs) and didn’t think to ask why there’s no black people out there,” said L’Heureux LewisMcCoy, a professor at New York University who studies racial inequality in suburban schools.

Students of color are still in the minority, even as suburban schools diversify. “The reason we haven’t been paying attention to it is that, in general, these schools have been performing well, so people don’t perceive it as a problem,” Lewis-McCoy said.

Rochester and Monroe County are archetypes of the hollowed-out urban core surrounded by wealthy, mostly white suburbs.

Kennedy Jackson lives in Rochester but attends school in the wealthy east side suburb of Penfield through an inter-district transfer program. She said many of her white classmates believe they can use the N-word liberally as long as they have an “N-card,” meaning they have a black friend who supposedly gave them permission to do so.

“I should feel comfortable going to school, and I don’t always, because people say that word,” she said.

Bethany Beru, a student at RushHenrietta Senior High School, said she was shocked to hear the slur used in the classroom by a white teacher last year. She went to her counselor’s office and documented the incident, in which the teacher used the word while explaining to students that they should not say it.