Racial progress remains frustratingly slow
Thirty-four years since the establishment of a national holiday in memory of Martin Luther King Jr., and 52 years after his death from an assassin’s bullet, the work for which he is remembered is as vital as ever, even as progress can seem tenuous. As a leader of the Civil Rights movement, King sought opportunity for everyone, regardless of what they looked like or where they came from. And there are many measures by which society has improved in the half-century since he was murdered. But as recent events make clear, the work is far from over.
In recent days the state Supreme Court announced a settlement in the decades-old Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation case, which takes its name from the governor at the time the suit was filed. William O’Neill left office in 1991, which says something about the slow pace of change.
The agreement announced this month will allow 600 Hartford students to enroll in better-funded magnet schools in that city in addition to providing $2.3 million more to the school system. Magnet schools themselves are a result of the Sheff suit, enacted as a way to reduce school segregation by bringing urban and suburban students together.
But at best they have only scratched the surface of the problem. Connecticut schools are and have been deeply segregated, with students of color more likely to attend underfunded city schools and affluent suburbs featuring far less diversity than their counterparts. If equality of opportunity is one of the central tenets of the Civil Rights movement, then it is impossible to say Connecticut has made the progress it needs to make in closing that gap over the past five decades.
A second school funding suit, Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell, led to a judge in 2016 calling the state’s funding system irrational and ordering widespread reforms of education policies. But in 2018, the state Supreme Court overturned that ruling, saying any reforms should be left to the political process. As followers of that political process know, this is a prescription to do nothing.
It’s not just systemic issues that have seen a distressingly slow pace of change. Outright expressions of racism, which can seem to be less accepted than they were in previous generations, have not disappeared.
Two University of Connecticut students in October were filmed shouting a racial slur while walking through campus and subsequently disciplined by the university. They have now sued the school, saying their punishment was overly harsh.
It will be up to a court to decide the merits of their complaint, but it’s worth considering why their actions were considered so egregious. It has not been long in this nation’s history that people of color lived in constant fear of racist attacks, and those memories have not faded. Far from overreacting, as some critics charged, the school was right to try to ensure all its students can live without fear and intimidation, which the shouting of racial slurs necessarily threatens.
Our society has a long way to go to live up to King’s ideals, but we should never take a step back in ensuring a voice for everyone, including the marginalized.
The Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation case takes its name from the governor at the time the suit was filed. William O’Neill left office in 1991, which says something about the slow pace of change.