Alejandra T. Vázquez Baur
Around the birth of the Civil Rights Movement, integration efforts primarily aimed to desegregate Black and white communities in schools and beyond. Given the undoing of rights for Black Americans secured during Reconstruction and the insidious effects of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South, this was the just and appropriate focus for the framing and implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Today, however, the U.S. looks and feels quite different than it did in 1954, and so do our schools. Latine students are fast approaching 30 percent of the total student population (NCES, 2022), and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) constitute the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the U.S. (Budiman & Ruiz, 2021). (Note: The author uses the gender-inclusive “Latine” instead of Latino or Hispanic, even where the sources use those terms.) Both groups have faced significant discrimination, and many are funneled into extremely segregated schools (Potter, 2021). As we approach seventy years since the Brown decision, and as neighborhoods and school communities continue to change and further diversify, integration efforts in schools and communities must evolve to meet the needs of our increasingly multiracial and multi-ethnic society.
According to the 1960 Census, about 88 percent of the population was white and just over ten percent was Black (Census Bureau, 1960). This pattern quickly changed, though it is important to note that the first effort to estimate the “Hispanic” population across the U.S. was in the 1970 Census. Before that, Latine people in the West were encouraged to select “white” (Cohn, 2010). The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act made significant changes to U.S. immigration policy by removing a long-standing national origins quota system that favored immigrants from Europe and replacing it with one that emphasized family reunification and “skilled workers,” or persons whose jobs require a minimum of two years of training or work experience that are not temporary or seasonal. As a result, the U.S. population grew and brought with it racial and ethnic change over the next fifty years. By the 2020 Census, white people made up about 57 percent of the U.S. population, while Black, Latine, and AAPI individuals made up about 12, 19, and six percent, respectively (Census Bureau, 2023). Moreover, the multiracial (two or more races) population grew to a shocking ten percent and is expected to grow significantly, alongside the Latine and AAPI populations, over the next two decades.
While these numbers reflect national shifts, local communities and school districts have seen significant demographic changes just in the past decade or so. Latine and AAPI communities are the fastest-growing racial and ethnic groups nationally—increasing by 23 and 35.6 percent, respectively, from 2010 to 2020 (Frey, 2021). While this growth is occurring in some large metro areas where these groups have been overrepresented compared to the national population for decades, there has also been a growing dispersion of both groups to new destinations in the last decade.
To be specific, Brookings reports that there are 155 metro areas where Latine growth exceeded the group’s nationwide growth by over 150 percent. These areas are spread all over the country, especially in new metro areas in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast. For example, among the areas registering the greatest Latine growth are three in Pennsylvania: Scranton, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh.
Some large cities such as Seattle, Dallas, and Atlanta have seen significant AAPI growth since 2010 as well as new metro areas in the Midwest and Northeast. For example, the AAPI population in Omaha, NE nearly doubled from 2010 to 2020. Researchers also found that AAPI growth has particularly expanded in university and high-tech towns such as Raleigh, NC, Columbus, OH, and Madison, WI.
Many of these changes in Latine and AAPI populations are driven by migration, often following international political shifts and destabilizing events. Further, the rise in Latine and AAPI migrant communities is associated with a rise in English learners (ELs) in U.S. schools. Indeed, the EL population in U.S. schools has risen to just over ten percent of all students as of 2022, constituting a total of five million in 2022 compared to 3.5 million just twenty years earlier (OELA, 2022). The growth of the multilingual community in different areas might require new or expanded resources and programming, including additional translation and interpretation services, updated intake and enrollment procedures to support students from new countries and those with limited or interrupted formal education, new or expanded newcomer programs and family welcome centers, and more—especially in districts that are less familiar with providing these resources in the past.
While Latine and AAPI communities grow in districts across the nation, there are also shifts in white and Black communities that impact schools and efforts to integrate and support their needs in schools. The aforementioned Brookings report demonstrates a notable shift for Black Americans, reversing the historical Great Migration from big cities of the West and Northeast back to the Southeast. In particular, in 1990, New York led all metro areas in Black population size, followed by Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Detroit. But by 2020, Atlanta had the second-highest number of Black residents, while Houston, Dallas, and Miami surpassed Detroit and Los Angeles in the same count. Similarly, white Americans have moved away from large metro areas (particularly those along the California and Northeastern coasts), delivering growth in the Midwest, Rocky Mountain region, Texas, and the Southeastern coast.
The rise and geographic spread of different racial and ethnic groups indicate that various nonwhite groups serve as the engines of demographic change throughout the U.S. Further, the fact that people of color hold an even bigger presence among young people suggests that multiracial and multi-ethnic diversity will be much more prevalent across most of the nation in the decades ahead. These local shifts significantly impact the provision of educational resources, programs, and social services.
School and district leaders must take heed of these changes to ensure curricula, services, and resources are linguistically appropriate, historically critical and accurate, and culturally responsive and sustaining for the communities served. Additionally, as the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education approaches, education leaders must recommit to the promise of Brown for Black students and families secured by civil rights leaders in the 1954 decision while also ensuring that all marginalized students—including students from new, multiracial, and multi-ethnic groups, students from religious minorities, immigrant students, etc.—can enjoy the academic and social-emotional benefits of a diverse learning environment (Stuart Wells, et al., 2016). This has always been the charge of education leaders, and it is just as hard but more important in 2024 as it ever was.
So what does this mean? It means genuinely listening to the needs, ideas, and concerns of parents and students. It means having hard conversations. It means reversing the pattern of historical exclusion and harm for Black students and families and preventing further harm for new groups by addressing racism, xenophobia, zero-sum mentality, and other forms of bias and discrimination as they arise within communities experiencing demographic shifts. It means including a diverse coalition of community members in district decisions from ideation to implementation. It means removing the barriers to participation. It means hiring and supporting diverse teachers and staff who can serve as trusted liaisons for new students and families. It means reconciling with the evolution and sunsetting of what might have once “worked” and reimagining new ways to run schools that welcome and serve all students in the community. Most importantly, it means pushing back on attacks on DEI because our education system should and must affirm every student.
Only with thoughtful, intentional leadership can we deliver the true promise of Brown for the increasingly multiracial and multi-ethnic America of the next seventy years.
Alejandra Vázquez Baur (vazquezbaur@tcf.org) is a fellow at The Century Foundation where her work focuses on school integration and newcomer education policy.
References
“1960 Census of Population.” United States Census Bureau, September 17, 1961. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/pc-s1-supplementary-reports/pc-s1-10.pdf.
“2020 Census Demographic Profile.” United States Census Bureau, September 27, 2023. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/dec/2020-census-demographic-profile.html.
Budiman, Abby, and Neil G. Ruiz. “Key Facts about Asian Americans, a Diverse and Growing Population.” Pew Research Center, April 29, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/04/29/key-facts-about-asian-americans/#:~:text=The%20single%2Drace%2C%20non%2D,a%2070%25%20increase%20among%20Hispanics.
Cohn, D’Vera. “Census History: Counting Hispanics.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, March 3, 2010. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/03/03/census-history-counting-hispanics-2/.
“English Learners: Demographic Trends.” Office of English Language Acquisition, August 2022. https://ncela.ed.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/ELDemographics_20220805_508.pdf.
“Enrollment and Percentage Distribution of Enrollment in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, by Race/Ethnicity and Region: Selected Years, Fall 1995 through Fall 2030.” National Center for Education Statistics, 2021. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_203.50.asp?current=yes.
Frey, William H. “Mapping America’s Diversity with the 2020 Census.” Brookings Institute, September 21, 2021. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/mapping-americas-diversity-with-the-2020-census/.
Potter, Halley. “School Segregation in U.S. Metro Areas.” The Century Foundation, May 17, 2022. https://tcf.org/content/report/school-segregation-in-u-s-metro-areas/.
Stuart Wells, Amy, Lauren Fox, and Diana Cordova-Coba. “How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students.” The Century Foundation, February 9, 2016. https://tcf.org/content/report/how-racially-diverse-schools-and-classrooms-can-benefit-all-students/.
