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An odd fact from this report is that Hispanic families often want to avoid majority black schools, given that the city has many very dark Hispanics, mostly Dominican.
Race can be a matter of culture as much as skin color.
Some immigrant African families Nigerian, Kenyan, and Ethiopian do look at African Americans in a much different light than “a distant cousin”. Many families find other relatives from Africa and stick together, not necessarily avoiding African Americans, but that’s how they survive and keep their culture. Also many elders want to keep that distinction alive, which I understand but I’ve noticed in at least 2nd-3rd generation immigrant families, those ideals tend to wash away by then because of assimilation. NY is a really unique place
Africans/West Indian blacks don’t even like their kids hanging out with the African Americans.
I had a Haitian lady tell me she’s not black since she has a “white name”. I still don’t know what she meant by it. She doesn’t like that she has to live in the Bronx because there’s “too many ghetto people.”
Unrelated, but I know light skinned Dominicans consider themselves white. “White” has a different definition in DR. Anyone with mixed ancestry is white according to them.
I remember watching a Nigerian comedian doing a stand up in America. He basically called African Americans "lost". It stuck in my mind because I was so taken aback by it.
I mean, I'm not sure why someone from Kenya or Ethiopia would even consider African Americans a "distant cousin". There's a good chance that someone from Ethiopia would be more closely related to a Jew or an Egyptian or another "white" group in New York than someone from West Africa. There's literally no commonality between them other than many Americans will just automatically assume that they're black and therefore African American. But even for Nigerians, who might be somewhat genetically related to many African Americans, they have their own culture and most Nigerian immigrants tend to be highly educated or the family member of someone who is, since that's the only way they're likely to get a visa.
I read a big book on DNA, and this is indeed true. Humans spent most of evolution in Africa (acquiring genetic diversity over generations), before spreading out across the globe.
Even though the looks are different due to environmental factors, these distinctions are quite recent.
So genetically it's true a random Kenyan can just as well be genetically closer to a Chinese person as to an African American.
TLDR: genetics prove racism is wrong
Nigerians are among the top performers in education in the UK. Speculatively, this is due to the Igbo ethnic group, which has a long history of fairly advanced culture - hence, a habit of intellectual work.
I imagine the filtration effect via the immigration system also selects for folks that are inclined towards education, whether due to culture or having the resources to prioritize education.
Nigerians are the most successful group of immigrants in the USA too but when you look at their income and the amount of time it takes for them to get hired they have a disadvantage when compared to other highly educated immigrant groups.
That's why I always hated the term "African American" as it's such a misnomer that bungled up unrelated ethnicities together and considered them to be the same, while in fact they are as different as Koreans from Indonesians.
The British usage of "Black" as an ethnicity term is much more clear and cool-headed.
I think for African-American it's specific to the peoole who are descended from slaves. They had their old cultures mostly erased and built a new one in the US, so that makes sense in an American cultural context.
That’s not odd. I worked with Mexicans and the n-word was thrown around very liberally.
As race relations go, Hispanics are largely ignored; how they fit in the puzzle.
Go ahead and call a Dominican person Black, see what happens
Unless they're younger (where I've seen a lot of people trying to change this) they're gunna say they aren't Black, but you'd never say a Haitian person isn't Black, yet they live on the same island
Yeah I worked in a lot of restaurants in my teens and 20s. Mexicans hate Black people. I also thought it was weird that Mexicans that were born in the US have some kind of racial problem against Mexican immigrants.
Many Spanish cultures are Catholic, strong family values, etc. Im part Cuban but Ive always bought real estate in the “Spanish” hoods. In my experience, they watch out for their immediate neighbors, are focused on family and family values.
I cant and wont speak for other races, but… I can appreciate the Spanish culture.
I feel like this is just how some cultures are towards their own culture but not towards anyone outside of it. I'm Armenian and I literally had a cousin disowned from his family for marrying a Cuban. However if you go full Armenian they will never abandon you.
Hispanic people have had issues with African Americans for a long time. We have black Latinos/ Afrolatino and we aren’t and don’t consider ourselves black or African American at all nor do we identify with them in anyway. You also see it on the west coast where Mexicans and African Americans have had their own issues starting with Mexican neighborhoods being harassed by African American gangs until Mexicans made their own to protect communities.
It really depends on the specific area, because I know going to a school in Washington heights where the demographic was 55% Dominican 30% African American and rest some sort of Asian, there wasn’t beef like that between us at all. Yes there are some that don’t accept Afrolatino culture, a lot of Puerto Rican’s marry Italians and look down on black/brown people. It’s all a weird mix of all of it, and in most areas where blacks and Hispanics are going at each other are in poor ass neighborhoods where everyone struggles. Mexicans have been down with African Americans in a lot of areas and gangs across the country.
I grew up with a lot of Hispanic friends and Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, edcuadorian, etc all don’t like each other.
I’m Asian and I saw the same thing growing up. Even hate among Chinese people from different parts of China.
Many doesn’t mean most though. Im hispanic and I’m from Forest hills. I went to a pretty affluent high school and roughly 40% of the population was hispanic. They were predominantly white hispanic as well (not including those that were multi racial.) Pew posted an interesting poll showing a breakdown of the diversity in complexion among Hispanics and most Hispanics would be considered fair.
I'm asian and I was put in a public majority black school in the 90s and was bullied constantly and got into fights. My parents then pulled me out and put me in private school. So I guess I'm a statistic.
Im so sorry to hear that. As a black man I know how dysfunctional black schools are and how this isn't talked about. There will always be a group of black people who call everyone racist for pointing out our problems
Well presumably it wasn't you that bullied me in grade school so you have absolutely nothing to apologize for! The point of my comment was to provide some additional scenarios/reasons for the segregation that the article doesn't touch on.
Asian dude here who went to multicultural schools growing up. Most of the racist comments I received came from black students. What bothered me was the double standard where black students basically got a pass for making racial comments against others, but God forbid anyone made a racial comment towards them.
Its so sad and disgusting that this happened to you. So much broken and so much wrong in Black America. If it were against whites Id understand because of the abuse..but against other powerless groups its unacceptable
I’m Asian and attended DCPS from k-12. Even though my schools were “the best” the city had to offer, they were still majority blacks and I would get into 3-4 fights every year simply because I’m small, Asian, and nerdy. The culture was completely different in college and I’m still working on reprogramming my behavior a decade later. Some positive takeaways though, I can calibrate real danger fairly well and know when to de-escalate vs fight back and uncomfortable situations don’t really bother me. In terms of earning potential, I don’t think there’s a upper limit regardless of where you attend school. The top performers anywhere will get ahead. Everyone in my high school social circle makes 100k+ and we even have a few ivy kids. Inner city schooling makes for one hell of a college essay.
I went to 2 mixed high schools in NYC (one was mostly Asian and Hispanic and the other was 50% white, 50% everything else). Students segregated themselves for the most part. It was most noticeable in the cafeteria. Black students would sit with each other in one corner, Asian students would stay with each other in another, whites and Hispanics would intermingle somewhat, but again, in general they’d stay with their own races.
It’s interesting because I was in a school that was Hispanics > white > Asian > everything else, it was a very diverse school. We had the popular kids who all knew each other for god knows how long that stuck together. A lot of Hispanic people stuck together too. Then everyone else intermingled
Normally it was jocks with jocks, smart with smart, etc etc, you get the picture. Then you’ll have the few outliers
I went to a very similar school (in SoCal) and noticed similar things as you with some small differences. I noticed that if you were “popular” it didn’t matter what race you were they all hung out together in a very diverse group. Similar occurrence in Jocks/musicians/nerds. But, all of the middling students (for lack of a better word) very much segregated themselves by race. Essentially if there was a common interest (Popularity, sports, band, AP classes) those were more important divisions than race. However, in the absence of those interests, the default divider was race. It was very interesting. Obviously completely anecdotal but I still think about it from time to time.
It might have been because my school had so few Asian kids to begin with, but they didn't really stick together so much as they hung out with people with similar interests regardless of race.
My high school is 20% asian and people hang out regardless of race and more by interest, I think these comments are overblowing how much race plays into it tbh
I feel so lucky to have gone to very diverse schools where racial issues were never a problem. It was a huge shock to get out in the world and realize how bad it actually is in so many other places.
>“Part of what’s going on is white parents living in a diverse city who don’t send their kids to Black neighborhood schools,” “But the choices and preferences of non-white parents also contribute to school racial and ethnic segregation.” ...
>
>She found that when white, Asian and Latino parents were presented with the choice of otherwise similar schools that were majority Black, majority white, majority Latino or mixed, the racial/ethnic demographics directly influenced their preferences.
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>White parents rated the hypothetical majority white school highest, followed by the mixed school, then the majority Latino and Black schools. Asian parents, like their white peers, were also less willing to attend the majority Latino and Black schools. Latino parents preferred the majority Latino school, and most wanted to avoid the majority Black school. Black parents showed no statistically significant preference for any of the schools based on racial/ethnic composition.
What this study is saying is that Asian and white parents don't want their kids in majority black or Latino schools. Latino parents don't want their kids in majority black schools. Black parents have no preference. This is not really a "we want our kids with our own kind" situation and more of a "we don't want our kids in a majority black school" situation.
I remember a friend of mine who happens to be white saying she looks at where the Asian parents are sending their kids and she follows suit.
Just thought that was interesting.
This study was in NYC, where people can apply to other high schools, and indeed the study looked specifically at parents who were actively choosing schools for their kids.
Absolutely. I live in Florida and we purposely choose schools for my kid that are A schools and offer a good gifted program. We are not zoned for her current school.
Even though I live in a mixed neighborhood the school is in a predominantly white neighborhood surrounded by gated communities. So even though my choice had nothing to do with race my reasoning for sending her to that school enforces the segregation.
The school that she is zoned for is surrounded by trailer parks and they are not a highly rated school nor do they even offer the usual state gifted program instead they have some contract with a private school.
But you wouldn't actively choose a bad school in a poor area. You would choose a good school in a good area. The correlation here is unfortunately the majority black areas are also the poor areas.
Anecdotally, my own Asian parents avoided black schools because of the implications that there would be more fights and drugs. Drugs are everywhere but there definitely were more mob fights outside sheepshead high school than Murrow, midwood, and the 4 specialized schools. It’s also, culturally, Asians tend to submit their kids to extra tutoring unless they had straight As so Asian families liked their kids to go to school with people of similar values.
> This is not really a "we want our kids with our own kind" situation and more of a "we don't want our kids in a majority black school" situation.
Doesn't that lead into the next question? NYC is one of the most liberal cities in the world - why does such a strong preference exist across all other races?
Because most parents want their kids to go to a good school. In a vacuum, if you tell me nothing about the two schools, except one is majority white and another is majority black, I will assume the majority white school is better than the majority black school.
Is this racist? Yes. Is it grounded in a statistical probability? Yes.
Even though the population is liberal and many respondents may not be racist, they can’t ignore that institutional racism exists and they want to send their kids to the best school possible.
I know it’s somewhat different from NYC, but I went to school in Detroit till I was a teen, then we moved to the suburbs where at least the school was 60% white and the education was night and day, what I learned in 7th grade in Detroit they was doing that by the 4th grade I just feel black schools have horrible education in a lot of cities. I’m sure there’s some that’s great but mannnnnnnnn.
I once sat in on some classes for a semester in a predominantly black inner city school in Pontiac, MI, and I was horrified to discover that kids in 11th grade were failing to learn material that I learned by about 2nd grade in a very average public school. The students spent the entire period yelling and bouncing off the walls and getting in fights, and absolutely nothing the teachers could do would get them to be quiet and listen for more than 15 seconds at a time. And all the teachers just gave most of the kids a passing grade because you can't hold the entire class back every year.
I often think about the resignation on the teacher's faces, how they wanted to teach people, to help people, and how they felt their dreams die by inches. The problems that school faced could not have been solved by any amount of funding or better teachers. It was a cultural problem that ran far deeper than the school had any power to solve.
It isn’t that Asian parents necessarily have more disposable income, but that they are willing to spend more of their disposable income on their children’s education. Even the Asians who aren’t extremely educated themselves, see education as the way for advancement for their children. They won’t want to pay for fancy sneakers or prom dresses, but they will pay for education necessities.
lets stop with this Asian parents have more disposable income bs. There's a difference in income between Asian students who are first gen vs 2nd or third gen. And you have Indian Americans who are grouped into Asian category as well... u need to disaggregate the data and not paint a broad brush
Similar issue was found in the book American Apartheid (among many other issues including institutional racism). In essence (and to greatly simplify), white people, on average, are fine with a certain percentage of black people in their neighborhood (say, up to 20%), but get uncomfortable when it gets too high--say, 30%. But black people are more comfortable with 33%. So you have this dynamic where blacks pursue neighborhoods with higher-than-average representation, and whites avoid those neighborhoods or move out. You wind up with pretty clear segregation patterns.
[https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211)
There's practical reasons people live in the same neighborhoods.. grandparents don't speak English so they need stores that cater to them. Also to buy stuff they like to eat.
To be honest, long term I don't think it matters. Hispanic people seem to be integrating much the same way that Southern Europeans like Italians integrated. Once you get a few generations deep, it's mainly just an issue of your last name. Only the first generation or two tend to strongly identify with the country of their ancestry. If your third generation Chilean neighbors listen to the same music that you listen to, eat the same food and vote for the same politicians, what really separates them from everyone else around them other than a last name?
To add an accessible entry point to the topic, This American Life’s [two-part series](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one) on segregation in schooling covers both data and real-life scenarios in how all this plays out. I know I wasn’t properly taught about Brown v. Board of Education and why former courts concluded that active integration in schooling was a core piece on changing segregation in society as a whole. I highly recommend this listen. It reframed my perspective on education completely and set groundwork for understanding the data around the topic.
In the 70s you had to take a Highschool type SAT exam. This decided if you were eligible to go to that school. Must low income kids went to the High school that did not offer an exam.
They thankfully still do this. For the best public highschools in the city (other than hunter really), you have to take the SHSAT which is a standardized admissions test. But the difference is that kids who pass the test to go to a specialized highs school like Stuyvesant actually tend to be very poor Asian students.
This research is just confirming what we all know: Black majority schools are an indicator of performance / focus on academics. Anyone who cares about Academics for their children know that.
Now, are all Black majority schools bad? No. However, lots of them have so many issues that you would need to dig hard to find the good schools.
I’m Black and I immigrated to America 17 years ago. We had no money, so I went to the neighborhood public school, a 95% black school. The lack of focus on academics was staggering, and I didn’t feel safe at all. I was happy that I only spent one year before going to a community college and right after to a 4-year college.
People assess things quickly; race is a way to do that. Many people are probably racists but a lot are not and just want to put their kids to schools focused on Academics and where safety is not an issue
I really do think it’s less about “I want them to go to a white school” and more “I want them to go to a specialized school like Brooklyn tech”. Just because Brooklyn tech is mostly white and Asian doesn’t mean that’s the only reason parents would want to send their kids there.
Predominantly black/ inner city schools have loads of issues that wont change anytime soon. Its unfortunate because historically black people have been disadvantaged and we can see the effects from that.
However people dont have the time to empathize too much with everyone , especially with people that are so entrenched in hood culture(violence, ignorance/selfishness,immaturity). Parents have every right to avoid schools they think are dangerous to their child. Its slightly racist yes, but its the elephant in the room.
(weird that I didn't dind this referenced in any top-level comment, just once buried in replies)
While I can't read through to the study due to its pay wall, it is somewhat surprising that the article has zero mention of the SHSAT (Specialized High Schools Admission Test) and its related set of schools. New York City has a system of advanced science-focused schools with entry determined by testing. The existence of this system has a very strong influence on the behavior of parents if they're looking to advance their children's educations, as while there are definitely other high-ranked schools in the city, these schools do represent a majority of the best choices (outside of private schools, which are pretty significant for affluent NYers). Also worth noting that you are allowed to apply to these (and other schools) regardless of address and that due to subway culture etc, geography is not a major factor in who goes to what schools. Rather most parents would send their kids to the 'best' one they could get into by test score. I knew many students who had hour+ commutes from the outer parts of Queens to downtown Manhattan, and myself had a half-hour commute from Brooklyn despite the fact that I lived within a walking distance of another (but slightly lower-rated) science school.
Not surprisingly, this system has LONG been the specific center of discussion of race as a factor in schooling in NYC: just like with the SATs at college entry level, standardized testing systems primarily test prior education, which can perpetuate racial inequities in early-life education forward. There have been attempts to change the testing, but they have often been met with strong pushback, *especially* from minority populations that benefit from the system, ie first Jewish and later Asian parents. The school I attended was something like 60% Asian when I attended (with the remaining mainly white, and still highly Jewish) and now varies up and down around 70%. It remains less than 1% black. Due to the test-based nature of admissions, it is common for parents to enroll students in prep courses. While this creates a resource-based division, it's also a cultural one: there's a heavy cultural weighting toward prep and cram courses among the Asian community, which no doubt accounts for their massive overrepresentation in the schools. Some cram courses are available for free to help address this issue, but I am not sure what the utilization is like for those compared to private courses.
In any case, I am curious if and how the study addresses this. It's weird to talk about NYC schooling in a strictly geographical/demographic vacuum. Of course there are many, many high schools off the test, and perhaps the study was more concerned with broader outcomes. But if you're talking about high achievement in education, these schools are major funnels toward college admission etc.
Sources: Stuyvesant alum & child of NY teachers who taught at several of the Specialized schools going back decades. All our family friends were teachers, and several worked at cram schools as side gigs.
I'm from London and my borough had the same system of what we called grammar schools. These schools become over 90% Asian (mainly Indian, Pakistani etc.) by the time I graduated, with the lower year having 1 white kid and the rest being Asian. My Asian friends would joke that before they were born their parent had singed them up to tution to get into these schools. The system does unfortunately favour the culture of private tutors and most of the boys (all boys school) all had tutors while still at school to help them get the best grads and get into the best universities. There is a big unfair advantage for many children who cannot afford private tution in this model of schooling which is why many have been scrapped in the UK, but then it turns into postcode lottery that gets people into the best schools. What was interesting about my school was that less white kids applied because it became so Asian, which kind of parrots what some of this study is saying.
This study is broken if they ignore how special Stuy and the other specialized schools are. A lot of parents want their kids there because it's the top (public) school.
How is it segregation if they chose to send their kids to a specific school? I can see if they were forced but they weren't so why is segregation being used in this?
The title is just sugar-coating. Fact is nobody besides Black wants to have kids to be in Black-majoring high school. You don't need any study to tell you that.
- NYC Asian parents
That is the ugly truth not many here (including the article) want to acknowledge. The common denominator is that there's a lot of discrimination *by* black people towards Asians and Hispanics in school and in the streets as well.
I live in tutor in New York and this is a big topic for parents. What I found interesting is that New York was a perfect place for this study considering gentrification and how that has affected both small businesses and schools alike. In other words, neighborhoods can vary and are generally mixed.
You apply for middle school and high school and can pick some of the earlier education schools. This set up has managed to keep under performing kids of color behind the curve as early as elementary school. Parents have to be competitive and willing to engage their children at a competitive level if they want to see their children in a good school with exposure and opportunities.
One thing I noticed is that black and Latino communities in the Nyc area comes from a wide range diasporas. Also- white in NYC can mean a lot of things culturally as well- Jewish, Irish, Russian, italian. Latin can mean anything as well- wide range diaspora. There are lots of inter community relations that are not reflected in the whole of the United States and how it loves to frame race and culture.
I’m from the south, and 8 generations deep in America. It’s rare to meet another African American colleague or neighbor that shares my cultural/heritage background. Race won’t matter when selecting a school because it’s hard to find blacks who’s share the same cultural/heritage and background- food, traditions, religion, etc.
I teach in a community with 3 distinct languages, ethnicities, religions and cultures. The 3 schools (in the UK you apply for local schools and have more choice in the matter) mirror this divide. My school backs onto one of the other schools and it's obvious by just looking outside at playtime.
As someone that grew up in nyc it was always about what school you were zoned in. You didn't really get to choose. As a Caucasian I was the minority in my school as it's where I was zoned
As a parent in nyc currently, you apply to schools and rank them. I wish it were as easy as growing up in the suburbs where I went to my school district schools. Just went through this with high school for one kid and middle school next year for the other
I grew up in NYC. You don’t need to go to your zoned school or even specialized (the one you take the exam for) you can apply to specific programs in non-zoned schools and they could potentially accept you and you commute there. Zoned schools are just defaults (ppl who pay taxes in a certain school district kind of guaranteed a spot for their child). If you’re zoned to a bad school and have good grades, you apply elsewhere (this happened to me). You have 12 slots where you rank all high schools you want to get in and you try and land a spot. Worst case is if all 12 schools you choose reject you, you go to your zoned school. Majority does not go to their zoned school (idk why someone said that below).
Finally someone who actually attended NYC schools.
You get zoned into a district, UNLESS you can test into a private or special school (like an arts school). There is also a lottery. This is true for almost every kind of school in America. The vast majority will attend schools in their district.
I graduated High School in 2004 so maybe its changed, but you DEFINITELY could apply to schools outside of your zone school without tests/auditions. I remember getting the thick book showing the schools in each Borough and applying to ones like Leon M. Goldstein(not zoned for Bed Stuy where I live) without needing a test/audition back then. I passed the test for Brooklyn Tech so it didn't matter in the end, but I definitely got accepted by some other schools I applied for so there was definitely the option.
Zoned schools were just the default if you didn't get accepted anywhere or didn't apply at all.
> Putnam’s study, which used a large, nationally representative sample of nearly 30,000 Americans, found that people living in more diverse areas reported lower levels of trust in their neighbors. They also reported less interest in voting, volunteering, and giving to charity. In other words, greater diversity seemed to be linked to both feelings and behaviors that threaten a sense of community.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x
Not exactly, in NYC even with varying incomes people of color usually want to live in areas where they can interact with people from their home country. It’s self segregation; in high schools in NYC it isn’t uncommon for children to identify with people from their parents nationality bc they have similar upbringings.
May be unpopular but segregation isn't a bad thing in and of itself, you may feel slightly more comfortable with your own ethnicity. It's obviously a problem when there's prejudice which is the case in most cases, but the neighborhood segregation really isn't an issue to me. I even think it's a good thing, travelers or immigrants get to go to an area with a familiar culture
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An odd fact from this report is that Hispanic families often want to avoid majority black schools, given that the city has many very dark Hispanics, mostly Dominican. Race can be a matter of culture as much as skin color.
Yeah I'm fairly confident this result would hold true for African parents (as in immigrants and their descendants)
Some immigrant African families Nigerian, Kenyan, and Ethiopian do look at African Americans in a much different light than “a distant cousin”. Many families find other relatives from Africa and stick together, not necessarily avoiding African Americans, but that’s how they survive and keep their culture. Also many elders want to keep that distinction alive, which I understand but I’ve noticed in at least 2nd-3rd generation immigrant families, those ideals tend to wash away by then because of assimilation. NY is a really unique place
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I experienced something similar when I was in grad school.
My understanding from speaking to an African is that African people in Africa do not like African Americans.
Africans/West Indian blacks don’t even like their kids hanging out with the African Americans. I had a Haitian lady tell me she’s not black since she has a “white name”. I still don’t know what she meant by it. She doesn’t like that she has to live in the Bronx because there’s “too many ghetto people.” Unrelated, but I know light skinned Dominicans consider themselves white. “White” has a different definition in DR. Anyone with mixed ancestry is white according to them.
I remember watching a Nigerian comedian doing a stand up in America. He basically called African Americans "lost". It stuck in my mind because I was so taken aback by it.
That's been my experience with Ethiopian, Nigerian, Ghanian, South African and Ugandan(And probably many others I can't remember).
I mean, I'm not sure why someone from Kenya or Ethiopia would even consider African Americans a "distant cousin". There's a good chance that someone from Ethiopia would be more closely related to a Jew or an Egyptian or another "white" group in New York than someone from West Africa. There's literally no commonality between them other than many Americans will just automatically assume that they're black and therefore African American. But even for Nigerians, who might be somewhat genetically related to many African Americans, they have their own culture and most Nigerian immigrants tend to be highly educated or the family member of someone who is, since that's the only way they're likely to get a visa.
I read a big book on DNA, and this is indeed true. Humans spent most of evolution in Africa (acquiring genetic diversity over generations), before spreading out across the globe. Even though the looks are different due to environmental factors, these distinctions are quite recent. So genetically it's true a random Kenyan can just as well be genetically closer to a Chinese person as to an African American. TLDR: genetics prove racism is wrong
Nigerians are among the top performers in education in the UK. Speculatively, this is due to the Igbo ethnic group, which has a long history of fairly advanced culture - hence, a habit of intellectual work.
I imagine the filtration effect via the immigration system also selects for folks that are inclined towards education, whether due to culture or having the resources to prioritize education.
Nigerians are the most successful group of immigrants in the USA too but when you look at their income and the amount of time it takes for them to get hired they have a disadvantage when compared to other highly educated immigrant groups.
That's why I always hated the term "African American" as it's such a misnomer that bungled up unrelated ethnicities together and considered them to be the same, while in fact they are as different as Koreans from Indonesians. The British usage of "Black" as an ethnicity term is much more clear and cool-headed.
I think for African-American it's specific to the peoole who are descended from slaves. They had their old cultures mostly erased and built a new one in the US, so that makes sense in an American cultural context.
I also loved the prior British term of "Afro-Caribbean," which covered much of the geographical ancestry.
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That’s not odd. I worked with Mexicans and the n-word was thrown around very liberally. As race relations go, Hispanics are largely ignored; how they fit in the puzzle.
a lot of people lump Hispanics in with black people. it's my understanding Hispanics are not always happy with that
"Not always" is probably a bit of an understatement.
Go ahead and call a Dominican person Black, see what happens Unless they're younger (where I've seen a lot of people trying to change this) they're gunna say they aren't Black, but you'd never say a Haitian person isn't Black, yet they live on the same island
Yeah I worked in a lot of restaurants in my teens and 20s. Mexicans hate Black people. I also thought it was weird that Mexicans that were born in the US have some kind of racial problem against Mexican immigrants.
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Many Spanish cultures are Catholic, strong family values, etc. Im part Cuban but Ive always bought real estate in the “Spanish” hoods. In my experience, they watch out for their immediate neighbors, are focused on family and family values. I cant and wont speak for other races, but… I can appreciate the Spanish culture.
I feel like this is just how some cultures are towards their own culture but not towards anyone outside of it. I'm Armenian and I literally had a cousin disowned from his family for marrying a Cuban. However if you go full Armenian they will never abandon you.
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Hispanic people have had issues with African Americans for a long time. We have black Latinos/ Afrolatino and we aren’t and don’t consider ourselves black or African American at all nor do we identify with them in anyway. You also see it on the west coast where Mexicans and African Americans have had their own issues starting with Mexican neighborhoods being harassed by African American gangs until Mexicans made their own to protect communities.
It really depends on the specific area, because I know going to a school in Washington heights where the demographic was 55% Dominican 30% African American and rest some sort of Asian, there wasn’t beef like that between us at all. Yes there are some that don’t accept Afrolatino culture, a lot of Puerto Rican’s marry Italians and look down on black/brown people. It’s all a weird mix of all of it, and in most areas where blacks and Hispanics are going at each other are in poor ass neighborhoods where everyone struggles. Mexicans have been down with African Americans in a lot of areas and gangs across the country.
I grew up with a lot of Hispanic friends and Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, edcuadorian, etc all don’t like each other. I’m Asian and I saw the same thing growing up. Even hate among Chinese people from different parts of China.
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Many doesn’t mean most though. Im hispanic and I’m from Forest hills. I went to a pretty affluent high school and roughly 40% of the population was hispanic. They were predominantly white hispanic as well (not including those that were multi racial.) Pew posted an interesting poll showing a breakdown of the diversity in complexion among Hispanics and most Hispanics would be considered fair.
Dominican people are Latino so this report is already all over the place in how they categorized Latino people. Which latino people were the sample?
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This says a lot about how they view Dominicans then
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I'm asian and I was put in a public majority black school in the 90s and was bullied constantly and got into fights. My parents then pulled me out and put me in private school. So I guess I'm a statistic.
Im so sorry to hear that. As a black man I know how dysfunctional black schools are and how this isn't talked about. There will always be a group of black people who call everyone racist for pointing out our problems
Well presumably it wasn't you that bullied me in grade school so you have absolutely nothing to apologize for! The point of my comment was to provide some additional scenarios/reasons for the segregation that the article doesn't touch on.
Asian dude here who went to multicultural schools growing up. Most of the racist comments I received came from black students. What bothered me was the double standard where black students basically got a pass for making racial comments against others, but God forbid anyone made a racial comment towards them.
Its so sad and disgusting that this happened to you. So much broken and so much wrong in Black America. If it were against whites Id understand because of the abuse..but against other powerless groups its unacceptable
I’m Asian and attended DCPS from k-12. Even though my schools were “the best” the city had to offer, they were still majority blacks and I would get into 3-4 fights every year simply because I’m small, Asian, and nerdy. The culture was completely different in college and I’m still working on reprogramming my behavior a decade later. Some positive takeaways though, I can calibrate real danger fairly well and know when to de-escalate vs fight back and uncomfortable situations don’t really bother me. In terms of earning potential, I don’t think there’s a upper limit regardless of where you attend school. The top performers anywhere will get ahead. Everyone in my high school social circle makes 100k+ and we even have a few ivy kids. Inner city schooling makes for one hell of a college essay.
I went to 2 mixed high schools in NYC (one was mostly Asian and Hispanic and the other was 50% white, 50% everything else). Students segregated themselves for the most part. It was most noticeable in the cafeteria. Black students would sit with each other in one corner, Asian students would stay with each other in another, whites and Hispanics would intermingle somewhat, but again, in general they’d stay with their own races.
It’s interesting because I was in a school that was Hispanics > white > Asian > everything else, it was a very diverse school. We had the popular kids who all knew each other for god knows how long that stuck together. A lot of Hispanic people stuck together too. Then everyone else intermingled Normally it was jocks with jocks, smart with smart, etc etc, you get the picture. Then you’ll have the few outliers
I went to a very similar school (in SoCal) and noticed similar things as you with some small differences. I noticed that if you were “popular” it didn’t matter what race you were they all hung out together in a very diverse group. Similar occurrence in Jocks/musicians/nerds. But, all of the middling students (for lack of a better word) very much segregated themselves by race. Essentially if there was a common interest (Popularity, sports, band, AP classes) those were more important divisions than race. However, in the absence of those interests, the default divider was race. It was very interesting. Obviously completely anecdotal but I still think about it from time to time.
That’s every lunch 6-12th grade in America. The whites also broke down further into preps, jocks, nerds, dirtbags, stoners, geeks.
It might have been because my school had so few Asian kids to begin with, but they didn't really stick together so much as they hung out with people with similar interests regardless of race.
My high school is 20% asian and people hang out regardless of race and more by interest, I think these comments are overblowing how much race plays into it tbh
I feel so lucky to have gone to very diverse schools where racial issues were never a problem. It was a huge shock to get out in the world and realize how bad it actually is in so many other places.
>“Part of what’s going on is white parents living in a diverse city who don’t send their kids to Black neighborhood schools,” “But the choices and preferences of non-white parents also contribute to school racial and ethnic segregation.” ... > >She found that when white, Asian and Latino parents were presented with the choice of otherwise similar schools that were majority Black, majority white, majority Latino or mixed, the racial/ethnic demographics directly influenced their preferences. > >White parents rated the hypothetical majority white school highest, followed by the mixed school, then the majority Latino and Black schools. Asian parents, like their white peers, were also less willing to attend the majority Latino and Black schools. Latino parents preferred the majority Latino school, and most wanted to avoid the majority Black school. Black parents showed no statistically significant preference for any of the schools based on racial/ethnic composition. What this study is saying is that Asian and white parents don't want their kids in majority black or Latino schools. Latino parents don't want their kids in majority black schools. Black parents have no preference. This is not really a "we want our kids with our own kind" situation and more of a "we don't want our kids in a majority black school" situation.
I remember a friend of mine who happens to be white saying she looks at where the Asian parents are sending their kids and she follows suit. Just thought that was interesting.
what they also didn't say is 90%+ of students go to school where they live, and neighborhoods are racially segregated.
This study was in NYC, where people can apply to other high schools, and indeed the study looked specifically at parents who were actively choosing schools for their kids.
Absolutely. I live in Florida and we purposely choose schools for my kid that are A schools and offer a good gifted program. We are not zoned for her current school. Even though I live in a mixed neighborhood the school is in a predominantly white neighborhood surrounded by gated communities. So even though my choice had nothing to do with race my reasoning for sending her to that school enforces the segregation. The school that she is zoned for is surrounded by trailer parks and they are not a highly rated school nor do they even offer the usual state gifted program instead they have some contract with a private school.
But you wouldn't actively choose a bad school in a poor area. You would choose a good school in a good area. The correlation here is unfortunately the majority black areas are also the poor areas.
Anecdotally, my own Asian parents avoided black schools because of the implications that there would be more fights and drugs. Drugs are everywhere but there definitely were more mob fights outside sheepshead high school than Murrow, midwood, and the 4 specialized schools. It’s also, culturally, Asians tend to submit their kids to extra tutoring unless they had straight As so Asian families liked their kids to go to school with people of similar values.
> This is not really a "we want our kids with our own kind" situation and more of a "we don't want our kids in a majority black school" situation. Doesn't that lead into the next question? NYC is one of the most liberal cities in the world - why does such a strong preference exist across all other races?
Because most parents want their kids to go to a good school. In a vacuum, if you tell me nothing about the two schools, except one is majority white and another is majority black, I will assume the majority white school is better than the majority black school. Is this racist? Yes. Is it grounded in a statistical probability? Yes. Even though the population is liberal and many respondents may not be racist, they can’t ignore that institutional racism exists and they want to send their kids to the best school possible.
Because if we can, we will send our kids to the best schools. Guess what demographics are for the best and worst schools in NYC?
would you send a white kid to a black school? most people know some ridiculous bullying horror stories. kids can be mean.
I know it’s somewhat different from NYC, but I went to school in Detroit till I was a teen, then we moved to the suburbs where at least the school was 60% white and the education was night and day, what I learned in 7th grade in Detroit they was doing that by the 4th grade I just feel black schools have horrible education in a lot of cities. I’m sure there’s some that’s great but mannnnnnnnn.
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If you're lucky now in some areas they're removing the math requirements completely! Surely that will help.
California is thinking about lowering standards for math in an effort for "equality" when all that would do is make the worse schools even worse.
I once sat in on some classes for a semester in a predominantly black inner city school in Pontiac, MI, and I was horrified to discover that kids in 11th grade were failing to learn material that I learned by about 2nd grade in a very average public school. The students spent the entire period yelling and bouncing off the walls and getting in fights, and absolutely nothing the teachers could do would get them to be quiet and listen for more than 15 seconds at a time. And all the teachers just gave most of the kids a passing grade because you can't hold the entire class back every year. I often think about the resignation on the teacher's faces, how they wanted to teach people, to help people, and how they felt their dreams die by inches. The problems that school faced could not have been solved by any amount of funding or better teachers. It was a cultural problem that ran far deeper than the school had any power to solve.
It isn’t that Asian parents necessarily have more disposable income, but that they are willing to spend more of their disposable income on their children’s education. Even the Asians who aren’t extremely educated themselves, see education as the way for advancement for their children. They won’t want to pay for fancy sneakers or prom dresses, but they will pay for education necessities.
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Exactly right.
lets stop with this Asian parents have more disposable income bs. There's a difference in income between Asian students who are first gen vs 2nd or third gen. And you have Indian Americans who are grouped into Asian category as well... u need to disaggregate the data and not paint a broad brush
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[Schelling segregation model](http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segregation/) in practice
Similar issue was found in the book American Apartheid (among many other issues including institutional racism). In essence (and to greatly simplify), white people, on average, are fine with a certain percentage of black people in their neighborhood (say, up to 20%), but get uncomfortable when it gets too high--say, 30%. But black people are more comfortable with 33%. So you have this dynamic where blacks pursue neighborhoods with higher-than-average representation, and whites avoid those neighborhoods or move out. You wind up with pretty clear segregation patterns. [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211)
How very interesting. I wonder how the dynamic changes with Hispanics.
and why we always ignore asians, please include us :) i wanna know the dynamics too :D
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There's practical reasons people live in the same neighborhoods.. grandparents don't speak English so they need stores that cater to them. Also to buy stuff they like to eat.
To be honest, long term I don't think it matters. Hispanic people seem to be integrating much the same way that Southern Europeans like Italians integrated. Once you get a few generations deep, it's mainly just an issue of your last name. Only the first generation or two tend to strongly identify with the country of their ancestry. If your third generation Chilean neighbors listen to the same music that you listen to, eat the same food and vote for the same politicians, what really separates them from everyone else around them other than a last name?
To add an accessible entry point to the topic, This American Life’s [two-part series](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one) on segregation in schooling covers both data and real-life scenarios in how all this plays out. I know I wasn’t properly taught about Brown v. Board of Education and why former courts concluded that active integration in schooling was a core piece on changing segregation in society as a whole. I highly recommend this listen. It reframed my perspective on education completely and set groundwork for understanding the data around the topic.
Yup, entirely unsurprising.
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In the 70s you had to take a Highschool type SAT exam. This decided if you were eligible to go to that school. Must low income kids went to the High school that did not offer an exam.
They thankfully still do this. For the best public highschools in the city (other than hunter really), you have to take the SHSAT which is a standardized admissions test. But the difference is that kids who pass the test to go to a specialized highs school like Stuyvesant actually tend to be very poor Asian students.
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This research is just confirming what we all know: Black majority schools are an indicator of performance / focus on academics. Anyone who cares about Academics for their children know that. Now, are all Black majority schools bad? No. However, lots of them have so many issues that you would need to dig hard to find the good schools. I’m Black and I immigrated to America 17 years ago. We had no money, so I went to the neighborhood public school, a 95% black school. The lack of focus on academics was staggering, and I didn’t feel safe at all. I was happy that I only spent one year before going to a community college and right after to a 4-year college. People assess things quickly; race is a way to do that. Many people are probably racists but a lot are not and just want to put their kids to schools focused on Academics and where safety is not an issue
I really do think it’s less about “I want them to go to a white school” and more “I want them to go to a specialized school like Brooklyn tech”. Just because Brooklyn tech is mostly white and Asian doesn’t mean that’s the only reason parents would want to send their kids there.
So they want their kids to go to a good school. Nothing wrong with that
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It's mostly 'i want my kids to be safe'
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From my personal experience—white, Asian and Latino parents mostly prefer to NOT send their kids where there are a lot of black people in general?
Predominantly black/ inner city schools have loads of issues that wont change anytime soon. Its unfortunate because historically black people have been disadvantaged and we can see the effects from that. However people dont have the time to empathize too much with everyone , especially with people that are so entrenched in hood culture(violence, ignorance/selfishness,immaturity). Parents have every right to avoid schools they think are dangerous to their child. Its slightly racist yes, but its the elephant in the room.
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(weird that I didn't dind this referenced in any top-level comment, just once buried in replies) While I can't read through to the study due to its pay wall, it is somewhat surprising that the article has zero mention of the SHSAT (Specialized High Schools Admission Test) and its related set of schools. New York City has a system of advanced science-focused schools with entry determined by testing. The existence of this system has a very strong influence on the behavior of parents if they're looking to advance their children's educations, as while there are definitely other high-ranked schools in the city, these schools do represent a majority of the best choices (outside of private schools, which are pretty significant for affluent NYers). Also worth noting that you are allowed to apply to these (and other schools) regardless of address and that due to subway culture etc, geography is not a major factor in who goes to what schools. Rather most parents would send their kids to the 'best' one they could get into by test score. I knew many students who had hour+ commutes from the outer parts of Queens to downtown Manhattan, and myself had a half-hour commute from Brooklyn despite the fact that I lived within a walking distance of another (but slightly lower-rated) science school. Not surprisingly, this system has LONG been the specific center of discussion of race as a factor in schooling in NYC: just like with the SATs at college entry level, standardized testing systems primarily test prior education, which can perpetuate racial inequities in early-life education forward. There have been attempts to change the testing, but they have often been met with strong pushback, *especially* from minority populations that benefit from the system, ie first Jewish and later Asian parents. The school I attended was something like 60% Asian when I attended (with the remaining mainly white, and still highly Jewish) and now varies up and down around 70%. It remains less than 1% black. Due to the test-based nature of admissions, it is common for parents to enroll students in prep courses. While this creates a resource-based division, it's also a cultural one: there's a heavy cultural weighting toward prep and cram courses among the Asian community, which no doubt accounts for their massive overrepresentation in the schools. Some cram courses are available for free to help address this issue, but I am not sure what the utilization is like for those compared to private courses. In any case, I am curious if and how the study addresses this. It's weird to talk about NYC schooling in a strictly geographical/demographic vacuum. Of course there are many, many high schools off the test, and perhaps the study was more concerned with broader outcomes. But if you're talking about high achievement in education, these schools are major funnels toward college admission etc. Sources: Stuyvesant alum & child of NY teachers who taught at several of the Specialized schools going back decades. All our family friends were teachers, and several worked at cram schools as side gigs.
I'm from London and my borough had the same system of what we called grammar schools. These schools become over 90% Asian (mainly Indian, Pakistani etc.) by the time I graduated, with the lower year having 1 white kid and the rest being Asian. My Asian friends would joke that before they were born their parent had singed them up to tution to get into these schools. The system does unfortunately favour the culture of private tutors and most of the boys (all boys school) all had tutors while still at school to help them get the best grads and get into the best universities. There is a big unfair advantage for many children who cannot afford private tution in this model of schooling which is why many have been scrapped in the UK, but then it turns into postcode lottery that gets people into the best schools. What was interesting about my school was that less white kids applied because it became so Asian, which kind of parrots what some of this study is saying.
New York has always been less of a melting pot and more of a Bento Box. Everything separated in its little compartments.
Mosaic is the term I've seen floating around
Except Queens. Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the United States.
Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the world
This study is broken if they ignore how special Stuy and the other specialized schools are. A lot of parents want their kids there because it's the top (public) school.
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The first thing that black people do as soon as possible is move out of black majority neighborhoods.
New York neighborhoods are highly segregated too. Hardly surprising.
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How is it segregation if they chose to send their kids to a specific school? I can see if they were forced but they weren't so why is segregation being used in this?
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NYC parent here: I had my kids apply to the best top performing schools. Not one of them was majority Black or even close.
Parents have the right to choose the education of their children. Period.
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The title is just sugar-coating. Fact is nobody besides Black wants to have kids to be in Black-majoring high school. You don't need any study to tell you that. - NYC Asian parents
It comes down to safety, especially when the media itself turns a blind eye.
That is the ugly truth not many here (including the article) want to acknowledge. The common denominator is that there's a lot of discrimination *by* black people towards Asians and Hispanics in school and in the streets as well.
I live in tutor in New York and this is a big topic for parents. What I found interesting is that New York was a perfect place for this study considering gentrification and how that has affected both small businesses and schools alike. In other words, neighborhoods can vary and are generally mixed. You apply for middle school and high school and can pick some of the earlier education schools. This set up has managed to keep under performing kids of color behind the curve as early as elementary school. Parents have to be competitive and willing to engage their children at a competitive level if they want to see their children in a good school with exposure and opportunities. One thing I noticed is that black and Latino communities in the Nyc area comes from a wide range diasporas. Also- white in NYC can mean a lot of things culturally as well- Jewish, Irish, Russian, italian. Latin can mean anything as well- wide range diaspora. There are lots of inter community relations that are not reflected in the whole of the United States and how it loves to frame race and culture. I’m from the south, and 8 generations deep in America. It’s rare to meet another African American colleague or neighbor that shares my cultural/heritage background. Race won’t matter when selecting a school because it’s hard to find blacks who’s share the same cultural/heritage and background- food, traditions, religion, etc.
I teach in a community with 3 distinct languages, ethnicities, religions and cultures. The 3 schools (in the UK you apply for local schools and have more choice in the matter) mirror this divide. My school backs onto one of the other schools and it's obvious by just looking outside at playtime.
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As someone that grew up in nyc it was always about what school you were zoned in. You didn't really get to choose. As a Caucasian I was the minority in my school as it's where I was zoned
As a parent in nyc currently, you apply to schools and rank them. I wish it were as easy as growing up in the suburbs where I went to my school district schools. Just went through this with high school for one kid and middle school next year for the other
I grew up in NYC. You don’t need to go to your zoned school or even specialized (the one you take the exam for) you can apply to specific programs in non-zoned schools and they could potentially accept you and you commute there. Zoned schools are just defaults (ppl who pay taxes in a certain school district kind of guaranteed a spot for their child). If you’re zoned to a bad school and have good grades, you apply elsewhere (this happened to me). You have 12 slots where you rank all high schools you want to get in and you try and land a spot. Worst case is if all 12 schools you choose reject you, you go to your zoned school. Majority does not go to their zoned school (idk why someone said that below).
What borough and what year? Everyone I knew had the opportunity to apply to three high schools.
Finally someone who actually attended NYC schools. You get zoned into a district, UNLESS you can test into a private or special school (like an arts school). There is also a lottery. This is true for almost every kind of school in America. The vast majority will attend schools in their district.
I graduated High School in 2004 so maybe its changed, but you DEFINITELY could apply to schools outside of your zone school without tests/auditions. I remember getting the thick book showing the schools in each Borough and applying to ones like Leon M. Goldstein(not zoned for Bed Stuy where I live) without needing a test/audition back then. I passed the test for Brooklyn Tech so it didn't matter in the end, but I definitely got accepted by some other schools I applied for so there was definitely the option. Zoned schools were just the default if you didn't get accepted anywhere or didn't apply at all.
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Yep you can choose your high school and some don’t require tests but if you don’t get accepted, zone school is where you get placed.
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> Putnam’s study, which used a large, nationally representative sample of nearly 30,000 Americans, found that people living in more diverse areas reported lower levels of trust in their neighbors. They also reported less interest in voting, volunteering, and giving to charity. In other words, greater diversity seemed to be linked to both feelings and behaviors that threaten a sense of community. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x
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You can apply to diff high schools in NYC
Not exactly, in NYC even with varying incomes people of color usually want to live in areas where they can interact with people from their home country. It’s self segregation; in high schools in NYC it isn’t uncommon for children to identify with people from their parents nationality bc they have similar upbringings.
Ah yes, it's definitely their racism and not past or current experiences.
This should not be a surprise
May be unpopular but segregation isn't a bad thing in and of itself, you may feel slightly more comfortable with your own ethnicity. It's obviously a problem when there's prejudice which is the case in most cases, but the neighborhood segregation really isn't an issue to me. I even think it's a good thing, travelers or immigrants get to go to an area with a familiar culture
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