No, NJ schools are not racially segregated (Opinion)

Activists are suing New Jersey claiming our schools are segregated and saying they won't stand for it any longer. A UCLA study suggests NJ ranks sixth among states in highest segregation of black students and seventh in Latino students. The suit filed in Mercer County Superior Court states 270,000 black and Latino students, which is nearly half the state's population of those minority students, are in schools that are more than 90% non-white.

"School segregation harms all students, including white students, by creating homogenous learning and social environments," claims the lawsuit.

The executive director of the Institute for Social Justice, Ryan Haygood, comments, "New Jersey has been complicit in the creation and persistence of school segregation because it requires that students attend public schools in the municipalities in which they live."

Wow. Where do I start?

Segregation is already illegal in New Jersey, and, in fact, there is no racial segregation in New Jersey schools. If activists want to desperately claim de facto segregation they can play that card all day. But here are the facts. The definition of segregation is the act of setting apart a group of people from the dominant majority. No one is doing that.

The segregation issue was the crux of Brown v. Board Of Education in 1954 resulting in a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. True segregation at that time was when black children and white children were not allowed to attend the same school. Think water fountains in the South with signs reading "whites only" and "coloreds only." The Brown in Brown v. Board of Ed was a 3rd grade girl by the name of Linda Brown in Topeka, Kansas. She was a black girl who was forced to walk more than a mile through a railroad yard to her to her school designated for black kids. There was a school much closer to her that was whites only.

That's what segregation is. And we do not have that in New Jersey. The activists' own facts prove that. "Nearly half" of the state's population of black and Latino students attend schools that are more than 90% non-white. Notice it is not 100% non-white. Also notice that this has to mean more than half of the state's population of black and Latino students do NOT attend schools that are more than 90% non-white. It all depends on what town you live in, and by law no town can keep out any given minority.

If you want to lamely argue socioeconomic segregation that's one thing. But despite what activist Kool-Aid they'll try to make you drink, socioeconomic segregation and racial segregation are not the same thing. When I moved my 4 and 6 year old kids to live in Plainsboro, we as white people were the minority there. It was predominantly Indian and Asian Americans. There were also a small number of blacks, Latinos and whites. There was no racial segregation. Later I lived in Hillsborough. Now I live in the Flemington-Raritan Twp district. If a black family lives on my street, they go where my kids go. If an Indian family lives on my street, which they do by the way, they go where my kids go. If an Asian family lives in my development, which they do by the way, they go where my kids go. If I move my family to Camden, my kids go where all the kids on that same street go.

If you're going to try to sell me a bill of goods claiming it's impossible for Latinos or blacks to work hard, be successful and afford to live in more affluent areas I reject that entirely not out of racism but out of reality. It isn't true. I'm a white person who can't afford to live in Alpine or Short Hills. There are black people who can.

So based on the lie that New Jersey schools are racially segregated what does this lawsuit want as remedy? The lawsuit asks for three remedies in particular.

Regional controlled choice - This is where students would list their preferred schools and would be assigned to them based on their preferences and the goal of achieving diverse classrooms.

Interdistrict desegregation which would allow black and Latino students to choose to attend schools outside their district of residency. In other words, students from Paterson might choose to attend Glen Rock schools or students from Trenton might choose to attend Lawrence schools. And it won't matter how hard or how little the parents work in life because a family paying a fraction of the property taxes of another district can send their kids there. And is it only black and Latino students who could choose to do this? Not white students? Isn't that racism?

Interdistrict enrollment in magnet schools which usually specialize in certain areas of learning.

Even if you buy into this fairytale that New Jersey schools are racially segregated, what will all this change? About the same that changed by pumping state dollars abundantly into the Abbott districts and sparingly into the other districts; not much. In fact all that extra money and decades later the performance gap between Abbott and non-Abbott districts only widened. Stripped away of excuses, the frustrating truth is success in 2018 is about intelligence, skill, hard work, determination. These things don't belong to one color or another. Generally speaking, families who live in better areas have better jobs. Generally speaking they have better jobs through hard work and determination. It is these same values that tend to be instilled in their children, regardless of race. Show me a hard working black man with good values versus a lazy white man and I'll show you a black child who is going to outperform a white child in school. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked we judge people not on the color of their skin but the content of their character. Can we not only start doing that but can we set public policy this way too?