Shocked at How Segregated & Stratified American Communities Still Are

[Tropicana]

Long Island Among America’s Most Segregated Metro Areas


Long Islandcontinues to be one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the United States, according to a new study.
Experts blame the problem on long-standing restrictive housing patterns.
A new study ranks the island the seventh most segregated among 50 major metro regions analyzed.

Researchers from Brown University and Florida State point out that it is really a black and white divide.

The study shows less segregation between Whites and Asians and between whites and Hispanics.
Government officials say they’re trying to address the problem through fair housing laws.
Since 2000, there has been little change in the diversity (or lack thereof) of Long Island. “You can hardly measure the change,” John R. Logan of Brown University (formerly of Stony Brook University) told Newsday.
The study was authored by Logan and Brian Stults of Florida State University.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/02/24/long-island-among-americas-most-segregated-metro-areas/

Video: Race and Education on Long Island

The documentary film A Tale of Two Schools: Race and Education on Long Island, directed by filmmaker David Van Taylor, aims to show the racial disparity in education and illustrates the structural and systematic racism that continues to widen the inequality gap in Long Island schools.
Screening at the Hamptons Take 2 Film Festival on November 20 and 21, the film follows David, who attends Rockville Centre’s South Side High, and Owen, who attends Wyandanch Memorial High – two similar African American high schools seniors who have high GPAs, strong family structures, and similar part-time jobs.
A Tale of Two Schools takes a close look at how Long Island schools are funded, the resources available for students, and how race plays a key role in quality of education. The schools chosen as examples reflect the issue of segregation and its consequences.

For instance, according to the Long Island Index:

• in Rockville Centre 77 percent of students are white and 8 percent are black.
  
• In Wyandanch, 80 percent are black; none are white.

When it comes to students who go on to four-year colleges:

• Rockville Center sends 89 percent of students
  
• Wyandanch sends only 21 percent

illustrating a troubling educational divide.

The film is part of a campaign by the advocacy organization ERASE Racism geared toward changing the public education system on Long Island, and the Hamptons event will be the first in a series of forums on the issue.

[Tropicana]

You know I find it extremely frustrating that every time an issue about race, racism or discrimination is raised on here, instead of getting down to a deep discussion and exploration, one has to waste pages dealing with all of the folks in denial and PROVING that what one raises as an issue really IS an issue and that things really ARE that bad.

This should not be necessary on a board for a country in which, whether they want to admit or not, the majority of people are Black. What's up with all this denial and minimization of issues. It's really becoming annoying you know.

Can we please get on with it now?

[Tropicana]

This is an interesting perspective from a young lady who grew up on Long Island:

Segregation, Racism, and Growing Up on Long Island

When I was in high school on Long Island, I helped to organize a project that taught elementary school students about other cultures from around the world. My supervisor felt passionately about putting an end to racist attitudes and stereotypes that she witnessed all too frequently in schools. She developed the C.A.L.M Project as a way to break down the belief that anyone who looks different from the majority is strange or to be feared.
Working with this project was the beginning of my journey to imagine an existence that was not racially isolated. At the time, segregation was the only way of living that I knew. I grew up in the same house that my mom lived in since she was nine-years-old when her family moved to Long Island. Her parents left Queens because “the neighborhood was changing.” In high school, I wondered what it would be like to be in a school with black and Latino students; that was not an option.

It wasn’t until I left Long Island to go to college that I was able to form meaningful relationships with peers of other races and ethnicities. My new friends had vastly distinct viewpoints that were shaped by their racial and cultural backgrounds and their experiences. My friends were racially diverse and some went to boarding school, some were home schooled, and others graduated from the nation’s poorest public schools. I learned more in the four years that I spent with these individuals than I learned in 14 years of sitting in the classroom. Their experiences helped to enrich my world view, my understanding of history, my politics, my appreciation for new knowledge, my notion of what’s right and wrong and, most importantly, they allowed me to challenge the assumptions and stereotypes that I learned from living on Long Island in a racially homogeneous community.
I returned to Long Island last year and regrettably, Long Island’s schools are still racially segregated. I’m glad to be working at ERASE Racism where our Education Equity Campaign is working to introduce polices that provide all students access to a rigorous course of study in racially integrated schools, and where programs like the Student Leadership Forum create a much-needed cross-cultural learning environment.
The workshop evaluations are evidence that participants in the leadership forum see the benefit of diversity once they are exposed to it. One participant said, “I had a blast interacting in activities and meeting new people, and I think ERASE Racism is such a great program because it makes our generation know what is going on. So I thank you, yet again for giving me an experience that I will remember forever.”

http://longislandwins.com/index.php/...n_long_island/

[Tropicana]

Long Island Segregation:


Enlargement of map http://www.eraseracismny.org/storage...ract_white.pdf

ACCESS TO HEALTHY ENVIRONMENTS

People of color disproportionately live in environments that lack the resources necessary to generate and sustain health. It has been shown, for example, that segregated African American neighborhoods are subjected to higher levels of substandard housing, abandoned buildings, and inadequate municipal services and amenities, including police and fire protection. Where you live can also limit your access to healthy foods. Many large commercial enterprises avoid segregated urban areas; as a result, the available services are typically fewer in quantity, poorer in quality, and often higher in price than those available in less segregated urban and suburban areas. Additionally, racial segregation increases the chances of discrimination, which has been proven to be detrimental to health.
Differential access to quality heathcare and public health creates racial disparities in health outcomes, such as the shocking statistics that are shown below.
According to the 2011 report from the U.S Dept. of Health and Human Services:

• People of color are more likely to live in communities with air pollutants that can damage one’s health
• Black men and women are much more likely to die of heart diseaseand stroke than their white counterparts, which accounts for the largest proportion of inequality in life expectancy between whites and blacks
• There are large racial/ethnic disparities in preventable hospitalizations, with blacks experiencing a rate more than double that of whites
• People of color experience disproportionately higher rates of new HIV diagnoses than whites. During 2008, the relative percentage difference in the HIV diagnosis rate among blacks compared with whites was 799%
• Hypertension is by far most prevalent among blacks (42%) than whites (28.8%)
• The highest infant mortality rate was for black women (13.35), with a rate 2.4 times that for white women (5.58)
• Among adults 65 and over, blacks consistently had the lowestinfluenza vaccination coverage every year from 2000 to 2010
• During 2005-2008 there was a higher prevalence of obesity among black women aged 2–19 years (24%) compared with white women aged 2–19 years (14%)
• The 2007 preterm birth rate for black infants was 59% higher than the rate for white infants (11.5%) and 49% higher than the rate for Hispanic infants (12.3%)
• http://www.eraseracismny.org/our-work/public-health

[RichD]

Again not sure where you were in Toronto and the fact that you won't name the area means you don't want to be proven wrong.

if she didn't want be proven wrong she would just ignore facts presented that contradict her view.....

[Tropicana]

if she didn't want be proven wrong she would just ignore facts presented that contradict her view.....

She won't even name the area as she knows I will bring facts and data forth to prove her wrong....but you are right. There are some on here who ignore facts and data. We have seen that a number of times.

[RichD]

There are some on here who ignore facts and data. We have seen that a number of times.

yes we have

[kia027]

For instance, according to the Long Island Index:

• in Rockville Centre 77 percent of students are white and 8 percent are black.
  
• In Wyandanch, 80 percent are black; none are white.

When it comes to students who go on to four-year colleges:

• Rockville Center sends 89 percent of students
  
• Wyandanch sends only 21 percent

I am not too sure about this because it is not an apples to apples comparison. Rockville Ctr is in Nassau County - closer commute to the city where the income opportunity is higher

Wyandanch is the in the middle of Suffolk County and farther out on Long Island where there are less access to jobs and the income opportunity is lower.

With both schools being in different counties will also affect how much of a county initiative is placed on education.

I would have compared Rockville Centre with Freeport or Hempstead and similarly Wyandanch with Babylon

[Tropicana]

Comparisons are here for those who want to go through this and pull them out.

http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/irp.pdf

They need to be updated with 2010 census data:

http://longisland.newsday.com/templates/simpleDB/?pid=190

plus more recent data about schools in the area:

http://insideschools.org/districts/queens/district-26

[Peasie]

She won't even name the area as she knows I will bring facts and data forth to prove her wrong....but you are right. There are some on here who ignore facts and data. We have seen that a number of times.

I've already admitted I am wrong. And you are right. Always.

Please, do you have any more statistics?

[Tropicana]

No more time to devote to posting statistics. I have posted the sources so that anyone else who has time and interest can get the statistics and post them.

[Tropicana]

So what steps are being taken to address the issues of segregation and stratification in the USA in general and Long Island in particular. We are almost 60 years past Brown and the Board of Education (Decided May 17, 1954):

- http://www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html

- http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/

and, in some jurisdictions, little has changed.

Here is a synopsis of these issue and some issues that remain:

http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/desegregation.html

As I said, I am totally shocked.

[Nunya]

yes we have

*snicker*