School segregation
Division of school students into characteristic groups
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
School segregation is the division of people into different groups in the education system by characteristics such as race, religion, or ethnicity.[1][2][3][4]
Before the mid-20th century, racial segregation in public schools was legally enforced in many parts of the United States, particularly in the South.[5] Although the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that mandated school segregation was unconstitutional, progress towards integration was not immediate.[5] Black students, especially in the South, would continue to attend predominantly Black schools for more than a decade after the ruling, while White students attended schools with a majority of white people.[5] Supreme Court decisions like Green v. County School Board of New Kent County in 1968 started to mandate school desegregation and forced schools to implement measures to accelerate racial integration.[5]
Influence on Health Disparities
School segregation is one of the various indicators of racial health disparities that holds the strongest predictors of health inequality compared to residential segregation.[6] This is stemmed from different outcomes of school segregation in regards to health, such as homicides, early passings, diseases, mental illnesses, as well as infant mortality.[6] The different variables that come into play when discussing the outcomes of school segregation are be due to the inequality in exposure to resources in education, placing students who would be benefit from those resources to rely on other means.[7]
In Michael Sigel and Vanessa Nicholson-Robinson's article concerning the association between residential and school segregation in racial health disparities, those with higher levels of school segregation act like a driver for higher health gaps.[6] A study was conducted under them in the finding that many countries have stepped away from school desegregation during the 1990s through legal rulings, causing long-term changes that are represented in the health data of those people who are later affected from it.[6]
Research has shown that school segregation has measurable health consequences, where several structural factors, such as systemic financial discrimination, institutional racism, and contingent behaviors, interact to produce various health disparities among populations.[8] These effects appear to occur from individualistic variables like peer prejudice or behavioral norms, but through structural inequality.[8] Education has been linked with life expectancy, where barriers to education would, in turn, result in diminished health and lower life expectancies.[9] Desegregation of schools elevates the education level in black children, which correlates with an association between school segregation and reduced life expectancies.[9] Amongst the Black population, estimates suggest that completing high school is associated with nearly a decade difference in life expectancy, and that exposure to education in desegregated schools compared to segregated schools was linked to higher chances of graduation.[9]
