Coming at a time when any discussion of integration seems like a quaint relic from the past, the Manhattan Institute's recently released report, The End of the Segregated Century, seemed like welcome news. Neither political party has raised it as a question or concern during this election year. And apart from the often unheard voices of fair housing and civil rights organizations, there has been virtually no discussion about the merits or need for integration in America.

Given there has been such relative silence on the issue, it’s disappointing that the report fails to take advantage of this opportunity to fully explore the fact that segregation is still very much a part of America today. It’s not that the authors misstated facts. Critics agree that there have been improvement in some respects. The problem is that the report suggests the battle against residential segregation is largely over. That conclusion is sadly at odds with reality. Segregation persists in this country, and in some cases has worsened.

The report makes clear the enormous complexity of residential segregation and the need to take a nuanced look at the issue. Studies show that integration is important not only because it addresses discrimination and promotes understanding, but because where you live is important. It determines access to education, transportation, employment, health care and access to a clean and healthy environment. These studies demonstrate that people of color not only tend to live in more racially and economically segregated areas but that they also live in communities that lag far behind white communities when it comes to access to all of these positive things. Any meaningful study of segregation will have to include questions of access to opportunity.

Questions of opportunity and access in education are instructive. As demonstrated by Gary Orfield at UCLA, segregation in schools is increasing once again after a relatively short time of improvement. In Sheff v. O’Neill, for example, a twenty-three year old education case, the ACLU and other groups have been fighting to enforce a 1996 order that Connecticut reduce the racial and ethnic isolation caused in large part by residential segregation patterns. With racial and economic segregation come concentrations of poverty, lack of access to educational resources, lower educational outcomes, greater numbers of dropouts, less likelihood of access to meaningful employment and greater chances of involvement with the criminal justice system. Similar long-term consequences result from lack of equal access to employment, health care and other opportunity deprivations that communities of color are subject to them. Taken separately, these deprivations are serious, combined they are devastating and nearly insurmountable.

The Manhattan Institute report ultimately raises more questions than it answers. It raises questions of what the numbers mean and, perhaps more importantly, what the numbers do not tell us. Does the “integration” being celebrated mean greater and more equal access for all people? Does the reduction of segregation in certain neighborhoods signal a period of access to better schools, more jobs, better medical access, greater availability of healthier foods or is it just the displacement of low-income populations to areas of lesser opportunity? The best outcome of the Manhattan Institute study would be the opening of a meaningful discussion of these and other questions.

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My husband and I recently invited a group of friends to attend our church. One couple hesitated because of concerns about how they would be received. Would there be stares, whispers or outright rejection? You see, our friends are a lesbian couple raising a young daughter. 

I understand their hesitation and thought of the struggles that blacks have endured throughout history and my own experiences. Black History Month is a time when attention is given to the achievements of African-Americans, as well as the many trials that have been championed.

Historically, blacks have been the victims of many demoralizing acts. We’ve had to fight for our identity, equal public education, equal pay, voting rights, the right to worship as we chose, to marry whomever we chose, and the list goes on. Although victories have been won, there’s still a very long way to go.

Just 10 years after the ACLU won the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia to overturn Virginia’s racist laws that made interracial marriage a criminal act, my mother met my stepfather who is white. Mildred and Richard Loving’s courage to fight for the right to love each other as husband and wife paved the way for my parents.

I remember the stares and whispers of people who didn’t approve of their love, but my parents did not let the negativity tear them apart. Instead, the disapproval bonded them closer to each other. My parents went everywhere together and although initial introductions to friends and family were tense, in the end it was all about their mutual love.

When we moved from the inner city to the suburbs, being a blended, mixed-race family was very different from those around us. As a preteen and the new kid on the block, I longed for acceptance. Our neighbors, instead, did not want their children to play with me or come to our house. My peers made fun of me. To this day, people are shocked when they find out that the man who raised me is white! I do not appear to be mixed race because of my dark complexion, so I am often asked, “Your mother married a white man?”

Today’s struggles within the LGBTQ community remind me of the race struggles of the past. Homosexuality is a new target for discrimination. It is still unfair for people who love each other not be allowed to just live, love and raise a family. It is hypocritical and I am amazed that my friends have to wonder if a church is “accepting of all people” when the basis of Christianity is love and acceptance. It is ridiculous for businesses to not allow Girl Scouts to sell cookies on their premises because of their policy accepting lesbian, gay and transgendered children. The mean-spiritedness and ignorance can make life miserable for those seen as different. This treatment is still demoralizing, today.

Everyone has the right to an opinion, but our constitution was written to protect the rights of all Americans. The bottom line is equal means equal for everyone. Today’s federal appeals court decision in the Prop. 8 case upholding same-sex marriage is a step in the right direction.

“A Loving Story,” a documentary about the Loving family and their Supreme Court case, will debut on HBO on February 14.

Photo: Grey Villet, [Richard Loving kissing wife Mildred as he arrives home from work, King and Queen County, Virginia], April 1965. © Estate of Grey Villet. From an exhibit of 20 photographs of the Loving family currently on display at the International Center of Photography in New York City (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) through May 6, 2012.

This blog is one of several personal testimonials written by ACLU staff members to commemorate Black History Month.

The country and the ACLU lost a champion of civil rights earlier this month, when Robert L. Carter, federal judge and former general counsel of the NAACP, died at 94. Judge Carter’s astounding contributions to reforming American law about race discrimination are detailed in a NY Times obituary and his fascinating book, A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights.

I worked as one of Judge Carter’s law clerks in the early 1990s, and always enjoyed hearing war stories about his time trying cases and the long struggle to dismantle court-sanctioned race discrimination that had been the center of his professional life. Occasionally he would also mention stories of discrimination he faced in his personal life, and I remember hearing a brief but striking anecdote about a time from his youth when he tried to integrate the swimming pool at his New Jersey high school. But I didn’t understand the full import of what happened until I read the following passage from his book:

At the time I attended East Orange High (1932-33), it had one of the best swimming teams in the state and would usually win or place high in all statewide competitions. The swimming pool in the school was available to black students only at the close of school on alternate Fridays, by gender. To protect the white children from contamination the blacks might have left in the pool, it was then drained, cleaned, and refilled for the use of white students the following Monday...

In May 1933, I read in the local newspaper that the New Jersey Supreme Court in a case from Trenton had held that all public school facilities available to white children had to be available to black children as well. Armed with this knowledge, during the next gym class period I joined the white boys when they retired to the swimming pool. The teacher was, of course, surprised, and at first tried to intimidate me by threatening me with expulsion. When that did not work, he pleaded with me to give in because otherwise he would lose his job. I was unmoved, insisting that the supreme court of New Jersey had said I had a right to use the pool when the white boys used it.

At every physical education class thereafter until graduation I went to the pool when the white boys did. I told the other black students in my gym class to join me, but no one did. It was a difficult, emotional effort for me. I could not swim at the time, but at every gym class, choked up and near tears with emotion and defiance, I would get in the pool at its shallow end and cling to the side of the pool until the period ended. None of the white boys used the pool with me in it, so there I was clinging to the side of the pool for dear life until the period ended. Rather than open the pool to all students, the school closed the pool the next school year. White-supremacy culture sometimes exacts a terrible toll on whites.

Imagine being that 16-year-old kid, in 1933, and having the inner strength to assert yourself that way. I’m blown away every time I read that passage. But it’s classic Judge Carter. We can see in the adolescent Bob Carter the man who would have the temerity to fight an accepted wrong, the fortitude to persevere over decades, and the courage to transform his own life as a means of changing other people’s lives and eventually the entire country.

The image of a young Bob Carter clinging to the side of the pool is among the many reasons he’s one of my heroes.

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Criminal disfranchisement proved to be a hot issue in the Republican presidential debates recently, leading to a CNN poll asking, “Should felons be allowed to vote after serving their sentences?”

The results showed that the majority feel that those with past convictions should have that right. The Washington Post also editorialized on the issue Friday, making the point that it is unjust to prevent “individuals from having a full stake and a full voice in the community and its leadership” after they have already paid their debts to society and earned their right to freedom.

Additionally, the Post ran an op-ed by Charles Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship and former counsel to President Richard Nixon who also saw no point in denying the right to vote for those who have already served their time.

“Voting does not put anyone in danger,” he wrote. “Sound public policy would teach us that if we want to turn ex-offenders into responsible citizens, we must demand of them responsible behavior. And once they demonstrate responsible behavior, what possible justification is there, beyond scoring political points during an election, for stripping them of their civil rights for the rest of their lives?”

Criminal disfranchisement laws, like recent laws requiring ID to vote or restricting third-party registration of voters, have a disproportionate and unfair impact on minorities. Criminal disfranchisement laws have their roots in the Jim Crow era and their harmful effects continue today as 13 percent of African-American men have lost their right to vote – a rate seven times the national average. Similarly, Latino citizens are also disproportionally disfranchised because they are over-represented in the criminal justice system.

Due to these laws in states throughout the nation, an estimated 5.3 million citizens cannot vote, and nearly four million of those are not in prison but working in our communities. The Democracy Restoration Act, which has been introduced in both the House and Senate, would eliminate the confusion around these laws and restore the right of millions to vote in federal elections.

“Citizens should not be denied their right to vote due to a past criminal conviction,” said Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU senior legislative counsel. “They are working, paying taxes, raising families and living in our communities. They deserve to have a voice.”

Criminal disfranchisement laws are another example of voter suppression tactics that threaten our democracy. Our government shouldn’t be in the business of deciding whose vote matters most. Elected officials should be seeking ways to encourage more Americans to vote, not erecting barriers to deny voters the access to the ballot.

Tell Congress to act now to restore one of our most fundamental rights by supporting the Democracy Restoration Act.

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