Created Equal: The Milliken v. Bradley decision’s effect on Detroit schools, 50 years later
Three guests joined Stephen Henderson on the show to talk about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and its ripple effect on the Detroit public school system today.
Last month marked the 50th anniversary of a Supreme Court case originating in Detroit that’s had a lasting impact on equity in schools, both locally and nationwide.
The Milliken v. Bradley decision limited the courts’ ability to address segregation in schools by halting an “interdistrict busing” plan to tackle Detroit’s increasingly segregated classrooms. Under the plan, students from Detroit would have been bused into the suburbs and kids from the suburbs would have been bused to Detroit schools.
Legal scholars say the 1974 ruling eroded the progress of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared racial segregation in the classroom unconstitutional. After that ruling, districts across the country were experimenting with ways to integrate schools.
The Milliken v. Bradley case originated when the NAACP filed a lawsuit against Michigan state officials on behalf of students and their families, arguing that school integration in Detroit could never occur where discriminatory practices like redlining and racial covenants are present.
While the lower court ruling said the city, state and surrounding suburbs must comply and participate in a desegregation plan, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a narrow 5-4 decision signaled that the courts shouldn’t be involved in efforts to desegregate schools.
Today on Created Equal, host Stephen Henderson was joined by three guests — Chalkbeat Detroit reporter Robyn Vincent, Detroit historian Ken Coleman, and Education Trust-Midwest Executive Director Amber Arellano — to talk about the Milliken ruling and its ripple effect on the Detroit public school system today.
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Guests
Robyn Vincent, education reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit, wrote a recent article entitled “Still segregated and unequal: The reverberations of Milliken v. Bradley in Detroit 50 years later.” Vincent says Detroit schools are not equitably funded in comparison to other districts.
“That became especially true with the adoption of Proposal A back in the ’90s, now that education policy is unequal in how much funding different school districts receive per student, and meanwhile we know Detroit schools serve a lot of kids from low-income households,” she said. “Nearly 80% qualify for subsidized lunches, so that tells us something.”
Ken Coleman is a Detroit historian and journalist. He says although Detroit’s Black population was growing, large swaths of the city had very few African American students up until the time of Milliken v. Bradley, and there was a clear correlation between segregation in schools and segregation in housing.
“There are lots of neighborhoods where Black kids don’t go to school with white kids because of race discrimination that was carried out in the real estate industry, and even pushback in city neighborhoods throughout the ‘40s and ’50s and ‘60s,” he said.
Amber Arellano is the executive director of Education Trust-Midwest. Arellano discussed how there have been a lot of changes within the past two years when it comes to schools being more equitable. She also talks about the recent funding mechanism that accounts for the concentration of poverty, which made history in Michigan.
“We are one of the first 10 states in the country to do this,” said Arellano. “It is an acknowledgment that we have had one of the most regressive and most inequitable state funding systems in the country, and in just two years, it’s driven almost $300 million more into schools for students with low-income background,” she said. It is really an important statewide change.”
Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.
