In 1954, the landmark Supreme Court case "Brown vs. Board of Education" found segregation inherently unequal, and made it illegal. With that, you would be perfectly reasonable to make the assumption that segregation in this country is no more. However, if you look at the statistics, you get a much different story. According to the Washington Post, public schools are more segregated now than they were 40 years ago. Even cities themselves are still separated by race, as demonstrated by these maps of Chicago and New York. In fact, New York City public schools are among the most segregated in the nation, but why?

Brown vs. Board of Education only struck down segregation by law, which was the precise method that was used in the Jim Crow south. It did not, however, address any of the indirect factors that lead to segregation, and the many problems that are associated with it. Segregation isn't just about laws; it can also be caused by economic policies. One of the most important, and least talked about reasons for segregation is a process known as "redlining".

Redlining goes like this: Neighborhoods were mapped out, color-coded in green, blue, yellow, or red. Banks used these maps in order to determine the riskiness of offering loans or mortgages to people (that is, the likelihood that the banks would get their money back). Green neighborhoods were considered the safest, most good areas with high property values, and made it easier for people living in those neighborhoods to get money and buy homes. Red neighborhoods, on the other hand, were deemed the most unsafe, had much lower property values and were almost impossible to get loans and mortgages in. So, what were the criteria for deciding which areas were good or bad? The answer is pretty black and white....literally. The vast majority of the red neighborhoods had a black majority. This made it damn near impossible for black people and black families to get loans from banks, own their own homes, or save money over time.

The effects of this redlining are still seen today. In green neighborhoods, families were able to get mortgages, property values increased, and business and investment soon followed. In red neighborhoods, however, the inability to get mortgages on homes hindered the ability of those living there to accrue wealth or start their own businesses. Businesses that were able left for "better" areas and these areas became even poorer as a result. This extreme poverty led to an uptake in crime, which led to more people and businesses leaving, which led to even lower property values, and even more poverty, creating a vicious cycle.

One of the things that suffered the most from this is public schooling. Schools in these areas are consistently poorer than their green counterparts, mostly due to a lack of funds. This is because schools are funded mostly through property taxes, which bring in less money due to the substantially lower property values. In fact, black and Latino students are six times more likely to go to a high poverty school than white students. If the neighborhoods are segregated by race, that means that the schools are as well. If you think about it, this isn't surprising in any sense. Children go to the school closest to where they live, so if a bunch of black children lives in the same area, they will all go to the same school. This is also true for the white majority neighborhoods.

If the policies are so bad, why don't we just get rid of them? While that would be a good first step, even if these policies were to be repealed immediately, the people and families in black neighborhoods would still not be able to move into a nicer area, as it has been harder for them to collect wealth over the previous decades. They would still be starting far behind their counterparts in the white areas.

Maybe you think that people weren't aware of this, and are just realizing this now as they look back at our history, but you would be sorely mistaken. Malcom X was pointing out the hypocrisy of liberal northerners during the civil rights movement; he said in an interview at a New York City public school boycott in 1964: "You don't have to go to Mississippi to find a segregated school system. We have it right here in New York City...it shows that the problems that the white liberals have been pointing the finger at the southern segregationists, and condemning them for, exist right here in New York City." That is what everyone gets wrong about segregation. Just because there aren't laws encouraging it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in some form or another.

Now, none of this is the fault of anybody living in the green neighborhoods. They may benefit from these policies, but they are not responsible for them. These are simply the rules of the game, and just like every game, the rules dictate how you play, and can dictate the winners and losers. The only way that this is going to get any better is if we choose to acknowledge the disparity that we have created, and take steps to ensure more equality of opportunity. Nobody should be condemned to poverty just because of the color of their skin; that may be how America used to work, but it cannot be how the system works now. This frankly should not, cannot, and will not be tolerated. We've come so far on civil rights in this country, but we've come too far to stop here.