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This report also examined indices of exposure between white and black students (these are reproduced as Table 2).  The average white student attended a school that was 86% white in 1968, dropping to 83% in 1990 and 79% in 2000.  At the same time average white exposure to black classmates increased from 4% in 1968 to 9% in 1990, remaining at 9% in 2000.  The average black student attended a school that was 19% white in 1968, increasing to 34% white in 1990, then declining to 29% in 2000.  Decreasing exposure to whites was not due to growing black isolation, however.  The average black student was in a 56% black school in 1990 (a comparable figure is not available for 1968), and this increased by less than half a percentage point in 2000.  Instead, blacks were in schools with a higher Hispanic and Asian presence in 2000.

Table 2.  Changes in average white and black students' exposure to white and black students in their elementary school (all public elementary schools)

 

 

 

White to whites

White to blacks

Region

Segregation plan

1968

1990

2000

1968

1990

2000

South

No

85.5

82.3

78.8

6.3

10.5

11.0

 

Yes

91.4

70.7

67.8

6.1

23.0

22.7

 

All districts

88.7

76.9

73.8

6.2

16.3

16.3

 

 

Non-South

No

85.1

88.8

85.2

1.9

3.1

3.8

 

Yes

83.0

64.9

59.9

8.6

18.7

18.3

 

All districts

84.6

85.6

82.2

3.3

5.2

5.5

 

 

Total

No

85.2

87.1

83.6

2.8

4.9

5.6

 

Yes

87.4

68.7

65.2

7.3

21.5

21.2

 

All districts

85.9

82.5

79.3

4.2

9.1

9.3

 

 

 

Black to whites

Black to blacks

Region

Segregation plan

1968

1990

2000

1968

1990

2000

South

No

29.7

55.0

47.8

NA

34.6

32.9

 

Yes

10.5

31.2

26.3

NA

63.7

65.7

 

All districts

14.9

36.7

31.5

NA

54.6

54.0

 

Non-South

No

48.4

48.5

44.3

NA

37.0

38.6

 

Yes

17.4

20.8

15.6

NA

63.8

65.6

 

All districts

24.5

29.4

25.8

NA

57.6

59.0

 

Total

No

37.7

51.8

45.9

NA

35.8

35.6

 

Yes

13.5

27.1

22.1

NA

63.8

65.6

 

All districts

19.1

33.6

29.1

NA

56.4

56.8

 

What evidence, then, has been presented for the thesis of resegregation in the 1990s?

One of the clearest statements of this position is found in a report prepared by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?  (Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, January 2003).  This report emphasizes two kinds of measures: exposure indices (the racial composition of schools attended by the average group member, the same indicator used in Table 2) and the percentage of students in majority white or majority minority schools. 
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