By Kumba Jagne
It was 1945. World War II had ended, and people of all colors sought to build lives on Long Island. Passage of the GI Bill in 1944 made it possible for many soldiers to afford homes. For Black veterans, though, the bill was a mirage. The federal government and the banking industry denied them mortgages, drawing red lines around Black and other marginalized communities to designate them as “high risk” for default. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made redlining illegal, but segregation remained.
Today, real estate agents at times steer Black and Latino Long Islanders to more diverse villages and White people to predominantly White ones, as demonstrated by Newsday’s 2019 series “Long Island Divided.” Within Nassau County’s communities are 58 small school districts. Racial segregation bleeds into the public school system, as well as into private schools, according to data analyzed by The Long Island Advocate.
ERASE Racism, a nonprofit based in Syosset that researches and advocates for the end of racial discrimination, defines an intensely segregated school district as enrolling 90% or more students of color and a predominantly White district as enrolling over 60% White students. According to these statistics, private schools and public school districts in Nassau County have similar levels of racial segregation.
Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, described Long Island as one of the most segregated regions in the country. “The school districts in majority non-White areas, except for Asian, tend to be among the lowest-performing and the poorest funded,” Levy said. “It’s a challenge for people who are segregated into communities with poorer schools and poorer housing and poorer health outcomes to break out of this vicious cycle that’s perpetuated across generations.”
Although private schools are not bound by the same regional limits as public schools, intensely segregated schools are often found in more diverse communities. Among private schools that post tuition information, predominantly White schools’ median tuition is thousands of dollars higher than intensely segregated schools.
Alan Singer, professor emeritus of teaching, learning and technology at Hofstra University, said families that can afford it often pull their children out of public school and enroll them in Catholic or Jewish schools, deepening segregation in school districts. These schools have become more racially diverse in recent years but lack economic diversity.
“Everybody says, ‘We want our kid to have a religious education,’” Singer said. “I think they want their kid to have a segregated education.”
Singer said Black and Latino middle-class families are also inclined to take their children out of public schools. Students with greater needs are more prevalent in intensely segregated public schools, forcing schools to stretch their resources thinner.
Kellenberg Memorial High School is a mostly White school in Uniondale, a predominantly Black and Latino community and school district. For Kellenberg alumna Abbygail Fenelon-Alty, private Catholic education mirrored the schooling that her mother received growing up in Haiti. Fenelon-Alty attended private schools throughout her life, and Kellenberg was more diverse than others. Still, attending mostly White schools took a toll on her, she said.
“I felt like I was in the middle where I was too White to be in a group of Black people, but I was too Black to be in a group of White people,” Fenelon-Alty said. “I had to be sitting in both lines and be neutral. I never really got to be myself until college.”
Fenelon-Alty experienced multiple micro-aggressions during her time at Kellenberg and other private schools, she noted. By her own account, none of these incidents were reported to the administration because she felt nothing would be done. Looking back, she has changed her view.
“If I was talking to someone who’s a little version of me or someone who’s in high school who has to deal with this, I would say to stick up for yourself,” Fenelon-Alty said. “Even now if I knew my administration wouldn’t do something, I wish I spoke about it more and gotten their attention. I feel like if you don’t bring attention to it, it’s not going to change.”
A Kellenberg representative declined a request for comment.
At Westbury Friends School, the students and teachers represent a variety of races, religions and countries. The Quaker school is run in part by the Westbury Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and serves students from nursery through third grade.
Schools such as Westbury Friends can serve as alternatives to districts that lack diversity, according to school officials. “I feel like we’re a better replication of what the real world is meant to be like, as opposed to being isolated or secluded from one race or culture from another,” Head of School Christina Anderson said.
Katie Braverman is a White mother of two Westbury Friends attendees and lives in the East Meadow School District, a majority White and Asian system. “My husband grew up here and we know what it looks like,” Braverman said. “It’s mostly White, and in this community [East Meadow], it feels mostly segregated.”
During Black History Month, all Westbury Friends students pick notable Black figures to dress up as and give a presentation on. Braverman’s son chose Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker pressurized water gun and a nuclear engineer in the U.S. Air Force and at NASA. Braverman said she understood not every child is given the opportunity to connect with African American culture.
“I think that politically there’s a divide about what you should and should not put down children’s throats,” Braverman said. “I think that there’s a lot of people who would not be happy to allow their children to participate in that Black History Month, and I think that that’s very shameful.”
The Westbury Friends School celebrates other holidays, including Hispanic Heritage Month, Diwali, Kwanza and, one year, Greek Independence Day.
