Introduction

Scholarship can either begin broadly and narrow down or intimately and generalize out. Mine will start small, personal really, and then zig-zag in focus. It will begin as my research process did by my asking myself a simple question. It will end, like most academic endeavors, with several affirmative conclusions and policy recommendations. I’ll build an argument by employing evidence obtained through an interview, print literature, old newspapers, and personal narrative. The voice I use in my writing is my own. I do not make any effort to conceal that bias either. Public policies, as we will explore, shape lives. In turn, then, I’d argue, it is only right for student scholars to analyze processes and practices by integrating human stories, lived experiences. Without subjectivity, decision-makers wouldn’t ever have made those choices in the first place that substantially limited black and brown Americans’ chance at success.

I’m motivated here to answer a fairly plain question. How did Long Island become so racially isolated? My hometown, Syosset, is a Nassau County suburb of roughly eighteen thousand residents, less than 1 percent of whom are black. What explains that? I lived a blissful childhood. My parents didn’t visibly struggle to make ends meet. The median annual income back home sits above $155k. We’re an outlier town, absolutely. After property taxes and cost of living, my parents still had well enough to spare. But we never thought of ourselves as rich. Two cars owned. Nothing luxurious — a Toyota sedan and Honda minivan. Now we’ve jumped ship to Hyundai. Both mom and dad are teachers. They prepared home-cooked dinners almost every weeknight. They relented to my brother and my prodding whenever a new video game release had us craving new toys. And they took us two traveling into New York City a couple of times each year. I never went to bed either too cold or too warm because, say, our three-bedroom home lacked central heating or air conditioning. While living directly above an uninsulated garage did cause some weird temperature fluctuations, making ends meet wasn’t a phrase I heard too often.

Many families cannot afford comfortable lifestyles such as ours. I knew this as a boy, that some people are less fortunate so you better appreciate what you’ve got and finish your meals and not pester your parents too often for new stuff. (We did anyway). But not until leaving my hometown, only after attending college outside that beautiful suburban bubble back on Long Island did I realize how racist policies, practices, and institutions enabled my white family to move into Nassau County generations ago but denied black families that same shot. It was a raw deal, a crooked, dirty bunch of bargains between developers, lenders, agencies, and decision-makers. Four generations later and racial segregation persists, leaving communities stagnant and shaken. Where a person grows up influences who they become. It shaped my birth and it is shaping my life in ways beyond count.

1. Measuring racial isolation

Residential segregation is our topic here. My specific focus, racial isolation, is what I felt growing up on Long Island. What I’ll briefly be discussing, these terms, they go beyond mere demographic composition. They’re numbers, sure, but they can always be traced back to people. Real human impacts interest me and only empirical analysis can provide full context. So specific ways of measuring how communities compare racially and in terms of equity. How homogeneous are our neighborhoods really? We can find out.

Some academics construct an all-encompassing formula for evaluating segregation quantitatively. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton felt differently. They instead conceived a “global construct” comprised of five underlying spatial dimensions: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering (283). Although there’s certainly overlap there, they argue each one is conceptually distinct. They write in American Apartheid, “A high score on any single dimension is serious because it removes blacks from full participation in urban society and limits their access to its benefits.” That’s why the numbers matter. The characteristic most relevant to my inquiry is exposure, “the degree of potential contact, or the possibility of interaction, between minority and majority group members within geographic areas” (287). Here’s it put another way: the likelihood that nonwhite and white people will interact in any given community. We can further deconstruct exposure, as defined, into two indices of interaction and isolation.

Which brings us back to where we started. In retrospect, I grew up sheltered. I simply wasn’t exposed to many people unlike myself. And, it turns out, that wasn’t some fluke. Brown sociologist John R. Logan, systematically assessed three decades worth of census data which can tell us how many white, black, Hispanic, and Asian people live in every neighborhood. What he observed doesn’t surprise me. He observed people of color moving in large numbers to suburbs. But sorting themselves into racially isolated enclaves. Not much mixing going on. Conveniently enough, when Logan spoke to The Atlantic about his findings several years ago, he invoked my home county to exemplify that main point. Long Island squarely fits into a larger, national phenomenon. Here’s what Logan told them:

“Long Island is becoming more diverse. Nassau County is becoming more diverse. But within Nassau County, there’s been hardly any change in the degree of segregation. The predominantly minority areas are becoming more minority. And the predominantly white areas are staying mostly white.”

I lived that! Take an example he references later on. Garden City and Hempstead are adjacent villages. Garden City has an average income of $150,000 and is 88% white. Hempstead has an average income of $52,000 and is 92% black. They share a common border.

One especially striking detail that Logan unearthed through his data-sifting project: when controlling for income, affluent blacks are more likely to live in high poverty areas than impoverished whites. Isolation was unrelated to how much money you make. Not only do African Americans reside in poorer areas; they also attend poorer schools in majority-minority districts. In practical terms, that means fewer resources per pupil, higher teacher turnover, things no parent wants for their child. The University of California Civil Rights Project has extensively researched the public school diversity problem in New York. By synthesizing sixty years of neighborhood and performance data, program director Gary Orfield and researcher John Kucsera have determined New York schools to be the least diverse in the country. In 1989, 4 percent of Long Island schools were what they’d call “intensely segregated,” boasting an enrollment of less than ten percent white students. Twenty years later, in 2010, that number climbed to 11 percent. “White students,” they write, “are overexposed to other white students” (5). That certainly held true in my case.

So how can we explain what scholars are seeing across suburbs? One line of thinking is that groups self-isolate. They choose to live around people who look like themselves. Another mindset revolves around there existing structural realities and public policies that discourage intermingling and cohabitation. I subscribe to this latter view. Some academics have constructed experimental designs testing white subjects’ aversion to living alongside blacks. It’s pretty revolting when quantified out as Emerson, Chai, and Yancey do. Only a quarter of respondents tell survey administers they’d be “very likely” to buy a home in neighborhoods 15 percent African American (930). And we’re talking about spectacular properties here! Everything you’d want as a prospective homeowner: low crime, high-achieving schools, rising property values. Notably, survey participants who reported having friendships with nonwhites were significantly more likely to say they’d buy these homes. That does reassure me. Fascinatingly enough, blacks asked similar questions just want parity. Their neighborhood preference is half-black and half-white (Farley, Bianchi, and Colasanto).

2. History lessons

Most citizens today live in suburbs, 55 percent of Americans (Parker et al.). It wasn’t always that way, of course. Mass suburbanization is a process, one that occurred last century and continues today. People left cities in great numbers. Many resented change. They moved away to avoid confronting social and political ruptures that came to a head before them, progressive movements and class conflicts.

A fascination existed then and still does today about suburban life. Groups sought that lifestyle, its connotations and associations. Not just white folk either; citizens of all races wanted to be welcome outside cities. Suburbs were commodified, built quickly and scrappily, scaled up. And they were absolutely glorified too. Owning a home not too far from that urban bustle but far enough away to afford privacy and quiet and safety — suburbs struck a wonderful middle ground between work and play.

There really isn’t any concrete criteria out there, any industry standard for defining suburban communities. Often we lump both cities and suburbs together as “metropolitan areas,” which isn’t conducive to our analysis. Let’s return to Kenneth Jackson. He observes four common traits across disparate suburbs. Highland Park, Beverly Hills, Long Island — here’s what connects them. First, they aren’t densely packed. Suburbs sprawl. People don’t nearly live atop one another as they might inside cities. Fewer apartments, more ranch-style homes. Second, individuals residing in suburbs are much more likely to own rather than rent homes. Third, household income tends to rise as you track further outside urban business districts (Jackson 8). Fourth, suburbanites spend much longer commuting to work and they do so by car.

Long Island represents that quintessential suburban ideal, both in meeting these criteria and aesthetically too. I’d say it matches the popular imagination of suburban life. Endless rows of split-level homes are made of mixed materials, brick and siding, surrounded by white picket fences. They’re landscaped pristinely. Those imported bluegrass lawns are always mowed neat. And today, you’d see double-wide driveways out front and painted decks out back. Back home, whenever I visit, which isn’t as often now, I still see middle-school-aged kids biking around town. Long Island almost feels frozen in time. But frozen at what time? Perhaps a time that we really ought to move past, a time when some met prosperity while others faced hardship inflicted by structural forces disinterested in seeing them succeed.

Suburbia as we know it did originate in New York. Historian Kenneth Jackson identifies Brooklyn Heights as America’s first “modern suburb.” Ferry service permitted individuals to live there and work in downtown Manhattan (25). Long Island boomed decades later, once allied military men completed our Japanese campaign. World War II was a turning point, scholars agree. Our government developed international clout and treated returning soldiers nicely. The GI Bill provided solid perks; the ability to settle down, raise a family, pursue an education, find a job were all within reach.

But not for everyone. While white service members could rely on government stipends to build a wealth base, blacks couldn’t. Banks and mortgage agencies both refused to loan African American veterans capital needed to start anew in suburbia. They never could uproot themselves upon landing home from war, for one, because it wasn’t financially feasible. One race received vital institutional support; another did not. In a sentence, the GI bill benefits subsidized white flight and perpetuated racial isolation.

Alright, besides post-war families needing a place to live, something else spurred Long Island’s ascension. New York City experienced a decline. Major cuts to city services and dilapidated infrastructure produced worker unrest, strikes and protests. Decades later, Mayor Ed Koch implemented radical budgetary adjustments to spur private-sector investment (Dolgan, 48), further isolating middle-class Manhattanites. The AIDS epidemic and scourge of crack-cocaine created greater tension inside New York City. It all made Long Island look appealing by comparison. But really, Nassau and Suffolk County saw its peak residential construction phrase during the seventies, following congressional passage of both the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act of 1968. Those laws protected buyer interests and prohibited discriminatory housing practices. But by then, enough damage had been done.

3. Blocked paths

I neglected to mention Levittown explicitly earlier. William Levitt was revolutionary. His cookie-cutter communities, which began on Long Island, just six miles from where my parents raised me, didn’t require cash up-front. Dr. Barbara Kelly, former Long Island Studies program director at Hofstra University, recalls how salivating that prospect was. “Because Levittown promised affordable housing, with no down payment, it offered hope to the African-American working class when no other community did,” Kelly told a New York Times writer back in 1997, “but that hope was quashed” (Lambert). Blacks were kept out, plain and simple. Whites filled nearly all 17 thousand homes built by Levitt on Long Island. Federal Housing Administration loans didn’t permit him to extend that invitation (Rothstein). But knowing how whites feel about living near blacks, some excuse would probably have been concocted regardless.

We all know it goes beyond restrictive loans and covenants. Evidence exists that even after those landmark civil rights policies became official, racial steering continued. George Galster and Erin Godfrey uncovered zero evidence suggesting that steering whites into white communities and blacks into black communities has declined despite toughening of federal law in 1988. That’s in line with what ProPublica discerned concerning executive enforcement of fair housing laws. Office of Fair Housing and Opportunity employees told reporters that when they’ve tried holding violators accountable, senior agency officials shot them down. As Nikole Hannah-Jones writes, “In most cases, HUD does not even check the paperwork filed by cities and states about their efforts to deal with segregation and other issues that stymie integrated housing; it simply writes checks.” These factors undergird continuing racial isolation on Long Island.

Another pair working hand-in-hand to stall integration — a lack of affordable housing and mass transit systems. The primary effort to increase affordable housing on Long Island came in 2008. The Long Island Workforce Housing Act mandated that developers provide 10 percent affordable housing in new buildings five units or larger, a fine policy in theory. But in practice, terribly limited. The Center for Popular Democracy was commissioned to study whether new housing got built as a result and, if so, how satisfactory living conditions were for tenants. Shockingly, nineteen of twenty experts weren’t aware of any new affordable housing units constructed since the act’s passage. So what went awry? Affordability was set too high at 130% annual median income. Legal loopholes permitted construction companies to build off-site in ghetto areas. Targeting investment to high-poverty areas and standardizing inclusionary zoning could’ve made a difference here.

Some fear new affordable housing will increase crime and taxes, and decrease home values. But that myth doesn’t pass muster. Mount Laurel, New Jersey, was the site of a landmark housing case years ago. Albright, Derickson, and Massey conducted a longitudinal, controlled design study of crime rates, property values, and taxes there. While notedly double my community’s size, the authors couldn’t identify any trickle-down negative effects of opening the 140-unit ELH complex in Mount Laurel. They write, “Our findings suggest that affordable housing can indeed be developed in an affluent suburban community without increasing social disorganization or producing negative externalities in terms of crime, property value, or taxes.” Perhaps a small suburban town, enormously wealthy like Syosset, New York?

Finally, before sharing some insights and recommendations for us moving forward, I have two notes left to share regarding transportation. If you do not have an automobile, getting around Long Island is tough. Our bus system, the Nassau Inter-County Express, is rightly called “beleaguered” by one blogger (Levy). Ridership fell to a fifteen-year low two years back and it hasn’t perked up. They’ve been adjusting trip times, adding Saturday service. It sadly isn’t enough. Low-income islanders without access to cars have no affordable alternative to NICE. Long Island Railroad tickets, in relation to NICE, cost a high premium. My second point concerns how our expressways are designed. Robert Moses intentionally laid out parkways with low overpasses to inconvenience racial minorities who’re more likely to rely on buses.

4. Pursuing equity through education

Both my parents are teachers, so I was inclined once I began researching my origin story, so to speak, to seek out an educator equity organizer. And that’s precisely what my interviewee does. Nyah Berg works at ERASE Racism NY, a Syosset-based nonprofit advocacy organization, that fights daily to deliver racially equitable outcomes across Long Island. Berg spoke candidly about her work, her goals, and challenges she has encountered in her role.

Her job entails “two buckets of responsibility,” in her words. She advocates for policy that will help educators and she empowers students to fight for racial equity in schools. I asked Berg to identify policies that she is pursuing. She rattled them off her tongue at lightning speed: teacher and administrative diversity, culturally responsible curricula, diverse districts, universal preschool, and restorative justice practices. What most interested me, rather than any individual approach, was the overarching strategy at play here. It revolves around schools, making them sights of change, building youth-led movements, passionate youngsters demanding the accountability that Berg thinks is deeply lacking 65 years since Brown. “We’re seeing resegregation,” she tells me, frankly. “What I do is work with students,” including some at Syosset, I might add, “to speak up and speak out. The kids keep me doing what I’m doing.”

Our twenty-minute conversation left me emboldened and proud, proud to know that racial isolation isn’t being ignored in my hometown by everyone. And yet, I was doubtful. It seemed her policy prescriptions didn’t go far enough. I asked whether politics played a role in that. She mostly brushed that aside. “Integration isn’t just about moving bodies,” Berg shot back. “Structural racism is in place on Long Island. We work to break that cycle.

Her transformative vision for education accounts for several fixed realities on the ground. Long Island schools are shockingly fragmented. 125 school districts across two counties. That is one “source of control,” Berg told me, keeping that structural racism in place. Having so many centralized school systems and governmental entities with which to interact causes some frustrations now and then. “It is a multifaceted problem requiring a multifaceted solution.” Another unavoidable force at play: since funding comes directly through property taxes, with residential segregation so pronounced, there’s less liquid capital to spend in poorer, largely black neighborhood schools.

Prior to our conversation’s end, Berg spurred my optimism a bit by drawing my attention to those teenagers she invoked earlier. They planned, by themselves, an event in March attended by 90 educators across Long Island of varying backgrounds. It even received earned media attention in Newsday. “I work with these children to create a platform for them to use their voices. And that’s what they did.” I’m sure if I was there I too would’ve been moved.

Conclusion

Long Island has held the unflattering title of “most segregated American suburb.” That’s my home. And I wasn’t paying much attention to it. My grandparents moved to New Hyde Park and Little Neck on Long Island over fifty years ago. Multiple generations of my family grew up in Nassau County. But only until I went away could I understand clearly how my livelihood, my opportunities since birth, are darkly entangled with structural neglect toward persons of color.

The suburbs are growing more diverse each year. But black folks are moving into black neighborhoods, and white folks are moving into white neighborhoods. That racial isolation is perhaps best exemplified by Long Island’s nationally renowned public schools. The number of students attending intensely segregated schools on Long Island has tripled since 2004 (ERASE Racism). And they’re stunningly fragmented. We do not need 125 school districts on an island only 118 miles long. That’s one school district for every nine miles and that’s a vestige of people in power actively maintaining racially unequal systems. Due to what? It’s unclear. But I’m ashamed to say, for decades up until civil rights commotion and even after it, intentionally built itself to be racially exclusive. The government, through discriminatory loan standards and flawed enforcement of civil rights laws, has extended and deepened the hurt caused by residential segregation back home.

William Levitt, Robert Moses — developers and planners, politicians all the same. The suburbs were coveted by all, and people big and small let racist practices stand rather than fight for a level playing field. Levittown today remains nearly 90 percent Caucasian. And while some back then made concerted efforts to end discrimination, little became of it. Writes another Hofstra professor on Levittown’s semicentennial anniversary: “In those years, even liberal people like ourselves tended to take residential segregation for granted, without approving it. None of us went out into the street to change it” (Lambert).

We have an opportunity to confront our history and change Long Island for the better. Individuals like Nyah Berg are leading the charge, hoping to instill in young people an affection for racial equity, a recognition that it’s a valuable pursuit, one that we failed to achieve before but can deliver if we band together. It won’t be easy. But it’s right. Don’t be shocked if you find me picking up a sign or recruiting volunteers one day soon.