Separate can Never be Equal: Unemployment in Newark, NJ

In 1947, New Jersey ratified a new State Constitution. This was a historic event, making New Jersey the first state to include an anti-segregation clause in its constitution(since then, only 2 other states have adopted a similar clause). This clause helped end Jim Crow laws in New Jersey, a state Black activists at the time commonly referred to as “the Georgia of the North”. 

Despite this explicit legal protection, racial segregation is still very present in New Jersey. The UCLA Civil Rights Project has ranked New Jersey as the sixth most segregated state for the segregation of Black students and seventh most segregated state for the segregation of Latino students.

In the Jim Crow era, racial segregation in schools was established by explicitly sending Black and Latino students to separate schools from their White neighbors. Today, racial segregation in New Jersey schools is maintained by geographic segregation. Instead of school districts with Black and Latino schools and White schools, New Jersey has Black school districts, Latino school districts, and White school districts. 

As seen above, geographic racial segregation in the Newark Metro Area falls neatly within the boundaries of school districts. The Newark school district, the Elizabeth school district, and some bordering school districts contain nearly all of the Black and Latino populations, while nearly all other suburban school districts are almost exclusively White. It is also worth noting that while the Newark school district contains both Black and Latino neighborhoods, school districts like Irvington and East Orange contain almost exclusively Black neighborhoods, and school districts like Elizabeth and Kearny contain almost exclusively Latino neighborhoods. 

The above map shows areas with current unemployment levels at or above 10%(recession level unemployment). These high levels of unemployment are contained within the Black and Latino school districts mentioned above. It should be noted that even within these segregated school districts, unemployment impacts Black regions to a higher degree than Latino regions, with the highest concentration of recession level unemployment in the Irvington and East Orange school districts(which are predominantly Black), and in Black neighborhoods in Newark. 

The above maps reveal that negative economic and health effects are largely clustered in the same regions where there are high levels of unemployment. These indicators suggest that there may be a dangerous cycle of unemployment and poverty concentrated in majority Black and Latino communities in the Newark metro area. For example, child poverty is linked to higher rates of academic failure and school drop out, which means children who grew up in poverty will have a harder time finding employment as adults. Further, property value is an effective indicator of generational wealth. The lower property values in these areas suggests that residents will not be able to build generational wealth effectively, certainly not at the same rate as in White neighborhoods, both furthering the racial wealth gap and potentially putting future generations at risk of growing up in poverty. 

It is abundantly clear that separate can never be equal. Mapping the geographic distribution of these different factors reveals that Black and Latino neighborhoods in the Newark metro area are disproportionately affected by a myriad of economic and health issues that likely prolong one another. The solution to this should be a large scale policy approach that aims to both cure these issues, and lessen their effects. Take childhood poverty for example. Policies like a universal school breakfast/lunch program will limit the food insecurity that children living in poverty often experience. This will lessen the detrimental effects of child poverty, but it should be paired with policies that will help end child poverty, like a universal job guarantee. Other programs like universal healthcare, higher minimum wages, rent control, and building more affordable housing could be potential solutions to the problems mapped above, and to others not captured in these data sets. Ideally, these policies should disrupt the cycle of continuous unemployment, by aiming to both reduce unemployment and mitigate its side effects. 

As for the problem of New Jersey’s extreme racial segregation in schools, this problem seems to be rooted in the racial wealth gap. If economic structures are the cause of geographic racial segregation, then perhaps closing the racial wealth gap will allow for integration to occur naturally. But other measures may have to be taken to solve this issue. One approach could be establishing larger school districts that would more equitably distribute funds between schools for wealthy and poor neighborhoods, and would allow for schools to have student bodies that draw from White, Black, and Latino neighborhoods.