Beyond Black and White

In early 2000, a group of Latino students at Jordan-Matthews High School in Siler City, North Carolina, petitioned to start the school’s first soccer program. “Some folks in the community were excited,” says Paul Cuadros, now the Jordan-Matthews soccer coach, “but many were skeptical, wondering, ‘What is this sport?’ and ‘What are they doing on our football field?’ which is considered sacred ground.”

The soccer battle reflects broader change in Siler City that began in 1998, when migrant farm workers began settling in this rural township 45 minutes west of Raleigh, North Carolina, attracted by poultry plant jobs. “American families weren’t sure what to make of their new neighbors--trailer parks that housed twenty- and thirty-something men. Certainly the language barriers made it difficult for them to get to know and understand each other,” Cuadros observed. Today, Latinos make up 52 percent of the population of Siler City, constitute 80 percent of the kindergarten and first grade classes, and account for nearly 70 percent of the Siler City workforce.

Yet despite the rapid growth of the Latino population in Siler City, life there has not necessarily been kind to Latino residents. “While a few families have been able to save a little money and navigate their way to homeownership,” notes Vince Sanabria, Executive Director of El Vinculo Hispano, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving Siler City’s Latino community, “the majority of Latinos live in the only homes available: miniature developments of ranch-style modular homes at the edge of the developed area, reminiscent of the Colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Siler City’s experience exemplifies a rarely discussed American phenomenon: Latino segregation. Segregation has long been thought of, and researched, as a black-white issue. This is not without cause--the history and ramifications of segregation in black communities are quite profound. Nonetheless, a narrow focus on the segregation experience of African Americans leaves out the experience of Latinos and other recent immigrant populations. Segregation in those communities, as in black communities, can mean inadequate access to health, financial, and educational services, and lost opportunities to build the kind of wealth other families do simply by paying their mortgages.

Historically, Latino segregation has primarily resulted from immigrants seeking opportunity, in contrast to the white flight, housing riots, and redlining that drove African-American segregation. Latinos have generally settled wherever they could find jobs and are often isolated within neighborhoods by language and culture.

While Siler City’s experience mirrors that of hundreds of small towns across the Midwest and the Southeast with new Latino populations, segregation also persists in cities with more established communities. “Immigrants are coming to this country looking for opportunities for their children,” says Manual Lopez, Deputy Director of Tejano Center for Community Concerns of Houston. “When they arrive, they settle in predominately Hispanic communities that seem safe and familiar. Unfortunately, they are not given the equal opportunity they were looking for. The public schools in the Latino neighborhoods have less funding, resources, and staff.” As a result, many cities have seen a cycle of Latinos in low-paying jobs without access to better opportunities. Despite the longstanding presence of the Latino population in Houston, Lopez reports, the mainstream community still has a difficult time understanding Latino families’ need for bilingual support and educational services. Latino gangs have sprung up, recruiting troubled teenagers “floating between [the] two worlds” of America and Mexico, as Cuadros puts it.

The difficulty in identifying Latino segregation trends, partly a result of rapid immigration, has contributed to a lack of understanding, funding of, and popular attention to desegregation programs aimed at Latinos. Latino groups receive only 3 percent of federal Fair Housing Initiative Program grants, designed to build capacity in groups that test for discrimination by realtors and apartment owners under the Fair Housing Act. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies and the Department of Justice rarely do their own proactive investigations of housing market discrimination affecting Latinos, as opposed to passively waiting for victims, who rarely understand their rights under the Fair Housing Act and other laws, to come forward. Only 22 of 180 Department of Justice fair housing cases between 2000 and early 2004 involved Latino plaintiffs. Perhaps partly as a result of this lack of enforcement, a recent Harvard Civil Rights Project study showed high levels of Latino school segregation, which usually tracks housing segregation due to the geographic nature of school districts. The study revealed that Latino students are more segregated than African-American students and Latino school segregation has grown over the past decade.

Given the anticipated growth of the Latino population, it is critical that the Latino experience with segregation and discrimination be taken into account; otherwise, well-intentioned policies to combat segregation will yield limited results. Perhaps then one day Siler City will not only have a soccer team, but one filled with people from all different races.