- Racial segregation in schools is increasing, with the number of schools where 1% or less of the student population is white doubling in the last 20 years.
- New York State is now the most segregated system in America, and the South is actually the least segregated region for black students.
- Black and Latino children are more likely to attend schools with inexperienced teachers and fewer resources.
- Northern cities, like New York, never truly integrated their schools, as the 1964 Civil Rights Act exempted the racial imbalance in these schools.
- Integration brought resources to African-American communities, but desegregation plans were often struck down, leading to resegregation.
- The prevailing narrative became that desegregation imposed too high a cost for a benefit that was no longer necessary.

- The piece discusses the misconception that the election of an African-American president means that systemic racism has been solved.
- The negative effects of segregated schools on children's education and self-worth are highlighted.
- Integration can have lasting positive impacts, such as narrowing the achievement gap and reducing incarceration rates for black Americans.
- Lack of exposure to other races can lead to racial bias in children.
- The importance of exposing children to diversity at a young age is emphasized.
- Some school districts are implementing programs to promote diversity and integration, such as voluntary school assignments and complex school assignment formulas.
- The benefits of diverse schools extend beyond just parents and children, as they contribute to a more inclusive society.

Public schools are increasingly divided by race and class. John Oliver discusses the troubling trend towards school resegregation.

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You know, the problem that Crash failed to solve.

And specifically, we're going to discuss school segregation, which it turns out is still a big problem.

The number of schools where 1 percent or less of the student population is white has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Even as our society has grown more diverse, nearly 7,000 schools have the same racial makeup as the audience of your average Tyler Perry movie.

And that 1 white guy is Leonard Maltin, and he has to be there.

Now, at this point, if you're in a city like New York, you're probably thinking, oh, splendid.

A story vilifying the backwards and racist American South.

Let me just grab a handful of kale chips that I can munch on while feeling superior.

There is something you should probably know.

According to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, the South is the least segregated region for black students.

And in fact, New York State is now the most segregated system in America, in large part due to New York City.

Twist ending, you were racist the whole time!

Put back those persimmons you bought yourselves as a treat from Fairway, you don't deserve them anymore!

And look, it would still be problematic, even if these schools were roughly equivalent academically, as that would still be a violation of the principle of Brown versus Board of Education that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

But in practice, they are very rarely equal in any way.

Black and Latino children are more likely to attend schools with inexperienced teachers, which are then less likely to offer a college prep curriculum.

On top of which, because race and class are inextricably linked, those students are 6 times as likely to be in high-poverty schools.

And while there are teachers and students working incredibly hard in those places, they are often doing so with fewer resources, as 1 student learned during a school exchange program.

Once a year, we do what's called a school swap, where students that go to county high schools attend a school in the city for 1 day, and then students in the city attend a school in the county for 1 day.

I went in, and the first thing that I noticed, actually, was all this stuff around here.

I'm talking about stuff that looked like it cost lots of money.

The teachers come in, they can get right on topic.

They have multiple computers that they can use.

And then I related back to my school, well, we don't have all that.

Okay, I get what that program was trying to do, but it still seems cruel giving students a glimpse of what other kids are getting.

At least on a plane, they cover first class with a curtain.

And sure, they might still bake cookies and waft the smell down the aisle, but that's just to fuck with you.

So, How is it possible that our nation's schools are by some measures more segregated now than they have been in over 4 decades?

Well, it turns out, places like New York haven't so much resegregated as never really bothered integrating in the first place.

Because the 1964 Civil Rights Act was very carefully crafted by Northern lawmakers.

It targeted the kind of segregation by law which existed in the South, so you couldn't have a school that was officially designated whites only, but it exempted the so-called racial imbalance of Northern schools.

So, if a New York school was all white because it was drawing from an all white area, even if that area had been kept that way due to a host of explicitly racist housing policies, that was somehow fine.

And if you're thinking, that is some hypocritical bullshit, you are not alone.

Malcolm X was pointing this out in New York at the time.

You don't have to go to Mississippi to find a segregated school system.

It shows that the problems that the white liberals have been pointing the finger at the southern segregationists and condemning them for, exists right here in New York City.

Yeah, of course racism exists in New York.

It is a musical about love transcending the obstacle of 1 person being Puerto Rican.

And for what it's worth, when on rare occasions, northern cities were forced to desegregate, things got just as ugly as they did down South.

Listen to 1 Boston man describe his memories of being sent to a school in a white neighborhood.

So my first day of school was, when we walked, we got off the school bus.

You got all these whites out there, you know, with, you know, signs, calling us niggers, you know, go back home, you know, the whole bit.

And then, some of these same kids you would see in class.

So now you're like, so what's up with that?

They shout, go home to Africa and then sit beside you in class.

I do hope the kids who heard that had the opportunity to go, uh-oh, you wanna borrow a pencil?

Oh, I'm sorry, I must have left mine in Kenya this morning.

And for just a taste, just a taste of the general paranoia surrounding this issue back then, just watch this trailer for a movie called Halls of Anger.

A handful of white students are transferred to an all-black school.

But, on a side note, using the terms chocolate and vanilla is actually the best possible argument for bringing races closer together.

Because what happens when you combine chocolate and vanilla?

And even though the path to integration was rough, and the burden often fell disproportionately on African-American communities, there were still clear benefits, because bringing in white children also brought in resources to an almost comical extent.

Immediately when the decision was made that white kids would now be bused into West Charlotte, it was like a community joke.

Like overnight, the gravel parking lot was paved.

The athletic facilities in terms of the football stadium, basketball, gymnasium stuff was upgraded.

It was like overnight, someone had written a check for a million dollars.

Funding tends to follow white people around the way white people follow the band Fish around.

Come on, come on ♪ -♪ Come on, come on, come on

♪ Now, that man's school was in Charlotte, North Carolina, a city which became a model for how desegregation could be effective.

By the end of the 1980s, just 1 percent of Latino children and 3 percent of black children were attending schools considered racially isolated.

And this was such a point of pride that when President Reagan visited and tried to talk shit about Charlotte's system, it didn't go down too well.

They favor busing that takes innocent children out of the neighborhood school and makes them pawns in a social experiment that nobody wants.

Reagan got no reaction from the crowd on that line.

I took great offense to it, and I stomped across the floor and said a few choice expletives about the president and cut off the TV.

That is some courtly Southern aggression.

I'm guessing his choice expletives were, heavens to Betsy, that really fried my grits.

And, sir, you are a scoundrel without valor.

Now, unfortunately, What happened next in Charlotte is basically the story of desegregation in a nutshell.

Because in 1997, a white parent got upset when his daughter lost out in a lottery for a magnet school which had reserved some seats for black children.

And even though she was still assigned to 1 of the top 10 elementary schools in the state, he filed a lawsuit.

I really believe that my daughter's constitutional rights were violated.

And as a concerned parent, and a responsible parent, I hope, I believe it was my job to look after her well-being.

And I do get making sure that your kid has a good education is 1 of the most important jobs a parent can do.

It's right up there with lying about not having a favorite child.

Because every parent has a favorite child, and it's Dylan.

But that man's selfishness had a huge impact.

A federal judge ruled in his favor, vacating the district's desegregation plan and basically blowing up the whole thing.

And tragically, Charlotte then experienced swift resegregation, as by 2010, those 1 and 3 percent figures for Latinos and blacks had grown to 44 and 47 percent.

And I know, it is tempting to be angry at that 1 parent.

Especially because, and this is true, before the verdict even came down, he moved his family to California, which is the constitutional challenge equivalent of farting in a crowded elevator just as you're stepping off of it.

But to be fair, this wasn't an isolated incident.

All over the country, desegregation plans were struck down, thanks in part to Supreme Court rulings making it easier to challenge them.

And the prevailing narrative became that desegregation imposed too high a cost on students for a benefit that was no longer necessary.

It's an attitude that's best summed up by this Louisiana state senator.

Do you think that you have to bus children all over, bus them long distance, so you can say you sit in a seat next to someone diverse, different from yourself?

The Justice Department, now they achieved their goal.

We have an African-American mayor here in Baton Rouge with a majority white in the parish.

The idea that because President Obama was elected, systemic racism was pretty much solved.

Which is absolutely absurd, because racism is not 1 of those things that just disappears on its own in due time.

It's not like chicken pox or Chewbacca Mom.

And I know, I know I have just restarted the clock on that 1, and I am genuinely sorry.

So, the only solution here is to be proactive.

Because remember, if you just assign kids to their neighborhood schools, and their neighborhoods are segregated, you will have a segregated school.

And clearly, there are some parents who, it seems, would resist just about anything that might result in integration.

Louis reacted to the idea of students from a mostly black community being added to their schools.

So will this district send my son to a better school when this 1 goes down?

We don't want this here in Francis Howell.

I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed or taking a drug or getting robbed, because that's the issue.

She's just a homies and a baggy pants away from full dog whistle bingo.

And look, those parents are all extreme examples.

But even if for a moment you give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and you assume that all complaints about bus schedules or class sizes are actually just about buses or class sizes, the hard truth is, you don't have to be intentionally racist to do things that have racist effects.

In the 60s, if you had insisted on separate lunch counters, not because you hated black people, but just because you loved your son so much, you wanted him to get his lunch quicker, the end result would have been exactly the same.

And while I get the impulse to seize every tiny advantage you can for your kid, I get that.

Segregated schools cause devastating harm to actual children, and not just to their education, but to their very sense of self-worth.

We have lack of books, resources, anything you can think of, but when we go in contact with these white children, or should I say, Caucasian, they don't know how to act because they believe that they're better than us, and we don't know how to act because we believe that they're better than us.

Because classrooms should teach children about the importance of self-esteem, not rip it from them.

And there can be lasting positive impacts to integration.

Not because the mere act of having a white classmate is somehow magic.

Unless, of course, that kid has round glasses, a scar on his forehead, and sits alone on Parents Visiting Day.

But getting to attend a good middle-class school can be transformative.

Berkeley professor Rucker Johnson studied black siblings where 1 went to a desegregated school and the other didn't.

And not only did those exposed to more years of desegregation fare better, but their kids did too.

Blacks who attended desegregated elementary schools were more likely to graduate and 22% less likely to be incarcerated as adults.

What is more, Johnson found that the narrowing of the achievement gap and the increased success of black Americans did not have any negative effect on whites on any metric.

So it was good for black people and had no effect on white people whatsoever.

It's like this canister of black and sassy cream shine.

-♪ ♪ -♪ The point is, for white children, a lack of Experience with people of other races can have serious downsides.

Just watch 1 young girl take a racial bias test.

Show me the good child Why is she the good child?

I just think it's because she's not exposed.

And that is why it is important to expose kids to other races at a young age.

You don't want your child playing guess who at a birthday party and asking, is this person bad to rule out anyone who isn't white?

And while yes, you can absolutely teach kids about racism in the abstract, if your school is overwhelmingly white, important nuances can get lost, as this second grader found after making a bold choice for a school project.

I have a dream that my 4 little children will 1 day live in a nation.

Sean is portraying a historical figure assigned by his teacher.

He said, Mom, I want to wear a suit because that's what he wore, and a black tie, and I have to wear a white shirt.

And he said, also, I want to, you know, do my face in black.

They thought it was inappropriate and it would be disrespectful to black people.

But I say that it's not, I like black people.

-...second, it is obviously not that kid's fault.

Could see that clip, I legitimately don't know whether he'd be thrilled or horrified.

He'd be like, wow, I really made a difference.

So, the benefits of truly diverse schools are obvious.

The problem is, often, just our willingness to do it at all.

And to their credit, some school districts, including Charlotte, are now looking for ways to fix things, and there are models, small and large, around the country for what can work.

Boston has long had a voluntary program to send kids from the city to schools in the suburbs.

And Louisville has created a complicated school assignment formula that has resulted in more integrated schools.

It is not perfect, and they've had to tweak it a lot.

But it is worth knowing that under that program, 90% of kindergarten families still receive their first choice of schools, which is impressive, because I doubt 90% of those families even receive their first choice of kindergartner.

She draws on a lot of things, but she's great.

---LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE --'cause as we all know, Dylan is the best.

And everyone should be invested in those sorts of solutions.

Because while this always gets framed as an issue about parents and their children, it's actually about adults and everybody.

Because kids grow up, and those little doctors, soldiers, police officers, and superheroes asking you for candy tomorrow night, well, in a decade or so, they might be actual doctors, soldiers, police officers, and assistant directors of human resources.

man of my word ♪ -♪ And I'm a man of my word

♪ and there are massive and multiple benefits for all of us if they interacted a lot more from an early age.

And I know this seems like a lot to ask, but in the words of a small white child dressed as a dead civil rights leader, I have a dweam.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Racism. You know, the problem that Crash failed to solve. And specifically, we're going to discuss school segregation, which it turns out is still a big problem.

Speaker 1: Racial segregation is on the rise. The number of schools where 1 percent or less of the student population is white has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Speaker 0: That's true. Even as our society has grown more diverse, nearly 7,000 schools have the same racial makeup as the audience of your average Tyler Perry movie. And that 1 white guy is Leonard Maltin, and he has to be there. It's his job. Boo, I'm a Dear Halloween.

3 stars. Now, at this point, if you're in a city like New York, you're probably thinking, oh, splendid. I know where this is going. A story vilifying the backwards and racist American South. Let me just grab a handful of kale chips that I can munch on while feeling superior.

Well, hold on. There is something you should probably know.

Speaker 2: According to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, the South is the least segregated region for black students. And in fact, New York State is now the most segregated system in America, in large part due to New York City.

Speaker 0: Oh, shit, liberal white New Yorkers! Twist ending, you were racist the whole time! Put back those persimmons you bought yourselves as a treat from Fairway, you don't deserve them anymore! And look, it would still be problematic, even if these schools were roughly equivalent academically, as that would still be a violation of the principle of Brown versus Board of Education that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. But in practice, they are very rarely equal in any way.

Black and Latino children are more likely to attend schools with inexperienced teachers, which are then less likely to offer a college prep curriculum. On top of which, because race and class are inextricably linked, those students are 6 times as likely to be in high-poverty schools. And while there are teachers and students working incredibly hard in those places, they are often doing so with fewer resources, as 1 student learned during a school exchange program.

Speaker 3: Once a year, we do what's called a school swap, where students that go to county high schools attend a school in the city for 1 day, and then students in the city attend a school in the county for 1 day.

Speaker 4: I went in, and the first thing that I noticed, actually, was all this stuff around here. I'm talking about stuff that looked like it cost lots of money. The teachers come in, they can get right on topic. They have multiple computers that they can use. And it's like, wow.

And then I related back to my school, well, we don't have all that.

Speaker 0: Okay, I get what that program was trying to do, but it still seems cruel giving students a glimpse of what other kids are getting. At least on a plane, they cover first class with a curtain. And sure, they might still bake cookies and waft the smell down the aisle, but that's just to fuck with you. So, How is it possible that our nation's schools are by some measures more segregated now than they have been in over 4 decades? Well, it turns out, places like New York haven't so much resegregated as never really bothered integrating in the first place.

Because the 1964 Civil Rights Act was very carefully crafted by Northern lawmakers. It targeted the kind of segregation by law which existed in the South, so you couldn't have a school that was officially designated whites only, but it exempted the so-called racial imbalance of Northern schools. So, if a New York school was all white because it was drawing from an all white area, even if that area had been kept that way due to a host of explicitly racist housing policies, that was somehow fine. And if you're thinking, that is some hypocritical bullshit, you are not alone. Malcolm X was pointing this out in New York at the time.

Speaker 5: You don't have to go to Mississippi to find a segregated school system. We have it right here in New York City. It shows that the problems that the white liberals have been pointing the finger at the southern segregationists and condemning them for, exists right here in New York City.

Speaker 0: Yeah, of course racism exists in New York. Have you never seen West Side Story? It is a musical about love transcending the obstacle of 1 person being Puerto Rican. It'll never work! And for what it's worth, when on rare occasions, northern cities were forced to desegregate, things got just as ugly as they did down South.

Listen to 1 Boston man describe his memories of being sent to a school in a white neighborhood.

Speaker 6: So my first day of school was, when we walked, we got off the school bus. It was right on the steps. And white, pink niggers... Go back home to Africa. You got all these whites out there, you know, with, you know, signs, calling us niggers, you know, go back home, you know, the whole bit.

And then, some of these same kids you would see in class.

Speaker 0: So now you're like, so what's up with that? Yeah, he's got a point there. They shout, go home to Africa and then sit beside you in class. I do hope the kids who heard that had the opportunity to go, uh-oh, you wanna borrow a pencil? Oh, I'm sorry, I must have left mine in Kenya this morning.

And... And for just a taste, just a taste of the general paranoia surrounding this issue back then, just watch this trailer for a movie called Halls of Anger.

Speaker 6: A handful of white students are transferred to an all-black school. You know there's gonna be trouble. Vanilla ice cream. And I'm gonna take me

Speaker 0: a big lick. Okay. That is clearly horrible. But, on a side note, using the terms chocolate and vanilla is actually the best possible argument for bringing races closer together. Because what happens when you combine chocolate and vanilla?

I'll tell you what happens. Fucking Fudgie the Whale happens! And it is superb! And even though the path to integration was rough, and the burden often fell disproportionately on African-American communities, there were still clear benefits, because bringing in white children also brought in resources to an almost comical extent.

Speaker 7: Immediately when the decision was made that white kids would now be bused into West Charlotte, it was like a community joke. Like overnight, the gravel parking lot was paved. The athletic facilities in terms of the football stadium, basketball, gymnasium stuff was upgraded. It was like overnight, someone had written a check for a million dollars.

Speaker 0: Exactly. Funding tends to follow white people around the way white people follow the band Fish around. It's a different show every time, man! -♪

Speaker 8: Come on, come on ♪ -♪ Come on, come on, come on

Speaker 0: ♪ Now, that man's school was in Charlotte, North Carolina, a city which became a model for how desegregation could be effective. By the end of the 1980s, just 1 percent of Latino children and 3 percent of black children were attending schools considered racially isolated. That is, 90 percent or more minority. And this was such a point of pride that when President Reagan visited and tried to talk shit about Charlotte's system, it didn't go down too well.

Speaker 9: They favor busing that takes innocent children out of the neighborhood school and makes them pawns in a social experiment that nobody wants. We found out it failed. I don't call that compassion.

Speaker 10: Reagan got no reaction from the crowd on that line.

Speaker 11: I took great offense to it, and I stomped across the floor and said a few choice expletives about the president and cut off the TV.

Speaker 0: Ooh! That is some courtly Southern aggression. I'm guessing his choice expletives were, heavens to Betsy, that really fried my grits. And, sir, you are a scoundrel without valor. Without valor, I say!

Now, unfortunately, What happened next in Charlotte is basically the story of desegregation in a nutshell. Because in 1997, a white parent got upset when his daughter lost out in a lottery for a magnet school which had reserved some seats for black children. And even though she was still assigned to 1 of the top 10 elementary schools in the state, he filed a lawsuit.

Speaker 10: I really believe that my daughter's constitutional rights were violated. And as a concerned parent, and a responsible parent, I hope, I believe it was my job to look after her well-being.

Speaker 0: Okay, sure. But she was already in a top 10 school. And I do get making sure that your kid has a good education is 1 of the most important jobs a parent can do. It's right up there with lying about not having a favorite child. Because every parent has a favorite child, and it's Dylan.

It's not you. It's not any of your siblings. It's Dylan. Just ask your parents. They like Dylan.

But he does his own laundry. But that man's selfishness had a huge impact. A federal judge ruled in his favor, vacating the district's desegregation plan and basically blowing up the whole thing. And tragically, Charlotte then experienced swift resegregation, as by 2010, those 1 and 3 percent figures for Latinos and blacks had grown to 44 and 47 percent. And I know, it is tempting to be angry at that 1 parent.

Especially because, and this is true, before the verdict even came down, he moved his family to California, which is the constitutional challenge equivalent of farting in a crowded elevator just as you're stepping off of it. -...off of it. -...off of it. But to be fair, this wasn't an isolated incident. All over the country, desegregation plans were struck down, thanks in part to Supreme Court rulings making it easier to challenge them.

And the prevailing narrative became that desegregation imposed too high a cost on students for a benefit that was no longer necessary. It's an attitude that's best summed up by this Louisiana state senator.

Speaker 12: Do you think that you have to bus children all over, bus them long distance, so you can say you sit in a seat next to someone diverse, different from yourself? The Justice Department, now they achieved their goal. Who can say we're not desegregated? We have an African-American president. We have an African-American mayor here in Baton Rouge with a majority white in the parish.

We've been through all that.

Speaker 0: And there it is. The idea that because President Obama was elected, systemic racism was pretty much solved. Which is absolutely absurd, because racism is not 1 of those things that just disappears on its own in due time. It's not like chicken pox or Chewbacca Mom. And I know, I know I have just restarted the clock on that 1, and I am genuinely sorry.

So, the only solution here is to be proactive. Because remember, if you just assign kids to their neighborhood schools, and their neighborhoods are segregated, you will have a segregated school. And clearly, there are some parents who, it seems, would resist just about anything that might result in integration. Just listen to how these parents in St. Louis reacted to the idea of students from a mostly black community being added to their schools.

Speaker 13: So will this district send my son to a better school when this 1 goes down? We don't want this here in Francis Howell. I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed or taking a drug or getting robbed, because that's the issue.

Speaker 0: Ooh! That is not subtle. She's just a homies and a baggy pants away from full dog whistle bingo. And look, those parents are all extreme examples. But even if for a moment you give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and you assume that all complaints about bus schedules or class sizes are actually just about buses or class sizes, the hard truth is, you don't have to be intentionally racist to do things that have racist effects.

In the 60s, if you had insisted on separate lunch counters, not because you hated black people, but just because you loved your son so much, you wanted him to get his lunch quicker, the end result would have been exactly the same. And while I get the impulse to seize every tiny advantage you can for your kid, I get that. Segregated schools cause devastating harm to actual children, and not just to their education, but to their very sense of self-worth.

Speaker 14: We don't have support at all. We have lack of books, resources, anything you can think of, but when we go in contact with these white children, or should I say, Caucasian, they don't know how to act because they believe that they're better than us, and we don't know how to act because we believe that they're better than us.

Speaker 0: And that is heartbreaking. Because classrooms should teach children about the importance of self-esteem, not rip it from them. Because that is what prom is for. And... And there can be lasting positive impacts to integration.

Not because the mere act of having a white classmate is somehow magic. It's not. Unless, of course, that kid has round glasses, a scar on his forehead, and sits alone on Parents Visiting Day. But... But getting to attend a good middle-class school can be transformative.

Berkeley professor Rucker Johnson studied black siblings where 1 went to a desegregated school and the other didn't. And not only did those exposed to more years of desegregation fare better, but their kids did too. And that is not all.

Speaker 15: Blacks who attended desegregated elementary schools were more likely to graduate and 22% less likely to be incarcerated as adults. What is more, Johnson found that the narrowing of the achievement gap and the increased success of black Americans did not have any negative effect on whites on any metric.

Speaker 0: So it was good for black people and had no effect on white people whatsoever. It's like this canister of black and sassy cream shine. I am pretty sure I can make that joke. I am pretty sure that's okay.

Speaker 8: Hold on,

Speaker 0: hold on, hold on. Which writer pitched it? Shit! Shit! That doesn't help.

-♪ ♪ -♪ The point is, for white children, a lack of Experience with people of other races can have serious downsides. Just watch 1 young girl take a racial bias test.

Speaker 16: Show me the good child Why is she the good child?

Speaker 17: Okay, Show me the bad child.

Speaker 18: Why is she the bad child?

Speaker 16: Because she's a white child. What do you think? I'm gonna cry. Shocking to you? I just think it's because she's not exposed.

Speaker 0: Exactly! And that is why it is important to expose kids to other races at a young age. You don't want your child playing guess who at a birthday party and asking, is this person bad to rule out anyone who isn't white? And while yes, you can absolutely teach kids about racism in the abstract, if your school is overwhelmingly white, important nuances can get lost, as this second grader found after making a bold choice for a school project.

Speaker 19: I have a dream today. I have a dream that my 4 little children will 1 day live in a nation.

Speaker 20: Sean is portraying a historical figure assigned by his teacher.

Speaker 19: I'm Martin Luther King Jr.

Speaker 20: He said, Mom, I want to wear a suit because that's what he wore, and a black tie, and I have to wear a white shirt. And he said, also, I want to, you know, do my face in black.

Speaker 19: They thought it was inappropriate and it would be disrespectful to black people. But I say that it's not, I like black people.

Speaker 0: Okay. First... Wow. -...second, it is obviously not that kid's fault. He didn't know any better.

And finally, if Martin Luther King Jr. Could see that clip, I legitimately don't know whether he'd be thrilled or horrified. He might actually be both. He'd be like, wow, I really made a difference. To a point.

-...to a point. -...to a point. So, the benefits of truly diverse schools are obvious. The problem is, often, just our willingness to do it at all. And to their credit, some school districts, including Charlotte, are now looking for ways to fix things, and there are models, small and large, around the country for what can work.

Boston has long had a voluntary program to send kids from the city to schools in the suburbs. It's tiny, but it's wildly popular. And Louisville has created a complicated school assignment formula that has resulted in more integrated schools. It is not perfect, and they've had to tweak it a lot. But it is worth knowing that under that program, 90% of kindergarten families still receive their first choice of schools, which is impressive, because I doubt 90% of those families even receive their first choice of kindergartner.

I mean, she's great, she's great. She draws on a lot of things, but she's great. She's fine, she's absolutely fine. She's no Dylan, of course. ---LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE --'cause as we all know, Dylan is the best.

And everyone should be invested in those sorts of solutions. Because while this always gets framed as an issue about parents and their children, it's actually about adults and everybody. Because kids grow up, and those little doctors, soldiers, police officers, and superheroes asking you for candy tomorrow night, well, in a decade or so, they might be actual doctors, soldiers, police officers, and assistant directors of human resources. -♪ And I'm a

Speaker 8: man of my word ♪ -♪ And I'm a man of my word

Speaker 0: ♪ and there are massive and multiple benefits for all of us if they interacted a lot more from an early age. And I know this seems like a lot to ask, but in the words of a small white child dressed as a dead civil rights leader, I have a dweam.

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School Segregation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)