African American reaction to Lafayette Parish School desegregation order: From Delight to disenchantment

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2002 by Caldas, Stephen J, Growe, Roslin, Bankston, Carl L III

From the viewpoint of school desegregation, Lafayette is unique in yet other ways. Like New Orleans, Lafayette has a strong tradition of Catholic education and a very healthy parochial (religiously affiliated nonpublic) school system. Socioeconomically, Lafayette Parish, with a 1999-estimated population of 187,000 inhabitants (U.S. Census, 2000), is the strongest parish in south-central Louisiana. Based on the complete 1990 census data (U.S. Census, 1990),1 Lafayette Parish has a lower average poverty rate than the state (20% vs. 24%) and a much greater percentage of households earning $35,000 per year-a figure greater than the state average (43% vs. 30%) and equivalent to the national average. A higher percentage of parish residents possess a bachelor's or higher degree (23%) than either the state average (16%) or the national average (20%). Moreover, the percentage of Whites living in the parish (76%) is relatively high in a state that is roughly a third African American. The city of Lafayette, with an estimated 1998 population of approximately 114,000 (U.S. Census, 1999), is the central city of Lafayette Parish. In the fall of 2001, the parish's public school system enrolled approximately 29,000 students, 38.5% of whom were African American (L. Benjamin, personal communication, November 15, 2001).

Black and White Socioeconomic Status in Lafayette City and Parish

While the city of Lafayette is overall solidly middle class in terms of income level, with a 1990 median family income of $30,956, the wealth was not equally distributed between African Americans and Whites (all figures are from U.S. Census, 1990). Only 23% of White households had incomes of less than $15,000 (low and extremely low income as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau), whereas a clear majority (58%) of Black families had incomes below $15,000. Most Black children (55%) aged 5 to 17 were classified as living below the poverty level, whereas only 12% of White children were classified as poor.

If we consider families in Lafayette who were middle income and above according to the U.S. Census Bureau, we see that there is a large disparity by race. Only 30% of the Black families in Lafayette were classified as middle income and higher, whereas 67% or two-thirds of all White families were classified in this category. Thus, we see that the White middle class is a substantially larger proportion of Lafayette Parish's White community than the Black middle class is of Lafayette's Black community.

Blacks and Whites in Lafayette are not only separated by income levels, but by geography as well. A large proportion of the parish's African Americans reside in the impoverished northeast comer of the city of Lafayette. This area has been designated as a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) target area, where the average family income is less than half the rest of the city, and the population is 70% minority (Lafayette Consolidated Government, 1994).

Given the great disparity in wealth between Blacks and Whites in Lafayette, and in an effort to control for the often different worlds inhabited by Blacks and Whites, this study focused on measuring the perceptions of Lafayette's small but prominent Black middle and upper middle class. Middle class has been roughly defined as households making between $25,000 and $50,000 (Pattillo-McCoy, 1999). William Julius Wilson (1978) described the Black American middle class as including business owners, clerical and sales workers, professionals, skilled crafts workers, and supervisory personnel. The sample utilized by this study included individuals from these middle-class occupations as well as individuals, such as physicians, who could arguably be included in a higher income bracket. Thus, we define our sample as including mostly middle and upper middleincome African Americans. However, an important caveat to note is that researchers have cautioned against comparing Blacks and Whites solely based on income. Sampson and Wilson (1995) point out that Whites and Blacks of all socioeconomic statuses live in qualitatively different neighborhoods, stating that "the 'worst' urban contexts in which Whites reside are considerably better that the average context of Black communities" (p. 42). Perhaps this is one reason for the disparity between White and Black perceptions in the United States.