This April, after over a decade of efforts, rich white community members finally got their way when the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled they could form the city of St. George, a majority white enclave that will break off from the largely Black city of Baton Rouge. The soon-to-be residents of St. George say their win will give them more control over their tax dollars and increased funding for their brand-new school district. Meanwhile, inhabitants of Louisiana’s racially diverse East Baton Rouge Parish and many outside observers recognize St. George as the latest in a series of similar efforts in the South that effectively reinstate segregation, particularly in schools.
The aim of St. George’s promoters was to create a new and better-funded school district. It will end up being 70% white. This advancement for already privileged kids means East Baton Rouge Parish will lose an estimated $48 million in tax revenue that will be funneled into the comparatively tiny St. George. Such a massive outpouring of funding is potentially devastating for the 89% non-white student base in the parish, which has a poverty rate of 24%.
Revived segregation by race and class is allowed to exist because a federal judge lifted Louisiana’s desegregation order in 2003. Two other East Baton Rouge splinter school districts — Zachary and Central — are 42% and 73% white, while the original district is just 12% white. Concerns have been raised over similar cases in Alabama and Tennessee where cities have split off in recent years with little consideration of the economic and racial consequences. In the 1980s, white flight to avoid mandated integration of Jackson, Mississippi schools saw a similar massive shift of tax dollars that led to a broken water system. Residents are still struggling to find drinkable water.
The opposition to St. George included poor communities standing to lose out on tax dollars, the Baton Rouge chapter of the NAACP, and East Baton Rouge Parish’s Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, who sued St. George’s organizers over concerns of segregation and strained resource distribution. Dissenters held off secession for a long time, and it’s a travesty that years of struggle could be summarily dismissed by a few powerful individuals on Louisiana’s Supreme Court.
If the trend of sequestering students in insular enclaves continues to spread, increased poverty, inequality and resentment are the only possible outcomes. A united, multiracial movement for quality, well-funded schools for all is essential to holding back the ugly rising tide of racial segregation.
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