Could Black Flight Change a Model of Integration?

Abstract

Some wealthier Black families recently told me they have decided that Shaker Heights is no longer worth the money, threatening to rip the longtime fabric of a model community of integrated neighborhoods and schools. "The parents who had the means and who were Black and with Black kids who were high-performing, they left Shaker," said Siobhan Aaron, 42, who in 2020 switched her 16-year-old son Kareem to private school and then moved out of the district to Twinsburg, a community 15 miles south of Shaker Heights, where the property taxes are significantly lower. Despite taking honors classes at Shaker Heights Middle School, where he was often one of only a handful of Black students in the room, Kareem was often stereotyped by administrators, who presumed that because he was Black, he needed extra help, said Ms. Aaron, an assistant professor of nursing at Case Western University. The Gap In dozens of interviews, Black and white Shaker Heights residents said the same thing: Shaker Heights appears integrated, but within its schools, where gifted and honors classes have long skewed overwhelmingly white, it is anything but. "Change is hard. That is as true in Shaker Heights as it is anywhere else in this country or even in the world." He points to many longtime Shaker Heights residents, including some of my former classmates, who say they are not going anywhere. Shaker Heights now has more renters, too: Over 65 percent of Shaker residents owned their homes 10 years ago, by 2020 it was just shy of 61 percent. As the gap between Shaker Heights's Black and white residents has grown, some Black residents want to distance themselves.