• By Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D. • IDRA Newsletter • April 2025 • 
Editor’s Note: In February 2025, the National Coalition on School Diversity held its annual conference with the theme, “NCSD at 15 – An Inflection Point in the School Integration Movement.” IDRA is an active member of NCSD. IDRA Chief Legal Analyst Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., presented the following marks during the opening plenary panel.
I am the daughter of Natalie Duggins and Bobby Sutton, a white woman and a Black man who dared to produce a Black bi-racial child in the year 1991 – the same year that racial apartheid legally ended in South Africa.
Despite the Supreme Court’s invalidation of laws banning interracial marriage in 1967 through Loving v. Virginia, three states (Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama) still had such laws on the books in 1991 when I was born.
In fact, Mississippi maintained its anti-miscegenation provisions, which outlawed interracial marriage, until 1987, when voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment to remove them with 52% in favor and 48% against.
South Carolina followed in 1998, with 62% of voters supporting the repeal of the state’s anti-miscegenation language.
Alabama was the last state to remove such provisions, doing so in 2000 through a voter-approved amendment that garnered the support of only 60% of voters.
There are many data points and historical references relevant to a discussion about the state of integration nationally, in the South, and in my home state of Texas. But I begin here because, in many ways, my own life story is deeply intertwined with the pursuit of integration.
Finding ways to blend and harmonize the immensely different worlds from which my parents came against the social and political backdrop of southern “massive resistance” has been core to my identity and education and is almost certainly a component of the lived experience of all children of the South.
I am proud and privileged to work as the Chief Legal Analyst at IDRA, a national, non-profit civil rights organization dedicated to achieving equal educational opportunity for all students through strong public schools.
Over our 52-year history, IDRA has worked in deep community with students, families and educators in Texas (where the organization is based) and across the U.S. South to dismantle the enduring legacies of racism while simultaneously confronting its ever-evolving forms, ensuring that our efforts address both the past and present realities of educational inequity.
So, what is the state of integration in Texas and the broader southern region? I posed this question to a dear friend earlier this week, who suggested it is more like the state of “dis-integration.” I thought that was a fair characterization. 
I don’t have to tell the folks in this room the abysmal statistics regarding the siloed demographic composition of our schools. We all know that the vast majority of schools in the U.S. South are just as or more racially segregated now as they were in 1954 when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education.
And, of course, given the current legal landscape dominated by federal courts that have retreated from enforcing integration plans (and even invalidate lawful interventions) and by coordinated campaigns to attack and undermine non-discriminatory school climates through classroom censorship and limits on diversity, equity and inclusion, I think it is fair to say that the era of seeking “integration” in the formal, traditional sense is over, for now.
But our work to create and maintain racially just, culturally sustaining schools continues. Consider this: In January of this year, the FBI reported receiving the highest number of complaints of hate crimes ever in the agency’s history. Schools are the third most common place where hate crimes occur. (FBI, 2024)
Continuing a disturbing, decades-old trend, the most common bias type motivating hate crimes at schools is – you guessed it – anti-Black bias (FBI, 2024). Between 2018 and 2022, Black students reported experiencing 1,690 hate crimes in school. In comparison, white and Latino students together reported fewer than 500 incidents combined.
In fact, if you add all the reported incidents of school-based hate crimes against all other students (934), Black students still experience nearly double the amount of race-based hate crimes in this country.
Unsurprisingly, Texas serves as an epicenter for extremism, hate crimes and harassment, driven by the heavy presence of white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ groups headquartered or highly active in the state (Downen, 2023; ADL, 2023; Duggins-Clay & Lyons, May 2023). Hate crimes reported in Texas increased by 33% since 2020, with the increase disproportionately impacting Black communities (ADL, 2023).
Despite the challenges, the “state of integration” is strong because we are strong and because our schools are stronger when we celebrate our diversity.
Segregation through Discipline
This broader climate has unfortunately permeated Texas schools. Students increasingly report alarming examples of bias-based incidents in schools (Duggins-Clay & Lyons, April 2023).
For example, a Texas school district has pushed out not one, not two, but three Black male high school students through the use of exclusionary disciplinary practices by using an outdated and discriminatory dress code and grooming policy to ban the wearing of protective hairstyles, like locs. Barbers Hill ISD justified this practice by insisting (in a paid advertisement run in the Houston Chronicle) that “being American requires conformity” (Salhotra & Serrano, 2024).
IDRA joined student, civil rights and Native American rights organizations in filing an amicus brief challenging the legality of this slavery and segregation-era practice (IDRA, 2024).
Black students in Lubbock, Texas, have been repeatedly subjected to racial bullying, cyberbullying, hate crimes and harassment with no recourse from school administration. Students are called colorful combinations of “monkey,” the “N-word,” “Black B-word” and a host of other derogatory slurs too horrific to repeat here. And when they fight back, the district sends them to a disciplinary alternative education program where they are required to change into orange jumpsuits daily.
IDRA worked with the Lubbock NAACP and impacted students and families in filing legal complaints to the state and to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to address this discriminatory, hostile climate.
Similarly, while Black students make up only 13% of the student population in Texas, they represent nearly 30% of all out-of-school suspensions and 25% of all in-school suspensions. They are four times more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions compared to their white peers (FBI, 2024). As in many other southern states, the Texas Legislature is trying to double down on discriminatory exclusionary discipline practices. IDRA is engaged in an intense battle to combat these efforts.
In the midst of all of the chaos and turmoil, we must not lose sight of the fact that these incidents create an illegal, discriminatory hostile educational environment, which is tantamount to the deprivation of educational opportunity. And when such environments push or remove (through exclusionary discipline or deliberate indifference) Black students and other students of color out of schools, we have replicated the intent and impact of segregation in our schools.
Segregation through School Privatization
In the meantime, political leaders in Texas have done everything in their power to rig our legislature to pass private school vouchers. It bears remembering that, in a 1954 amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown II, then-Texas Attorney General Jon Shepperd invoked the rhetoric of “school choice” in crafting his plea for a “gradual adjustment” to the court’s desegregation order (1954).
Arguing in the amicus brief that “integration can no more be compelled than can segregation,” the former Texas Attorney General laid out several examples of how the state would evade full implementation of integration (Brown, 1954).
The proposed plans included the “complete abolition of the free public school system,” “turning the state schools into private schools,” and repealing “the section of the law which provides for compulsory education” so that if parents desired, they “could select a school in which the majority of the other pupils are of the same race as the child, or… in which the other pupils are of both races, thereby providing equality of opportunity and freedom of individual choice.”
Make no mistake: Contemporary calls for “school choice,” “parent rights” and funneling public tax dollars to private schools bear a chilling resemblance to the discriminatory policies intended to perpetuate segregation of the not-so-distant past.
Collective Power for Children
Despite this discouraging dispatch, I’d like to end on a point of hope.
Prior to attending law school in 2014, I spent a summer living and working in South Africa, serving as a volunteer teacher while earning a certificate in Restorative Justice and Community Development from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. It was there that I was introduced to the concept of Ubuntu, which roughly translates to “I am because you are” or, put another way, “our common humanity.”
The proverb expresses a universal African core belief that “the individual exists only in relationship to the collective” (Davis, 2019). Some also translate the expression to “A person is a person through their relationships.” This concept further emphasizes our need to build strong communities with one another, along with the corollary responsibility to care for one another and the community we co-create. This ethos can be found in other cultural and faith traditions, forming part of the mosaic of identities represented in our public schools.
Schools must be central to our nation’s efforts to address and end discrimination, harassment and bias-based harm perpetrated against youth in our communities.
Though this work is hard, and indeed, miserable at times, I invite all of you not to lose sight of the cause that has brought us all here together today. Achieving the “more perfect union” promised by our Constitution is an ongoing project. I thank each and every one of you here today for the important role you play, for the valuable work you do, for the cause of integration.
For me, despite the challenges, the “state of integration” is strong because we are strong and because our schools are stronger when we celebrate our diversity.
Resources
ADL. (September 21, 2023). Hate in the Lone Star State: Extremism & Antisemitism in Texas. Anti-Defamation League, Center on Extremism.
Brown v. Board of Education, Br. of John Ben Shepperd, Attorney General of Texas, Amicus Curiae, 1954 WL 45721 (U.S.), 17 (1954).
Davis, F.E. (April 16, 2019). The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice – Black Lives, Healing, and US Social Transformation.
Downen, R. (September 21, 2023). Extremists have turned Texas into a hotbed for hate, report finds. Texas Tribune.
Duggins-Clay, P., & Lyons, M. (May 2023). Identity-Based Bullying Undermines Student Safety and Success. IDRA Newsletter.
Duggins-Clay, P., & Lyons, M. (April 2023). Identity-based Bullying in Texas Schools – Policy Recommendations – IDRA Issue Brief. IDRA.
FBI. (January 2024). Reported Hate Crime at Schools: 2018-2022. U.S. Department of Justice.
IDRA. (December 5, 2024). Black, Native American and Civil Rights Advocates Urge Texas Court to End Hair Discrimination in Texas Schools – IDRA and Allies File Amicus Brief Supporting Students Deprived of Education Due to Hair Length.
Salhotra, P., & Serrano, A. (February 22, 2024). A Texas school has punished a Black student over his hairstyle for months. Neither side is backing down. Texas Tribune.
Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D., is IDRA’s chief legal analyst. Comments and questions may be directed to her via email at paige.duggins-clay@idra.org.
[© 2025, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the April edition of the IDRA Newsletter. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]
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