Abstract
The enduring condition of racial and ethnic segregation in schools and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, is rooted in historical and contemporary racial discrimination and in practices and policies that exacted disparate harm on Black and Latinx people. School segregation both reflects and reinforces segregation in housing that was created, sustained, and exacerbated over decades. By all available measures, both the state of Connecticut and the Hartford metropolitan area have extremely high levels of racial and ethnic segregation in housing and public schools relative to other metropolitan areas in the United States. The purpose of this report is to increase awareness both of the role of government and other actors in creating and cementing segregation and of the consequences of the condition of racial and ethnic separation. The hope is that this knowledge will inspire redress in the form of holistic policy making in multiple sectors, including housing, education, health, and economic development. This report can also inform grant making that acknowledges and seeks to address root causes of racial inequality, an inequality long a hallmark of the state of Connecticut. The report offers recommendations to inform these conversations, from which more and better ideas will surely emerge. [The report was published with the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy at Brandeis University, the Open Communities Alliance (OCA), the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council.]