"The real understanding of equity is where we recognize that not everybody starts out on a level playing field."

- Caprice Hollins, former Director of Equity, Race, and Learning Support
for Seattle Public Schools

In 2016, when Ahlaam Ibraahim, 19, was a senior at Rainier Beach High School, funding for the school’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program was slated to run out. The district associate superintendent’s response was that the plan had been for the district to start the program and for the school and local community to eventually pay for it (Morales). Although this may have worked in other Seattle neighborhoods, Rainier Beach serves a neighborhood where over 15% of the adult population never finished high school – a neighborhood that did not have the resources to fund a program that could have been a pathway to higher education opportunities for its students (Statistical Atlas). For Ahlaam, the fight for funding became just another example of Seattle’s complicated relationship between neighborhoods and race.

“We work hard and we have the same education,” she said,
“But we don’t stand on the same playing field.”

“No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said property or any building thereof, except domestic servants or servant may be actually and in good faith employed by white occupants of such premises.”

– property deed for North Queen Anne (1946)

Today, many Seattleites may consider the city to be a progressive and inclusive space. However, not long ago, racial segregation policies were the backbone of the housing market and written directly into property deeds. 

How did neighborhoods become separated?

Explore any known housing restrictions that existed within Seattle neighborhoods between 1927 and 1948. To think that just a few decades ago from today, the ability to live where we wanted was a privilege and not a right.

In 1977, decades before Ahlaam Ibraahim attended Rainier Beach and twenty-three years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Washington Ship Canal served as a “de facto racial dividing line” (Tate). Schools in north Seattle neighborhoods were filled with white students; students in the south were predominantly of color - a leftover legacy of housing discrimination, even though the practice became illegal in 1968. Seattle voluntarily undertook a district-wide mandatory busing plan, which, for twenty years, “unfairly burdened children of color; contributed to a widening achievement gap between white and minority students; [and] undermined public confidence in the schools” (Tate). In the late 1990s, the district implemented a new plan: open enrollment to any school, with a racial tiebreaker aimed at keeping racial demographics at any given school as close to the demographics of the district as possible. Except it didn’t do a very good job.

How were schools affected by neighborhoods?

In 1998, the district adopted open enrollment, hoping to combat the homogenous schools created by the neighborhood-based plan. See the demographics of the most and least diverse high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools at the time of the policy change, and again in 2005. Rainier Beach High School, where Ahlaam went, is also included.

Click on a school on the map to see how its demographics changed after the open enrollment plan was adopted, and how closely the breakdown aligned to that of the district. Hover over the dots to see the exact breakdown.

In 2006, a group of parents sued the district over the racial tiebreaker, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the tiebreaker unconstitutional under the 14^th Amendment. And so in 2010, roughly 30 years after the mandatory busing plan was first implemented, the Seattle School District returned to its original school enrollment plan: by neighborhood lines.

“We gotta change these narratives. Because if someone in the north is not willing to come to the south out of fear, they’re not going to be helping change things in the south.”

– Ahlaam Ibraahim, Rainier Beach High School Class of 2016

Neighborhoods, race, and education are closely intertwined. Throughout the history of Seattle, numerous policies in housing and education have created racially and social-economically imbalanced neighborhoods within the city. Children in these neighborhoods face a higher risk at starting behind and being left behind, and, without the necessary support and resources, become part of a narrative that, for these communities, have been told too many times (Oyez).

What are the implications for today?

Seattle neighborhoods are still very much divided, separated not only by geography but also by what percent of their population idenfities as a specific race, brackets of income, and levels of education. Click on a neighborhood or two in the map to see how they rank in these factors; click on the dropdown in the middle to specify a race. Click and drag up or down directly on the axes on the right to highlight trends - where are all the people with higher education? Finally, choose a button on the left to see which factors are high and low in certain neighborhoods.