For blacks, a 'dream' partly fulfilled

What counts for many of the students here is that you often see black men and women on the streets wearing Armani suits. They know the stories of civil rights activists fighting off police dogs to eat at a lunch counter or cast a vote, but they also see African Americans running huge corporations or advising presidents on issues of war and peace. "We've got someone who is close to Bill Gates," Latrell says.

Like most big American cities, D.C. has become more integrated residentially since the 1960s, and federal housing laws have opened up the suburbs to black families.

Education, too, has improved. Only about 20 percent of black students completed four years of high school in the 1960s, compared with more than 40 percent of white students. By the 1990s, three-fourths of blacks and 84 percent of whites completed four years.

But national tests show a huge gap in achievement between blacks and whites. It was reduced by half in the 1970s and 80s, but again appears to be widening. The average reading and math scores for black 17 year olds is about the same as the average white 8th grader, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress - one of the most sensitive statistics in public education.

In incomes too, gaps remain. In 1967 the median income for blacks was 53 percent that of whites. The number today is 61 percent.

And while economic opportunities have improved dramatically since the civil rights era, that doesn't translate into desegregation. The students here wonder if they will ever live in an integrated environment - or want to. They feel people in malls think they're going to rob the shop or can't afford to pay for an expensive purse.

"There are no places I won't go, but when I do, I get a funny look. They look like you don't belong here, especially for me being a black teen," says Raymond Normand, who is lobbying his school to start a football team.

It's easy to tell the malls that have African-Americans living nearby, Nicoisa says. The malls in the suburbs where her aunts live keep the Coach bags under lock and key. In the malls in a more prosperous suburb, "they're just out there on a table with a price tag," she says .

None of these teens expect they will ever live next door to white people. They resent all the talk of black teen crime, and worry more that President Bush will bring the country into a war. "If a bomb hits this school, we're all dead," says Nicoisa.

The high schoolers here are split on whether color should count in college admissions. "If Martin Luther King is right, we should be judged by what's in our heads not the color of our skin," says Latrell.

Courtney isn't so sure. "I want to get into college," she says. The extra 20 points for race on the admission form could help. "Perhaps they could just give the 20 point to everyone."

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