There are days when you pause and think about how far America has come and at the same time how far we still have to go. Today – when we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. – is one of those days.It’s hard to believe, but it wasn’t too long ago, where you wouldn’t have whites and blacks living or working side-by-side in America’s senior care communities. Yes, things have changed. But then you read studies such as that led by Vincent Mor, chair of the Community Health Department at Brown University. Last fall he and his fellow researchers released a study that found that 60% of African Americans in U.S. nursing homes ended up in just 10% of the country’s nursing homes €” typically ones that had been cited for quality problems. Other key findings in the study:

• Blacks were nearly three times as likely as whites to be in nursing homes that predominantly cared for Medicaid patients.
• Blacks were twice as likely to be located in homes that had provided such poor care that they were subsequently kicked out of Medicaid and Medicare.

• Blacks were nearly 1½ times as likely as whites to be in homes that had been cited for deficiencies that could cause immediate harm.

The study also found that nursing homes in the Midwest were most likely to be racially segregated. Nursing homes in the South were the least likely to have an unequal distribution of minorities.

Segregation. It’s ugly. It’s still alive. And it underscores how public policy decisions connect generations. It’s time for an American Aging agenda.