Here, I'm going off memory, but White students typically attended schools that were 80% White, while Black and Hispanic students attended schools that were roughly 50% Black or Hispanic. The schools imposed target racial compositions to combat this. One parent sued when her daughter couldn't attend the school of her choice, and her right to do so was upheld by the Supreme Court. To people of color, it's impossible to say that this particular parent was openly racist, but when you essentially have richer White folks fleeing schools where there are many students of color, we have to wonder. We wonder if White folks are thinking, deep down inside, "There's too many Latinos there." And we worry that when they leave, they'll take their financial resources and political clout with them.
And, by the way, I would be reluctant to put my kids in schools that were majority Black or Hispanic. Yes, that's racist, and part of the issue is that I've absorbed, just by being in the US, the stereotypes against Hispanics and Blacks. And the other part of the issue is that if the school is majority Black or Hispanic, how good is the education? Is the school board devoting enough resources there? Or are the rich White parents managing to siphon away funds for their majority White schools, using their greater political influence? We can get rid of that problem, at least, by integrating the school system.
In this article, Deborah Stallworth, who sued successfully in 2000 to stop bussing (bussing students to schools where they met people of other races), said, "We send children to school to be educated, not as a social experiment."
She is wrong, and she is an idiot. If you don't meet and interact with people who are different from you, then you cannot possibly call yourself educated. You don't have to like them. You don't have to end up dating them. But you have to learn that you have prejudices, and you have to learn to put them aside, because you will be working with people of color (and LGBTs, and people with disabilities, etc) in the workforce. It is not pleasant to deal with people in an integrated workforce who have never dealt with people of color as equals. And if such people make it to management positions, you get a de facto segregated workforce. And they will de facto segregate the workforce, while saying "it shouldn't matter what color your skin is." Kathleen Brose, one of the Seattle parents who sued her school district, said, "I believed so much in what we are doing, I just felt we had to win. The goal here is to make sure all kids have access to great schools." She can continue to think that, but the fact is that increasing racial segregation in schools will, in this economic climate, slowly but surely lead to worse schools for minorities (especially African-Americans and Hispanics).
Ever since Alito and Roberts were nominated to the Court, liberals have lost most fights. Stephen Breyer was reportedly rolling his eyes and shaking his head as Roberts read the ruling.
``So few,'' Breyer said, ``have so quickly changed so much.'' He ended his dissent, saying that ``this is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret.''
However, Senator Ted Kennedy reminds us that the Court did not close the door on racial integration completely. Here's an excerpt from his opinion piece in the Seattle PI.
In the more than 50 years since Brown declared that "separate but equal has no place" in our society, voluntary efforts by local school boards have benefited all of us. As explained in a brief to the court in Thursday's cases that was written by more than 500 social scientists, the work of local school boards such as Seattle's to overcome segregation has helped children enjoy the enormous benefits of diversity in education -- including enhanced academic success for African American students, greater parental involvement in public schools and cross-cultural understanding. One of the nation's leading conservative judges, Alexander Kozinski, described Seattle's integration plan as an "eminently sensible" "stirring of the melting pot," which helps children learn how to interact as citizens of our multicultural society. Without integrated schools, children will not learn those important lessons. That would be a far greater harm to society than considering race in order to prevent segregated classes.
It is disappointing that the effective programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., have been struck down. Fortunately, in ruling against the voluntary integration programs in Seattle and Louisville, the court did not close the door on all efforts to bring students of all races together in our schools.
Many measures remain available to pursue integration and inclusion in schools, and Congress is not powerless to address the harm that Brown declared unacceptable. We must find new ways to support school districts that want to achieve diversity in public schools. By doing so, we will continue the racial progress of the past 50 years, so that America will truly become one nation, undivided.
George Bush, in the first Presidential debate in 2004, claimed that we needed good judges. John Kerry reminded him that previously, he'd said we needed "good conservative judges." Well, we need good judges of a mix of political persuasions. It's a fantasy to imagine that judges can separate their deeply held beliefs from the law - ambiguous cases like this one will bring those opinons out.
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