Are they Radicals, Racists or Retards?
A truly Orwellian decision today by the Supreme Court on the issue of whether school districts can take race into account when making school assignments. Apparently, Brown v. Board serves as the major precedent for the idea that you cannot even LOOK at racial composition when trying to keep schools desegregated. As if the 14th amendment positively requires a kind of racial laissez-faire by local governments and school officials. Golly, good thing we don't know of any cases where white parents have conspired to keep their kids in all white schools. I am sick and tired of this Court pretending that the only discrimination prohibited by the 14th amendment is that which harms whiny privileged white people. There is simply no moral equivalence between Jim Crow policies designed to maintain a racial caste system on one hand and integration policies designed to eradicate such caste divisions on the other, especially when the latter make absolutely NO trade-off for student "merit."
Can someone say judicial activism? And of the worst sort. Right-wing, brain dead, consequences-be-damned activism. This case reminds of the infamous Civil Rights Cases (1883) when a very similar Court ruled that Congress had no power to fight discrimination in public accommodations. Except here, of course, we have a state endeavor.
If zombie Earl Warren were to pop up out of his grave tomorrow, I suspect he would bludgeon John Roberts with a shovel and then eat his brain. If he could find it.
posted by tenaciousmcd @ 1:43 PM
3 Comments:
TMcD,
While I agree with what you've written, wouldn't you agree that the Court's previous school desegration rulings have long since been overturned by suburbia? And most of the whites who are left in urban school districts send their kids to private schools anyway. In Cleveland, I can't see the new ruling making much of a difference where the student body is 90% black.
I think that the practical consequences will be in districts with county-wide school districts, which most northern/Midwestern states have few of. More common in the South. But this is just conjecture. And the white-flight academies reduce the number of white students to integrate, as you say.
Maybe I'm more sensitive on this issue because I am a Southerner, but I think you're both missing how extraordinary this case is. A plurality of the SCt has ruled that Brown positively demands the resegregation of schools in much of the country. That's a watershed moment and liberals need to treat it as such. The SCt is our enemy, and we need to turn those sorry fucks into rhetorical punching bags. I've actually been heartened by the rapid, passionate, and vocal reactions to the decision. Today's NYT editorial is a good place to start.
Having said that, I agree with Paul that the battle for integration was lost long ago in many midwestern cities, thanks to the SCt's unwillingness to extend busing beyond district lines in states outside the south. But this goes much farther by striking down plans that state and local governments have WILLINGLY set up to promote school diversity. So, whereas the earlier decision could be seen as at least a sop to democracy, this one cannot be. As I mentioned to #3 yesterday, it seems pretty clear to me that this decision, radical though it may be, does reflect one consistentcy with recent precedent: treating "reverse" discrim as if it is equally entitled to a "strict scrutiny" standard of ajudication. This was always pretty silly and now we see what it has wrought.
Finally, #3, in the South, at least, public schools do tend to be much more racially diverse than in places like Detroit or Cleveland. The private academy movement had real but nonetheless limited effects down here. So this is not merely academic. It will have serious consequences. Maybe Kennedy's slightly more moderate opinion (not widely reported yesterday) will leave enough of a window to salvage some hope. I'm doubtful.
BTW, I anxiously await your post on why the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case is more consequential than this one. I haven't read much on that one, but, intuitively, it strikes me as a much less offensive decision (morally and legally).
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