During legalized racial segregation, students were assigned to schools based on race. Whites and blacks were educated in separate facilities. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this practice was no longer tolerable in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education.
Fifty-two years later, some students still are being assigned to schools based on race. Monday, the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments for lawsuits filed by white parents in Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., challenging their school districts’ use of race in assigning students in an effort to achieve “racial balance.”
In the United States, people are free to move wherever they wish for any reason (for now), and many parents choose to move to better neighborhoods so their children can attend better schools. Consequently, some schools enroll disproportionate numbers of students from certain racial groups and socioeconomic classes, which is neither immoral nor illegal.
But bureaucrats believe otherwise. For the sake of so-called diversity, school districts have violated the rights of parents, discriminated against students based on race, and made a mockery of Brown, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the U.S. Constitution.
The issue in Brown was whether the segregation of children in government schools solely on the basis of race deprived black children of equal educational opportunities.
Implicit in the court’s reasoning was that government-mandated racial segregation was anathema to the notion of equal protection, not segregation per se. The court ordered government schools to desegregate, which was not the same as forcing individuals to integrate.
If the intent of Brown wasn’t clear, then the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should remove all doubt:
“Desegregation” means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but “desegregation” shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.
Additionally, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted after the Civil War to secure the rights of freed slaves, declares that “no State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Racial discrimination, even to overcome racial imbalance, is a clear denial of equal protection.
I have yet to read or hear a coherent argument laying out the benefits of skin-deep diversity, why it’s important for a child’s education and why it justifies treating citizens differently based on the color of their skin. Didn’t the turbulent civil rights movement mark the beginning of the end of government-mandated, race-based preferential treatment?
Unfortunately, it did not. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) that arbitrary notions of diversity justified racial discrimination, despite federal law and precedent to the contrary. But there is hope for those of us who believe government policy should be colorblind. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who cast the deciding vote in Grutter, is no longer on the court.
The role of the nation’s highest court is to determine the constitutionality of laws, not to fix social problems, especially those that don’t violate the Constitution.
Let’s hope this time, it rules in favor of race-neutral policies and against racial discrimination.
La Shawn Barber is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and blogs at www.lashawnbarber.com.
