AJC.com > Blogs > Get Schooled > Archives > 2007 > June > 28 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USRace And Schools: A Landmark Decision Or Not?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The nation’s highest court ruled this morning that two public school systems — Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky. — had unlawfully used race to assign students when trying to create more diverse campuses.
In both cases, the justices pointed out, officials had voluntarily created systems to integrate their schools — neither was doing so under a federal court order to desegregate, although the Kentucky district had been under one previously.
It’s still unclear what effect, if any, the decision will have on public schools in Georgia, where 73 of the state’s 181 school systems still operate under federal desegregation orders.
What to do, if anything, about the racial makeup of the country’s public schools has been the subject of fierce debate for decades — long before the famous Brown v. Board of Education case a half-century ago declared that separate schools for black students were not only unconstitutional, but unequal.
Just the other day, we were talking about how much more diverse Georgia’s schools are expected to become in the next decade. So for a moment this morning, I figured this decision and any others on student skin color wouldn’t matter in the future because the country will be so much more multicultural anyway.
Then I realized that regardless of how diverse the United States becomes, the majority of Americans will probably still live in their own, homogeneous enclaves — and most neighborhood schools still will be segregated by race.
UPDATE: Legal experts I spoke to were divided over whether this decision would affect school systems here that still operate under federal court orders to desegregate. A couple said it would not because the Seattle and Jefferson schools had developed their integration plans voluntarily — not under the direction of any court. But one lawyer, who represents dozens of Georgia school systems under those orders, said the decision from the U.S. Supreme Court would trump any lower court ruling. Now that the decision’s out, it’ll be interesting to see the repercussions from what many are calling a historic case.
Comments
By Jeff
June 28, 2007 1:09 PM | Link to this
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
I couldn’t agree more, Chief Justice Roberts.
By jim d
June 28, 2007 1:47 PM | Link to this
Well now, isn’t that a fine kettle of fish? Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
There really is a simple solution that should make all sides happy. Well with the exception of those that want to keep public education in its current form. “Free market public education”. just let folks go wherever they wish to attend school. Also let them worry about how to get there.
By thomas
June 28, 2007 3:57 PM | Link to this
I wonder when we will get off the race issue. Some liberal whites bring up race on one hand and conservative whites make a big deal about it on the other hand. I just don’t understand it. I don’t hear blacks crying about wanting to reestablish school “integration” and busing. The whole thing is silly to me.
The reality is that the demographics of schools exist for a reason. It is due to housing patterns, NOTHING THE SCHOOLS SYSTEMS HAVE DONE. Therefore what is there for school systems to “remedy”? Alas, life in America. Issues that are to do about nothing.
By Blind Homer
June 28, 2007 4:02 PM | Link to this
This is a natural phenomenon that shouldn’t and can’t be legislated away. A generation ago ‘no MARTA’ Marietta and Cobb County was a center for ‘white flight’. Now it’s diversity central and the flight has moved on to private schools or further out to Paulding. I suspect this is about 75% racially motivated and 25% ‘seeking the best education possible’, but at least the public school part isn’t dicriminatory.
By Lee
June 28, 2007 4:12 PM | Link to this
Well, it’s a good first step to undo the damage done by Brown vs. Board - too little too late though, IMHO.
No Thomas, school systems do play around with the racial makeup of a school. Seems to me that we had a blog topic not too long ago about Cobb County trying to increase the number of whites at one of their schools in an attempt to get the test scores up. Remember that?
What if your child was bussed into a poor performing school just to prop some numbers up. What if your child received an inferior education, which could affect him for years to come, just because some educrat was playing around with some numbers on a spreadsheet?
It’s hardly about “nothing.”
By jim d
June 28, 2007 4:31 PM | Link to this
So coice schools worked in Seattle with the one exception of race when deciding on who could attend if the school had more applicants than seats?
Why then not just throw all of the names into a hat?
By mmm
June 28, 2007 5:12 PM | Link to this
I find the Louiville attorney’s statement: “All schools are equal.” curious. If that were so, why do we need NCLB?
The Bush administration has essentially reinvented a race neutral busing program with transfer preferences given to those in schools that have enough members of “minority” subgroups. Those groups—i.e. disabled, LEP, Hispanic and Black, if the exist in great enough numbers to be counted, typically increase the probability that the school will fail. At the same time, schools without enough diversity to have the subgroups are more likely to pass and then be force to be a receiving school. I wonder if the Republicans really thought this through. From what I see in Dekalb, a population of parents savy enough to demand transfers has really angered the more Republican parts of the district where already overcrowded schools(who may have already had racial diversity but not SES diversity) are forced to take transfers.
By HB
June 28, 2007 5:25 PM | Link to this
Personally, I think it’s a good idea to try to create diverse schools when it can be done through reasonable means. However, forcing a child to take a 90-minute bus ride when there is a school with space in his own neighborhood is not reasonable. I remember Jacksonville struggling with this in the mid-90s, sending kids on 2+ hour bus rides to “get the numbers right.”
In the small town where I grew up back in the 80s, 2 elementary school districts were almost entirely white (one quite wealthy, one lower middle class), the third mostly black (large % of kids on free/reduced lunch). There was absolutely no reason for that to be the case — tiny town, so no bussing program would send kids to far from home. After a couple of botched attempts at drawing new districts, they came up with an brilliant plan — no more districts. The elementary schools there now have only two grades each, so instead of 3 K-5 schools, they have K-1, 2-3, and 4-5. The kids are all together all the way through high school. I wonder: if more systems set up schools like this, would it make districting easier? Granted larger systems wouldn’t be able to trim down to no districts, but it would cut the number of districts dramatically. Wouldn’t that simplify things a bit?
By SET
June 29, 2007 1:02 PM | Link to this
“Then I realized that regardless of how diverse the United States becomes, the majority of Americans will probably still live in their own, homogeneous enclaves — and most neighborhood schools still will be segregated by race.”
And this is a problem because??
This is supposed to be a free country. And Freedom Of Association is a right co-equal with Freedom Of Speech and all the other “freedoms” the Federal Government is forced to allow us.
People are different and people (and all other animals) choose to associate with similars. In time people will make changes and adjustments when they damn well please. We are equal before the law and that’s it. Government should not be forcing people into things by racial quotas.
Doing so interferes with people sorting out their own issues and actually makes racial conflicts worse.
By Alan Richard
July 3, 2007 9:16 AM | Link to this
My response to Chief Justice Roberts: The way to end continuing racial segregation in America’s schools is to end continuing racial segregation in America’s schools. Allow schools reasonable means to try and keep people from dividing ourselves. Considering our history, I don’t see why requiring some attention to racial integration is somehow discriminatory.
By Jeff
July 3, 2007 9:31 AM | Link to this
Alan:
As long as segregation is by CHOICE and not by LAW, there is NOTHING wrong with it. Brown struck down segregation BY LAW. The government has ZERO right to force my child to attend a non-neighborhood school just to enforce some random “diverseness” criteria. I choose to live where I live for the VERY REASON that I don’t want my kids exposed to thugs and prostitutes. I also don’t want my child exposed to white trash, so I try to find schools that have neither thugs nor w******* nor white trash.
The problem is that in today’s black youth, thugishness and prostitution is GLORIFIED, even when their parents abhor it. I have met MANY of the older generations of blacks - my parents’ ages and older - that I consider it an HONOR to know and call my friend. I have met FEW my age or younger that I can say the same about, and because of this I choose to live AWAY from these negative influences.
The way to end discrimination by race is to stop discriminating by race!!
By SET
July 3, 2007 11:40 AM | Link to this
Alan Richard: You’d have made a nice speech writer for Stalin. I’ve got news for you, nothing in the US Constitution - which is not that complicated - provides any power for the Federal Government to force people to associate. It says the opposite. Freedom of Association.
It is that Freedom that would have prevented the degeneration of black culture to what is has become since 1960. Congress and the courts abated Freedom of Association when the went too far with the Civil Rights legislation and court cases. The result is the madness we see throughout the country.
You don’t get to tell other people who to let into their homes, businesses or rentals. The marketplace does that. “Free Markets” goes along with “Free Minds”. You can’t have one without the other which is why we now see George Orwell style attempts at thought control and government lying about just about everything.
You can’t sell your Utopian Nonsense to me or to just about anybody anymore who has to get up and go out and work. In my working career not to mention my lifetime I have come to know neighbors and collegues who have been victims of carjackings, home invasion robberies, and every other crime you can name (such as home invasion rape). And these are whites, not blacks, some of them lawyers and all homeowners.
I might add that I am armed and so are most of my friends. My parents always had guns in the house and so did all their generation - my aunts & uncles. We would kill such attackers and laugh while we did it. When I mention this to my white collegues they are shocked - shocked! Somehow somebody told white folks in CA that 911 will always be there in 2 minutes and save their dumb asses.
You see, they always felt safe. We always knew better. But even black folks in my generation fear the current generation of feral fatherless out-of-control largely black criminal class.
And I see your statements as saying that people have to be given something because they are black - or whatever color is politically fashionable these days (mexican?).
We are living in a war zone and you are complaining about integretation. Well maybe you haven’t lived under our conditions yet in your town. Good luck.