Law to Segregate
Omaha Schools
Divides Nebraska
By SAM DILLON,
NYTimes on the Web, April 15, 2006
OMAHA, Apr. 14 -- Ernie
Chambers is Nebraska's only African-American state senator, a man who has fought
for causes including the abolition of capital punishment and the end of
apartheid in South Africa. A magazine writer once described him as the
"angriest black man in Nebraska."
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Kent Sievers/Omaha World-Herald
Ernie
Chambers, the only African-American in the Nebraska Legislature, was
a major force behind a law enacted this week that calls for dividing
the Omaha school district into three districts defined largely by
race. |
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He was also a driving force behind a
measure passed by the Legislature on Thursday and signed into law by the
governor that calls for dividing the Omaha public schools into three racially
identifiable districts, one largely black, one white and one mostly Hispanic.
The law, which opponents are calling state-sponsored segregation, has thrown
Nebraska into an uproar, prompting fierce debate about the value of integration
versus what Mr. Chambers calls a desire by blacks to control a school district
in which their children are a majority.
Civil rights scholars call the legislation the most blatant recent effort in the
nation to create segregated school systems or, as in Omaha, to resegregate
districts that had been integrated by court order. Omaha ran a mandatory
busing program from 1976 to 1999.
"These efforts to resegregate schools by race keep popping up in various parts
of the country," said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at
Harvard, adding that such programs skate near or across the line of what is
constitutionally permissible. "I hear about something like this every few
months, but usually when districts hear the legal realities from civil rights
lawyers, they tend to back off their plans."
Nebraska's attorney general, Jon Bruning, said in a letter to a state senator
that preliminary scrutiny had led him to believe that the law could violate the
federal Constitution's equal protection clause, and that he expected legal
challenges.
The debate here began when the Omaha district, which educates most of the
state's minority students, moved last June to absorb a string of largely white
schools that were within the Omaha city limits but were controlled by suburban
or independent districts.
"Multiple school districts in Omaha stratify our community," John J. Mackiel,
the Omaha schools superintendent, said last year. "They create inequity,
and they compromise the opportunity for a genuine sense of community."
Omaha school authorities and business leaders marketed the expansion under the
slogan, "One City, One School District." The plan, the district said,
would create a more equitable tax base and foster integration through magnet
programs to be set up in largely white schools on Omaha's western edge that
would attract minority students.
The district had no plans to renew busing, but some suburban parents feared that
it might. The suburban districts rebelled, and the unicameral Legislature
drew up a measure to blunt the district's expansion.
The bill contained provisions creating a "learning community" to include 11
school districts in the Omaha area operating with a common tax levy while
maintaining current borders. It required districts to work together to
promote voluntary integration.
But the legislation changed radically with a two-page amendment by Mr. Chambers
that carved the Omaha schools into racially identifiable districts, a move he
told his colleagues would allow black educators to control schools in black
areas.
Nebraska's 49-member, nonpartisan Legislature approved the measure by a vote of
31 to 16, with Mr. Chambers's support and with the votes of 30 conservative
lawmakers from affluent white suburbs and ranching counties with a visceral
dislike of the Omaha school bureaucracy. Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican
facing a tough primary fight, said he did not consider the measure
segregationist and immediately signed it.
Dr. Mackiel, the Omaha superintendent, said the school board was "committed to
protecting young people's constitutional rights."
"If that includes litigation, then that certainly is a consideration," Dr.
Mackiel said.
Some of Nebraska's richest and most powerful residents have also questioned the
legislation, including the billionaire investor Warren Buffett as well as David
Sokol, the chief executive of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, which employs
thousands in Nebraska and Iowa.
"This is going to make our state a laughingstock, and it's going to increase
racial tensions and segregation," Mr. Sokol said in an interview.
The Omaha district has 46,700 students, 44 percent of them white, 32 percent
black, 21 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian or Native American. The
suburban systems that surround it range in size from the Millard Public School
District, with about 20,000 students, 9 percent of whom are members of
minorities, to the Bennington district, with 704 students, 4 percent of whom are
members of minorities.
Parent reaction is divided. Darold Bauer, a professional fund-raiser who has
three children in Millard schools, said he was pleased that the law had
eliminated the threat of busing, although he said he was not thrilled about
sharing a common tax levy with the Omaha schools.
"What this law does is protect the boundaries of my district," said Mr. Bauer,
who is white. "All the districts in the area are now required to work together
on an integration plan, and I'm fine with that, because my kids won't be bused."
Brenda J. Council, a prominent black lawyer whose niece and nephew attend
Omaha's North High School, said of the law, "I'm adamantly opposed because it'll
only institutionalize racial isolation."
Whether the law goes unchallenged is unclear. "We believe the state may
face serious risk due to the potential constitutional problems," Attorney
General Bruning said in his letter.
But Senator Chambers, a 68-year-old former barber who earned a law degree after
his election to the Legislature in 1970, was unmoved. He lists his
occupation as "defender of the downtrodden," and suggests that is precisely what
he is doing.
"Several years ago I began discussing in my community the possibility of carving
our area out of Omaha Public Schools and establishing a district over which we
would have control," Mr. Chambers said during the debate on the floor of the
Legislature. "My intent is not to have an exclusionary system, but we,
meaning black people, whose children make up the vast majority of the student
population, would control."
During an interview in his office, Mr. Chambers took time out to answer calls
questioning the plan. He told several people bluntly that they were
misinformed, but he remained polite.
"You call me anytime, whether you agree with me or not," he signed off one
conversation.
He acknowledged that he had nursed a latent fury with the Omaha district since
enduring the taunting of schoolmates during classroom readings of "Little Black
Sambo" when he attended during the 1940's. He also accused the district of
returning to segregated neighborhood schools when it ended busing in 1999,
although no high school is more than 48 percent black.
Other black leaders in Omaha criticized the new law.
"This is a disaster," said Ben Gray, a television news producer and co-chairman
of the African-American Achievement Council, a group of volunteers who mentor
black students. "Throughout our time in America, we've had people who
continuously fought for equality, and from Brown vs. Board of Education,
we know that separate is not equal. We cannot go back to segregating our
schools."
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