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THE WASHINGTON
POST
Standing in the
Schoolhouse Door
By Eugene Robinson,
Op-Ed Columnist, washingtonpost.com from the Web, June 29, 2007
It's time for those of us who are old
enough to remember when the U.S. Supreme Court was a major force for racial
integration and justice to stop living in the past. We need to realize
that for the foreseeable future any progress our increasingly diverse country
makes toward fairness and equality will come in spite of the nation's highest
court, not because of it.
No one should be surprised that the court, as it made clear yesterday, does not
consider promoting racial diversity in the nation's public schools to be a
particularly worthy goal. No one should be surprised that Chief Justice
John Roberts pretends not even to understand the concept: In his majority
opinion striking down school integration plans in Seattle and Louisville,
Roberts described what the two cities were doing as "racial balancing," even
though local officials made clear that their intent was nothing more sinister
than racial inclusion.
George W. Bush's packing the court with conservatives is likely to prove one of
the more enduring aspects of his unfortunate legacy. Bush appointees
Roberts and Samuel Alito have joined Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in a
solid, four-justice bloc that can be reliably counted on, pretty much whatever
the issue, to vote for turning back the clock.
That means all they need to do is win the vote of one of the court's more
moderate members and, voila, history is unmade. In the schools decision
yesterday, Anthony Kennedy sided with the conservative faction to invalidate the
integration programs. Kennedy wrote his own opinion, making clear that he
does too understand what diversity is, and also why schools might want to foster
it -- if they can just figure out how.
Go ahead and promote racial diversity in the classroom if you think that's
important, the court basically said. But whatever you do, you can't take
race into account.
The irony is that the Seattle and Louisville plans were widely popular among
both black and white parents. Both plans were designed, in essence, to
ensure that segregated housing patterns -- a fact of life in many U.S. cities --
did not inevitably result in segregated schools.
The Louisville schools -- like many other school systems in the South -- had
spent decades under a court-ordered desegregation plan. When a federal
judge lifted the order several years ago, the local school board decided to keep
most elements of the plan in place because it had worked so well. Racially
integrated schools, officials decided, were good for the educational process and
good for the community.
In Seattle, which had never operated under a court-ordered desegregation plan,
school officials had been using race as just one of several factors in trying to
ensure diversity in the city's public high schools.
I start from the premise that racial integration in the schools is a good thing.
I think the educational process benefits from diversity, and all students are
better served in an integrated classroom. I also believe that in a nation
where minorities will someday form the majority, integration is an important
civic lesson our schools ought to be teaching. Given those beliefs, it
seems to me that allowing local officials in Louisville and Seattle to continue
with limited programs to ensure integration in the schools should be a
no-brainer.
But our revanchist Supreme Court obviously doesn't share my belief in diversity.
Thomas, the court's only black member, wrote a concurring opinion in which he
had the gall to cite Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954
decision that integrated the nation's schools, as precedent for yesterday's
ruling -- which will boldly advance the cause of resegregation.
Let's not grasp at straws here. While Kennedy kept the court from
definitively shutting the door on school integration, it's clear what direction
we're headed. This court would have been perfectly happy for me to go to
the "black" high school in my hometown of Orangeburg, S.C., instead of following
a handful of pioneers who integrated the "white" school. This court has
the whole concept of affirmative action in its sights. Sorry about the
whole slavery thing, and the whole Jim Crow thing, and the whole "separate but
equal" thing, and, oh yes, the whole racism thing. That was then, and this
is now
If we as a society -- black, white, brown, yellow, red -- are going to work
toward fairness, inclusion, equality and, yes, integration, we're going to have
to do it by working around those dour men in black robes on Capitol Hill.
They have decided to stand in the schoolhouse door.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
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