The Supreme Court of the United States of America is once again hearing arguments in a case of national importance with regards to school integration. In 1954 the SCOTUS handed down one of its most important decisions in Brown vrs Board of Education. In Brown they overturning the doctrine of separate but equal. The Supreme court found that separate was inherantly unequal and that schools could not legally segregate their schools based on the color of students skin. This led to a spate of law suits over the next couple of decades forcing schools to integrate. In most cases the solution was to bus kids to remote schools thus over coming the inherent geographic segregation of American society due to decades of legaly upheld separation of the races.
Fast forward through to today and now a school system is being charged with using racial discrimination in order to keep its school systems integrated. IE they are now using race to maintain DE-segregation. In short it is an affirmative action process by which racial discrimination is being used for good... or so the supporters of the program claim. Essentially they claim that any harm done by using racial discrimination in this manner is outweighed by the benefit of maintaining a largely de-segregated school system population.
The argument is one that is at the heart of American racial discord and an extremely thorny issue. Why is it thorny? Isn't it obviously evil and discriminatory to make any judgement based on the color of someones skin?
Practically speaking if you are to keep a school system from being segregated by geographic default how on earth are you to do it if you are not aware of the ethnic distribution of the students? That is the problem faced by the Louisville school board. A system which did not receive absolution from the federal court system until 1999 that it has sufficiently managed to integrate its schools systems well enough to regain its independence in determining student enrollment assignments. So they have voluntarily maintained a system of insured integration by being sure that among many consideration they maintained a 15-50% minority population in all of its public schools. It is this number guideline, or racial quota in some eyes, that has landed them with a suit in front of the SCOTUS.
Who is right? The school board certainly seems to have the best of intentions but I find it hard to condone ever upholding a system which contains the possibility in which race can trump all other decisions. And saying that race discrimination is wrong while actively discriminating in order to achieve racial balance is a highly hypocritical situation. It is a long term stance of the NAACP that such methods are the only realistic way with which to combat such things as default geographic segregation and a system which was systematically shaped through the decades/centuries by actively discriminatory practices. In a sense that fire must be fought with fire until such time as true parity is attained.
Personally I think the argument from the NAACP has at times reached the level of two kids in the back seat saying they hit the other because they 'got me last' and I had to even the score. The old saw goes "Two wrongs don't make a right". It seems to me the NAACP is saying you can correct years of discrimination with more discrimination. No one would suggest that the justification of the NAACP is the same as that which was used to implement Jim Crow laws. However I find it hard to swallow how blithely the NAACP accepts the notion of discriminatory practices as palatable. No matter how noble the justification, racial discrimination remains the upholding of one over another based solely on the color of ones skin. I must say at the last no matter what your reasoning that is simply an indefensible position.
On the other hand it is equally difficult to suggest that by simply turning a blind eye to race entirely it will be enough to ensure that the problem disappears on its own. Again... if racial integration is a legal mandate of Brown, then how is a school system to ensure racial integration if it does not actively make sure the ethnic make up of its schools is mixed by some arbitrary percentage that is deemed 'enough'?
It is still very much a fact that the population of America is still geographically segregated by default if not law. Thus going to a neighborhood school system (which many systems went back to once receiving their autonomy after the Brown based suits came to segregate them) results in many school systems now segregated by default rather than law. Basically Louisville is getting around this process with a "school of choice" system and by keeping an eye on the racial makeup of its schools. The person overseeing the system is making the (probably accurate asesment) that without explicitly ensuring racial diversity that the schools will over time default back to geographic divisions which in Louisville means highly segregated schools both along racial and socio economic lines. In short the question before the SCOTUS is should it be acceptable for public school systems to use race as a determining factor when assigning students to schools.
