Joy Moses

Kids, Courts, and Our Future

Two of the most well-known billionaires, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, joined forces last week to combat America's educational crisis. In doing so, Oprah's cameras recorded what happened when students from a predominately black urban school swapped places with their white counterparts in the suburbs. One of the black students was almost brought to tears, and her mother did cry, when they saw the suburban school with its well-maintained facilities and superior educational opportunities.

America's separate and unequal schools have been highlighted in two recent works by Jonathan Kozol and the Harvard Civil Rights Project. The authors document the rapid resegregation of public schools in recent years. This pattern is related to a civil rights rollback movement in the courts.

Significant civil rights court victories began with school desegregation cases and Brown v. Board of Education. They grew to include cases that validated the rights of other minorities, women, people with disabilities, senior citizens, and workers. Undoubtedly, such progress has resulted in a conservative civil rights rollback movement that is aimed at cutting such cases at the root by booting them out of court before judges and juries hear the facts or review the proof offered by plaintiffs. This phenomenon is highlighted in a recent book (Awakening from the Dream) and by such groups as the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights (NCRCR) and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).

For students like those on the Oprah show, this civil rights rollback has translated into attacks on both school desegregation cases and efforts by school districts to voluntarily desegregate. For those belonging to other subgroups, there have been attempted and actual limitations in such areas as healthcare, employment, and the environment.

Although the world is continually awed by the power of Oprah and Gates, ultimately, fixing the problems posed by urban schools and a variety of other social ills will also require ordinary people using multi-pronged approaches that include grassroots advocacy, legislation, and of course, the courts. Thus, those concerned about justice and equality must be ever vigilant in contacting their Congressional representatives and expressing their views on judicial nominations and progressive legislation designed to reverse rollbacks in the courts.

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Posted at 11:48 AM, Apr 19, 2006 in Progressive Agenda
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