Elizabeth Hartline Green

“Race-blind” Supreme Court Decision Actually Blind to Justice

Today, in the latest in a string of questionable decisions by the Supreme Court, five of our nine justices decided that the monumental 1954 Brown v. Board of Ed. decision wasn’t actually meant to ensure racial integration. 5-4, the court said that schools no longer could use race to help integrate their students.

The cases in question, Parent Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith, custodial parent and next friend of McDonald V. Jefferson County Board of Ed et al , had to do with the right of school districts to use race as a minor factor in determining school placement in certain circumstances (the decision applied to both cases). The two plans, one in Louisville and one in Seattle, are not easily summarized, but Louisville’s involves school transfers for parents who want their children to attend a school outside of their assigned district and Seattle’s is for determining which high school a student is assigned to.

Several things are very interesting about these cases. The mother who brought the case against Louisville missed kindergarten registration and thus could not enroll her child in her neighborhood school or second choice school because both were over their racial quotas. Two years later, she reapplied to the neighborhood school and her son was granted a transfer to his neighborhood school. In seven of the ten district high schools in Seattle, race wasn’t used as a factor at all in determining admissions; race is only considered after a school has more students than spots at the school and the school is outside of the racial quotas set by the district, and as secondary “tie-breaker” factor (the first tie-breaker in their system is whether the student has a sibling at the school already). Both districts adopted the policies voluntarily, to promote student integration, and are popular among parents. The issue in question was whether a school district can ever use race as a determining factor, no matter how minor that factor is, if a school district is not under court orders to desegregate.

One thing to remember is this: in most of the school districts in the country, parents have no say at all in where their children go to school. The majority of school districts limit registration to neighborhood schools, so where you live is where you go. The two districts in question allow their students a great deal of freedom in deciding where to go; in the terms of Justice Kennedy in oral arguments,

“the question is whether or not you can get into the school that you really prefer. And in some cases that depends solely on skin color. It's like saying everyone can have a meal but only people with separate skin can get the dessert."

The court has decided that denying some students the dessert of deciding what school they want to go to is so important that it rules out all of the proven benefits of integration[pdf]. Even Judge Alex Kozinski, a Reagan appointee, said of the Seattle case in the appeals court, “that a student is denied the school of his choice may be disappointing, but it carries no racial stigma and says nothing at all about that individual's aptitude or ability”

Likewise, the decision only affects the small number of schools who have decided that they will not tolerate the residential segregation that exists in their districts, and have voluntarily adopted plans to promote integration. These districts desire integration so that all children can experience the benefits of learning with those of different races or cultures.

The argument that is bandied about by conservatives is that government needs to be colorblind. In this line of thinking, denying a child a school transfer from one integrated school to another is the same as denying a child the chance to be educated with his peers of a different race. While colorblindness would be a worthwhile quality for the government to have if our society were colorblind, this is simply not the case. Minorities in this country are much more likely to be in poverty, to be steered to predominately minority neighborhoods or not adequately helped by real estate agents, to lack health insurance, and to generally face a different world than whites face. Since the world is not colorblind, there is no reason that government should not act as a force for good and try to rectify the injustices that minorities still face today.

We could talk for days about the societal conditions that have kept intact a world where segregation is not legal, but still very much a reality. Segregation is very real today, and well-documented. One of the only ways that districts can ensure that students are educated in an integrated environment, and thus uphold the spirit of the Brown v. Board decision, is through using race as one of the considerations in school assignment. As of today, that is no longer an option.

Elizabeth Hartline Green: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 4:40 PM, Jun 28, 2007 in Supreme Court
Permalink | Email to Friend