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U.S. Supreme Court votes to curb school districts' diversity plans

00:41 / 29.06.07

the article

WASHINGTON: In a decision of sweeping importance to educators, parents and schoolchildren across the United States, the Supreme Court on Thursday sharply limited the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.

The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, declaring that the districts had failed to meet "their heavy burden" of justifying "the extreme means they have chosen - discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments."

The decision Thursday, one of the most important in years on the issue of race and education, may not eliminate race as a factor in assigning students to different schools. But it will surely prompt many districts to revise programs they already have in place, or go back to the drawing boards in designing plans.

The majority's rationale relied in part on the historic 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools - a factor that the dissenters on the court found to be a cruel irony, and which they objected to in emotional terms.

It's like watching a race to dismantle every progressive thing my country has accomplished...

Ok so:

"Classifying and assigning schoolchildren according to a binary conception of race is an extreme approach in light of this court's precedents and the nation's history of using race in public schools, and requires more than such an amorphous end to justify it," the chief justice wrote.

Are we looking at an end to integration in public schools?
Should I not be freaked out?

Jot Evil Rules During Weddings

01:49 / 29.06.07

No you should be freaked out. As someone who went to an almost completely white high school in the United States, I believe that this a step in the wrong direction. I believe that diversity is something that is something that is valuable to everyone, whether white, hispanic or black. The American public school system is very segregated to start with, because of the way the public schools are run. I am lucky because I live in New York City, so this is not as much of an issue because there is a lot of diversity and the cultures mix quite a lot.

I tutored in the Washington DC Public schools, which were ranked 51st out of the 50 states and DC, and it is very very segregated. It is really a shame that it has been 40 years since the CIvil Rights Act and there is such a deep level of segregation still. And this is coming from a white person. This is because of the way that the public schools are funded and how they zone the schools. In most cases it causes a different level of education for schools with different races. This was documented in a 60 Minutes show where it showed a really rich white school in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and down the road a very run down, poor school with almost all black students. In Georgia, for the first time this year, a high school held the prom with both white people and black people. Up until this year they has seperate proms. This is indicative of how many schools are still very much segregated.

This decision by the Supreme Court is moving in the exact opposite direction from where we should be going. The US Supreme Court should be upholding racial equity in education, and this is not a reality at this point in time. The conservative judges, who penned this decision should be ashamed of themselves. I did not want to get politics into this but the reality is that the right wing judges all voted for, in essence, racial segregation in education. Right now, there is a long way to go before all races get the same level of education. This decision decided to continue the segregation that exists in the American public school system.

03:47 / 30.06.07

To me, what is so sinister about this is the rhetoric of the conservatives responsible. Segregation masquerading as desegregation? It's horrible! The right wing is saying that not discriminating on the basis of race is the true course to the destruction of racial preference in schools... which makes sense if you only think about it for a moment. But think any further and it's clear that this statement is resoundingly false, mostly because it does not go beyond the basics. In my opinion, one of the main differences between conservatives and liberals is conservatives' exceedingly myopic worldview (not that I don't have beef with liberals as well).

Jot Evil Rules During Weddings

08:07 / 07.07.07

Jusice John Paul Stevens had a similar argument in his dissent. Stevens blasted those who wrote the majority opinion's use of Brown vs. Board of Education in order to rule against racial integration. He is completely right about that.

There is no way that you can use a Supreme Court case that ruled that schools are not allowed to be segregated, thus they have to be integrated, and then twist it 50 years later in order to say the opposite. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissent that the majority used a "cruel distortion of history." in relation to the majorities use of Brown vs. Board of Education.