The U.S. Supreme Court could rule as early as Monday on whether using race to determine a school's enrollment is constitutional in two districts. Experts contacted by The Wichita Eagle are predicting a 5-4 decision tossing out that practice.The Louisville and Seattle districts enforce a ratio of black to white students in their schools.
Arguments waged against the need for racial balance fall short if they are unwilling to examine the history of education in America. Barriers to education were firmly entrenched with Jim Crow schooling laws. Remember the Day Law in Kentucky? Well, those willful and successful efforts to withhold education from African Americans for centuries have had long-term effects that still play out today.
Even so, it is unfortunate that some African Americans -- and this problem isn't exclusive to us -- don't connect the dots between education, economic improvement and the overall enhancement of life.
...When children are separated by race, it doesn't take long for funding disparities to create inequities. The past 50 years have not been a smooth and accepted transition, but instead have been years filled with one battle after another in an effort to maintain fairness and equal access to equal education.
The current petition before The Supreme Court asking the justices to assume that all is well and the vestiges of segregation are no longer significant, shows a lack of deeper understanding of the sacrifices it will take to make public schools serve all equally. The dissolution of the ill effects of barriers that were in place for hundreds of years will take more than the few years that thus far have been begrudgingly allotted.
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Read the transcript (or Listen to or download the argument) before the U S Supreme Court, recorded December 4, 2006
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