In August 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the hope that our "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) case moves the nation one step closer to that goal.
Given the level of media misinformation, it is important to realize what the Court did not hold in its recent decision. First, the Court did not attempt to "turn the clock back" and return the country to the dark days of segregation. Indeed, the Court reaffirmed Brown v. Board of Education's prohibition against de jure or de facto segregation and said nothing that could be interpreted as authorizing JCPS to resegregate local schools. Indeed, although the Court struck down JCPS' student assignment plan, the Court flatly condoned the use of race-conscious remedies to eliminate the vestiges of segregation.
The difficulty for JCPS is that Brown was decided more than a half century ago, and the courts have held that JCPS has eliminated the effects of segregation. While it might have been appropriate for JCPS to use race-conscious remedies during the desegregation phase, the Court held that it is not appropriate for the district to use race conscious remedies now.
Second, the Court did not repudiate the concept of "diversity" in education. Indeed, both the Seattle and Louisville plans were criticized because they did not provide diversity. True diversity includes an array of factors, including "exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints." Both the Louisville and Seattle school districts focused only on race, and Louisville's school assignment plan focused only on a single race (African Americans).
This focus on race produced perverse incentives and results. As the Court noted, under the Seattle plan, a school "with 50 percent Asian-American students and 50 percent white students but no African-American, Native-American, or Latino students would qualify as balanced, while a school with 30 percent Asian-American, 25 percent African American, 25 percent Latino, and 20 percent white students would not." Similarly, in Louisville, a school transfer might be denied even though a student might bring real (racial and ethnic) diversity to the transfer school if it did not produce African-American balance.
This focus on race tends to undercut, rather than enhance, diversity. As the Court recognized in its decision, to "the extent the objective is sufficient diversity so that students see fellow students as individuals rather than solely as members of a racial group, using means that treat students solely as members of a racial group, is fundamentally at cross-purposes with that end."
...The segregationist-era focus on race has had a very negative effect on society. No one doubts that there are a significant number of African-American individuals who are suffering the effects of slavery and segregation, including poverty and lack of economic opportunity. Moreover, few doubt that society has an obligation to provide assistance. The difficulty is that race-conscious remedies provide a blunt and relatively ineffective instrument for dealing with this problem.
...If governmental assistance is based on need (e.g., economic disadvantage), rather than race, society as a whole will advance, and we are more likely to alleviate historical inequalities and disadvantages. Moreover, given that African Americans are disproportionately economically disadvantaged, they will be disproportionately benefitted by progressive programs. However, others who are economically disadvantaged will also be empowered rather than embittered. Society as a whole will be better off.
This from the Courier-Journal.
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