Supreme Court to school districts: Do not discriminate on the basis of race at all!

The Supreme Court, in a close 5-4 opinion, today struck down public school voluntary assignment (by race) plans in Seattle, WA and Louisville, KY. The court ruled that “race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools.” Justice John Roberts wrote, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.” The Court noted that before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, students were told where to school on the basis of race, and in practical terms, school integration was slow and involved bitter fights, “with all deliberate speed.” Remember that Farmville, VA closed its public schools for a few years in the early 60s rather than integrate. (Picture above taken there.) In a long dissent, Justice Breyer noted that there is a difference between "exclusionary racial discrimination" and inclusive policies designed to bring members of different races together.

The CNN story is “Divided Court Rejects School Diversity Plans”, here.
Yesteday CNN had a story “Long journeys reflect the quest for knowledge, equality.”

The PDF file for the Supreme Court opinion is here.
Case is called “Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al.”

I can recall during an interview in 2004 for a substitute teaching job in Arlington being asked about working with “minorities.” Something that should be a non-issue (in the thinking of the Court) was an issue. In a few cases, with low income students who were largely non-white, I found that they did not respect me because, as a “privileged white male” I had never come close to sharing their experiences.

I was in seventh grade (Swanson Middle School) when our "general education" (English and social studies combined) teacher explained Brown v. Board of Education to US in 1955. Yet, when I graduated from Washington-Lee in Arlington VA in 1961, it was still almost completely segregated, and one of the top public schools in the nation (Yorktown had just opened). In Arlington, populations are much more mixed today (throughout the entire school district) than they were then, but still Wakefield in South Arlington faces more challenges with disadvantaged students than the other three Arlington high schools.

Another factor is that assignment of "race" is a very arbitrary notion. In many parts of the world, such as India and the Middle East, it is especially meaningless. The one scientific factor that determines skin color is how far away from the earth's Equator one's ancestors thousands of years ago were. The closer to the Equator, the more pigment one needed to protect one from ultraviolet radiation; the farther away, the lighter one's skin to make Vitamin D. That's about it.

The ABC Nightline coverage recalled the riots in Louisville in 1975 over court-ordered forced busing. I recall the controversy over busing in the DC area in the 1960s. The mother of one child in Louisville, who had filed suit, described the hardship of driving her child miles according to ordered racial balances, when she did not want her child alone on the school bus.