In-Depth: Re-Segregation? The repercussions of revoking Brown v. Board of Education in 2007: Part I
Published February 20, 2007
By Nate Bradbury
This May will mark the 53rd year since the United States Supreme Court banned legal racial segregation in schools. The court’s ruling established that segregation is “ separate and unequal.”Segregation was violating the 14th Amendment, “which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws.”
Most of this is common knowledge, but many people don’t know that this monumental achievement is under attack. Two current court cases threaten to bring to a standstill many school districts’ plans for integration.
On December 4th, 2006, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments for two legal cases that challenge the 14th Amendment: Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education et al.
The plaintiffs in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky are petitioning the Supreme Court to end the school districts’ policy of voluntary integration.
I had an exclusive interview with Miranda Massie, a key member of the legal community defending Brown’s position across the country, in which she explained to me the gravity of the situation. “Both cases are founded on racist and segregationist principles,” Massie said.
Massie said that a potential ruling against Brown by a newly youthful and right-leaning Supreme Court would “deepen the already broad social inequalities in America.”
Louisville is a racially diverse city with racially segregated neighborhoods. After a 25-year period of federally supervised integration, in 2000 the Jefferson County School District implemented a plan that would allow parents to choose their children’s school. However, to maintain racial equality all the schools in the district must remain between 15 and 50 percent African-American.
This school assignment plan, known as open or managed choice, uses a variety of factors in student placement. Parents are allowed to request that their child attend a certain school, but in order to maintain the school’s overall racial balance, sometimes that child is asked to attend a different public school in the area within a short bus ride’s distance.
The primary plaintiff in the Louisville case, a white woman named Crystal Meredith, filed suit when her son was initially denied a transfer into a kindergarten program that was struggling to stay above the 15 percent minimum of African-American students. However, when her transfer request was finally granted the next year, she did not drop the case.
According to Massie, the open-choice, equality-promoting programs are “fantastically popular programs in [their] local communities,” because the provide a high quality of education in racially balanced classrooms.
But wait, why do school districts still need to have assignment plans such as Louisville’s open choice program? Segregation and racism are no longer pressing issues in in 21st century America, right? Wrong.
In Louisville, the number of racially mixed neighborhoods is low. Therefore, without the 15-50 percent requirement, residential preferences alone would lead to segregated, and thus unequal public schools. By maintaining racial balance, Louisville schools better prepare their students for the realities of interracial interactions and improve the educational setting at the same time.
Both of these lawsuits seek to establish a precedent of a supposedly “race-neutral” equality in the United States. However, our society is not race neutral.
“The concept that equal protection under the law can be upheld under a race-neutral administration is completely ignorant,” Massie said.
Bluntly stated, “race-neutral” governance would ignore the real differences in social and educational opportunities between races. It would effectively incapacitate government-enforced equal protection under the law and paralyze the ability of the government to solve racial tensions and inequalities.
The existence of programs that support racial equality, such as affirmative action, stand to be undermined as well. These court cases represent a major threat to the advances made during the Civil Rights movement and challenge the basic ideals of the 14th Amendment.
Check out Part II next week…
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