BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Supreme Court Decision Challenges Goals of Brown v. Board of Education
June 29th, 2007
In a 5 to 4 vote on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down school diversity practices in Seattle and Louisville. You can read about the case and the decision here.
To me the greater issue here is not this specific case because a particular form a diversity plan takes could be unconstitutional, and for me to comment on that we’d need to explore the specifics in depth. The greater issue to me is the reasoning given by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and his 3 consigners; and the implications thereof.
Chief Justice Roberts
Justice Anthony Kennedy while voting to strike down this particular practice actually dissented against Robert’s reasoning; highlighting some salient points.
First this summary commentary from the article: “Supreme Court declared Thursday that public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race.”
The notion of that statement is most patently absurd. How can you achieve racial inclusion without acknowledging race? It’s outright impossible. If this commentary is a correct representation of this ruling, then the right-wing agenda to end affirmative action has largely been realized; at least in regards to affirmative action in education.
Further, the opinion put forth by Roberts and his 3 cosigners Thomas, Scalia and Alito; basically overrules and ends Brown v. the Board of Education. The affront to Brown can further be seen as the article continues, “Chief Justice Roberts said such programs were “directed only to racial balance, pure and simple,” a goal he said was forbidden by the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.” This contradicts the Brown ruling which recognized racial balance; as “separate but equal” was declared inherently unequal.
Justice Kennedy
Kennedy makes these points in his dissent, describing Roberts decision as “all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account”. The article further points out that “Justice Kennedy said achieving racial diversity, “avoiding racial isolation” and addressing “the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling” were “compelling interests” that a school district could constitutionally pursue as long as it did so through programs that were sufficiently “narrowly tailored.”
You can hear an audio report on Kennedy’s decent on NPR here.
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4 Responses to “Supreme Court Decision Challenges Goals of Brown v. Board of Education”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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Add this to your segregation debate. Let all the races go to the same public school and in the future we will take God out of it and your patriotism. And once we do that we will blame the families when it’s not working. American families are overworked, underpaid and stressed out. They are the last line of defense and they are holding their ground the best way they can against sources that need to be idenfified and also debated. It is self-evident that God is the one who gives wisdom. Education and wisdom should go hand and hand. Our children are in a godless war zone and they are dropping out. What godly man or woman who hears a child cry out to be removed from the fire of a godless place would do nothing. If we segregated this time based on if you believe in God the american school system will be majority God loving and living. Please keep this in mind when you attend conferences and workshops. And encourage private schools to be treated like public schools. Provide a way out for our children.
Wow, I don’t even know where to begin with your comment LifePrincess.
I guess I’ll ask first was this meant to be a serious message, or are trying to make a point
by being satirical.
Thanks for your very nice analysis of the terrible direction the Roberts court has taken with this decision. I agree about the utter ridiculousness of forbidding the inclusion of race in any remedy to a problem of racial injustice. This is such a clear point that it should be surprising that anyone would fail to comprehend. One can only conclude that there is a racist agenda behind (or in front of) this court decision.
I think that it is most evident that there is a racist agenda at play here.