SCOTUS: Will they overturn Brown?

Great Debates
1

Very soon the Supreme Court of the United States will determine whether school boards can use race a factor in order to promote diversity in public elementary and high schools. The School Board’s use of race is rather stringent and stipulates that every school to have a minority population not less than 15% nor greater than 50%. The Board contends that its is constitutional (i) per Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education which states that polices that promote racial integration is under the school board’s “broad discretionary authority” and (ii) the recent *Grutter v. Bollinger * ruling which said that diversity is a compelling state interest. What you should find interesting is that one of the question presented in these cases is whether Grutter should be overturned. These two cases areMeredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

This gives a rather nice review of one of the cases.

In Brown, the court contended that state-sponsored segregation is unconstitutional. Now, these school districts are under fire for doing the opposite: state-sponsored integration. I’d like to focus on a practical conversation about the subject, though discussion of the case is welcome too. I have some questions to get us started:

  1. Do you think integration in our public school system is a “good thing”?

  2. If a school board’s racial objective is to integrate schools in its district, is it wrong for them to use race as a means to achieve that goal? If so, what race-neutral means can administrators employ to achieve the objective of an integrated school system?

  3. What is your personal opinion? Do you think school boards should be concerned with diversity? Or do you think it is something that should be left up to parents?

  4. What is your prediction on the outcome of the ruling?

  • Honesty
2

I don’t know what they’ll do but Brown is not at issue. It looks like Grutter is the relevant precedent.

3

I understand *Grutter * is the precedent, but why is *Brown * not at issue? If SCOTUS rules in favor of Plantiffs, it would essentially prevent school boards from using race to address *de facto * segregation. It would essentially be letting the chips fall where they may. Am I wrong? I hope I am.

  • Honesty
4

Brown disallows intentional segregation, not de facto. If the plaintiffs win, schools may not be allowed to consider race as a factor for tie-breakers in the admission process for over-subscribed schools, but it will not mean that schools will be allowed to intentionally segregate into all-black or all-white. Brown is not being tested at all here.

5

Exactly. You should read Brown this way: every student has a right to attend their neighborhood school. Now if you want to argue that the current cases would allow school districts to force students to go to a non-neighborhood school to promote integration then it would be Brown.

6

NO.

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) stood for one proposition only. You can’t build a school and say: “this school is for white only.” As the court’s opinion stated:

Applying this principle, it was easy for the court to determine that segregated schools were not education “made available on equal terms.” It wouldn’t matter if you built two schools right next to each other in the same neighborhood, and sent the black students to the black neighborhood school and the white students to the white neighborhood school.

So, on the issue of forced bussing, or of attempts to mandate integration of schools through quotas, etc., Brown would be totally silent.
As to the OP:

  1. Schools are always better places when they provide for a diversity of opinion and culture, even if that fact causes tension and difficulties.

  2. Quotas and race-based counting and admission methods should be abolished. The use of the artificial distinction of “race” (a totally man-made construct that is almost impossible to define accurately; what “race” is Tiger Woods, for example?) should be avoided whenever possible. There are plenty of other ways to ensure a diversity of school population, remedy the social injustice of slavery and its after-effects and overcome the destructive influence of poverty on educational opportunities without utilizing such an artificial distinction that serves only to perpetuate certain views of humans that we generally find offensive.

  3. The court will take some middle ground. Justice Kennedy is not one for making sweeping changes, and his vote will be pivotal between the likely stances of the two wings of the court. It is unfortunate, in a way, because Kennedy could use his position to create sweeping advances in constitutional law that could stand for decades, especially now that that great equivocator and fence straddler O’Connor is no longer on the court. Thus, while Kennedy could author an opinion that would decisively end the use of race as a method to achieve affirmative action, it’s doubtful that he will vote to do so.

7

That’s very interesting.

Let’s say we extend your reasoning to all state and federal programs like Vital Statistics, Census Bureau, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Social Security Department, etc. Do you support these programs use of race?

Like what?

The Right seem to give a hesitant nod toward the idea that racial diversity in public education is good idea, but adamantly oppose the use of race to achieve this racial objective. If the goal is an integrated school system, school boards are either going to use race as a criterion or conceal it using some clumsier proxy device. The Right prefers the latter. Why?

I guess question is this: If you were charged with the task of creating an racially integrated school system, how would you achieve it without using race?

Why? Kennedy dissented in both Grutter and Gratz.

My hunch is that it’ll be a 5-4 split against the school boards.

  • Honesty
8

No.

A school system should not be “racially integrated.” It should strive for diversity when possible. To do this, there are methods that don’t involve race. For example, one can utilize income as a method for determining how to allocate students. Allocating students solely to neighborhood schools will inherently cause troubles, even in places where the population is “white” when there is great poverty, and resources for schooling are dependent upon local taxes.

In urban areas, allowing students to attend the school of choice, not the school of mandate, will probably do quite well for diversity. Making certain that “local” school boards can’t exist solely to circumvent issues of neighborhood poverty or racial makeup would make this more likely. For example, in Toledo, there is a school district called Ottawa Hills, which serves solely the very upscale enclave of the town of the same name. Needless to say, it is fairly undiverse, and it is relatively devoid of African Americans. Such a district exists solely to avoid having the children of the residents go to school in the same district as those who are poor, whether black or European immigrant. Given that poor people are likely to want their children to attend good schools as much as rich people do, true school choice would promote diversity of student body, as schools start catering to attracting students.

The reason that the typical conservative who wishes “race” away in decision-making fails to provide an adequate solution is that that conservative isn’t interested in truly diversifying the schools. So, for example, faced with the fact that true diversification would require increased transportation costs, the typical conservative refuses to pony up such costs to the schools. Thus, districts without resources are left unable to truly attract a diverse population (to say nothing of upgrading their infrastructure, etc.), and end up being filled with students from local poor families. No change results, but the conservative in question gets to take the moral “high ground” of asserting that at least he/she isn’t racist. This sort of approach should be seen for what it is: an attempt to prolong the existence of a system completely biased against those who are from a different cultural background, especially those who are poor, and whose roots are found in Africa or Asia.

I am sure it will, but it will be tailored on narrow grounds endemic only to those districts, and not to broad, sweeping sections of the country. It will provide little guidance to other districts in situations significantly different. It won’t be: “Those decisions are wrong and so is any use of race in decision making.”

9

I don’t think even the supreme court has the authority to rule that the minority can be greater than 50%. I’d sure like to see them try though. Also, pi is now 11.

10

You can have a population of a “minority” that is greater than 50%. It won’t be the minority in that school, of course, but that’s not the meaning of “minority” here. :smack:

11

Why?

If I am reading your position correctly, you’re saying that a school system should not be racially segregated or integrated. And that the chips should fall where they may. Correct?

This is already apart of the student assignment plan employed by these two schools.

I’ll be very surprised to see this happen.

  • Honesty
12

So you’re saying that you don’t believe the United States should use or collect data on race?

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with you 100%. I just find it quite peculiar that the moment racial identity stopped benefiting white males in education and employment, there has been a crashing din calling for a race-free society ever since. Where was the outcry 60 years ago?

As a black male, I’d like to see law enforcements’ use race to describe criminals to be abolished; I’d also like if the Census did not require you to indicate an ethnicity due to the fact that the data is abused by state legislatures; I’d also like to see the government to force employers to use a SSN to identify applicants rather than relying on names that could give away ethnicity. It’s all a pipedream. I’d imagine these practices will persist until it interferes with the hegemony.

Overturning Brown, which is essentially what this ruling will do, will do nothing but exacerbate racial tensions in this country. By outlawing diversity programs (not Affirmative Action - there is nothing merit based in the student assignment plans) you prevent *elected * school boards from even trying to address segregated schools in the district. Your idea of using income as a clumsier proxy for race is a faulty one. I imagine to accomplish this, you’d use Census data to indicate hotspots in which blacks are poorer than whites. This contradicts your previous post in which you support abolishing data collection from state and federal departments.

How can you attain racial diversity in a school if you (a) can’t use race and (b) don’t have data that is a proxy to race? The answer is © you can’t. Whether you think racial diversity is a good thing in elementary and high schools is immaterial. This is a school board that has been elected by its constituency. If the parents didn’t like the school board’s objective for an integrated school system, they could have ran for office on an anti-diversity platform. They didn’t, of course. Pure cowardice.

  • Honesty.
13

You keep saying this, and people keep telling you you’re wrong and explaining why. If it overturned Brown, a school district could leglaly segregate Blacks and Whites. They won’t be able to do that.

The school system in question here is using racial quotas to achieve a certain racial balance. They can pretend that it isn’t a quota system all they want, but when you put a minimum number on something (15% in this case), it’s a quota.

14

So, no one should ever challenge a law in court? He or she should run for office and change the law that way?

Or is it only “cowardice” in this particular case?

15

I think the educational systems has problems much more significant than too many blacks in school A and too many whites in school B. To be honest I don’t see a realistic benefit to “forced racial integration.” How far out of their local neighborhood are we going to send kids in order to achieve these quotas?

What about students in suburban and rural school districts, where there may only be two High Schools in the entire county, should we shuttle kids from one end of the county to the other in order to get the perfect racial make-up? Even if it means a two hour bus ride?

I think the most pressing issue with American public schools is funding for said schools. Once you find a way, other than property taxes, to fund local schools, I think you’ll start to see the poor have access to better local education. We’ve tried forced integration in the past, “busing” was a big issue decades ago. In general it failed to achieve any of its purported goals.

The big problem with our schools has nothing to do with some schools being mostly black and some being mostly white. It’s more an issue of rich school districts have wealthy property owners so said school district has more money to spend on education. I don’t know how local school funding works nationwide, but the meat of funding for education around here comes from local property taxes, with relatively smaller contributions coming from State and Federal government.

Programs like forced-integration are on their way out. The tide of public sentiment and the judicial rulings are starting to move against racial quotas and affirmative action in higher education, I don’t really think there’s a realistic chance we’re going to start seeing widespread “forced integration” as a major solution to the problems in our local school systems.

There may be some ways to try and address inequities within a single city, but when you move outside major metropolitan cities a lot of the solutions that might work city-wide would have difficulty working state-wide, not everyone lives in a nice, concentrated city where going to the High School in the next neighborhood just means a 2-3 minute lengthening of your commute.

Some cities have public High Schools with higher academic standards, that students across the city can apply to, with admission being based on standardized test scores and GPA. But nice as that is for possibly getting some superior students out of inferior schools, it still doesn’t fix the weaker schools themselves.

16

Also, what do we do about States like West Virginia (Black population 3.49%), Montana (Black population 0.50%), Vermont (Black population 0.76%), North Dakota (Black population 0.85%) and et cetera.

In my opinion that idea that somehow it’s really important to make sure that K-12 school systems have X amount of “racial diversity” is undermined by the fact that outside of a few of the more highly populated States it’d be all but impossible to achieve such diversity.

Kentucky as a whole (the location of Jefferson County from the above case) only has a black population of 7%. It seems like trying to hit that “15%” level would be ludicrously hard in many cases, if the people aren’t there, they aren’t there.

17

Also of interest to me is why it’s okay for this policy to put one specific race into a special category.

From this Wiki page on the case:

That seems really inappropriate to me. Theoretically you could have a school with a 40% Hispanic population, 40% Asian, 10% black, and 10% white, and it’d still not be “diverse” under this policy.

This isn’t a policy which treats all minorities equal, it treats blacks as a special minority and lumps other minorities in with the local and nationwide majority as if they were the same.

18

Honesty, my unifying theme in answering questions about “race” is that “race” doesn’t exist. It is an artificial construct of humans, primarily those from Western and Central European nations, designed to act as a proxy for certain unscientific and outmoded philosophical approaches to people who look different. Race has never been easily defined, and, as I pointed out in the case of Tiger Woods, is damn near impossible to determine, even with a relatively easy set of standards to apply (for the record, he would be more “Asian” than he would be “black”).

To study race, to collect statistics about race, to in any way emphasize a “divide” that doesn’t really exists is to perpetuate the same mistaken philosophy that created the supposed divide in the first place. If we look at an African American and all we can think of is “black,” how do we ever get past all the negative connotations that that appellation carries for so many people? What do we do about someone like Barack Obama, who is African American in the most true sense of that term (first generation American whose father immigrated from Africa), and yet is purely “white” American as well? Is he “black?” Is he entitled to be treated with the same approach that we would use for people who are descended from American slaves; that is, is he entitled to remedial efforts to overcome his status as a former slave, when, in fact, he is not one?

What I said about school districts is that “race” should not enter into their composition. I did NOT say “let the chips fall where they may” and no competent reading of my posts could in any way infer such a statement. I said that, if you wish to have diverse schools, for example, schools with a population that includes those of African descent (NOT the same thing as “black”, you will note), then you should engage in methods of determining school populations that accomplish that goal without using the artificial construct of “race” in the process. Thus, a school district should not be “racially” anything, because to meet any such standard is to acknowledge the application of a particularly obnoxious, artificially defined characteristic.

Am I more clear, now?

19

Of course it treats blacks as a special minority. Education programs in the United States have specifically and explicitly disenfranchised African-Americans since their emancipation up till Brown. I beg you to remember that the plaintiffs in Brown wasn’t a Pan Gonzales or a Xian Cho, they were all parents of black children. I also beg you to remember that Brown had to be enforced in some school districts by actual military force.

These school districts, especially in the south, have had a long past of discrimination against black children. To think these school boards would not take affirmative steps in ensuring that blacks are allowed access to the same education as whites is ludicrous. Blacks are treated as a special minority only because they have a special history with educational programs in America. Not Hispanics. Not Asians. Blacks. Try to examine to these policies under the lens that extends a bit further than 2005.

  • Honesty
20

By the way, while I do not agree with everything esposed in this linked article, it does have quite a bit in there that is apposite with my feelings.

Black vs. “Black” (dealing with Barack Obama in particular)