(U.S. Supreme Court) Considering Fairness in Affirmative Action in Schools

ABC News ^ | December 1, 2006 | Jan Crawford Greenburg

[Zakeet]

When Crystal Meredith moved to Louisville, Ky., and tried to enroll her 5-year-old son in kindergarten a couple blocks from their house, officials pointed her elsewhere, to a school that was a 90-minute bus ride away.

A school that was closer to their home, officials told her, couldn't accept another white student like Joshua that year.

Meredith, a single mother, wasn't looking for a fight. After driving Joshua across town to school every day, she decided she'd bypassed the closer school long enough.

She sued and is now at the center of the most significant legal battle over race to reach the Supreme Court in years.

"Joshua was denied entrance to a school for no other reason than racial classification," said Teddy Gordon, Meredith's attorney. "There was room at the school. There were plenty of empty seats. This was a racial quota."

Meredith and other parents who sued the Louisville school district argue that the racial assignment plans amount to unconstitutional race discrimination.

[Lurker]

"Sorry lady. Your kid can't come to this school because he's white."

Nope. No discrimination there.

L

[NavVet]

"The Louisville school district adopted its plan in 2001, and it requires schools to seek a black student enrollment of at least 15 percent and no more than 50 percent."

I'm guessing that setting the black student limit at 50 percent ensured that no black student would ever be turned away because he was black. But I would bet dollars to doughnuts that if a black student came in to enroll and he would put the school over 50 percent black enrollment, the child would not be told he couldn't enroll in the school because of the color of his skin.

[nathanbedford]

It seems to me that we need a new prism, a new way of looking at this matter. If you see the purpose of government and especially the purpose of our courts to shape society to a greater good than you are in support of affirmative action which means you are in favor of racial balancing, quotas, and nice-looking graphs and charts.

But if you see the government as a creature of the individual who has passed on to the government certain powers out of those owned by the individual and granted to him by his maker, you see the right of the school kid to go to one's own neighborhood school as the decisive factor.

It is the eternal choice between left and right, do you see society is the grand Soviet or do you see it as a collection of individuals?.

[The Citizen Soldier]

When Crystal Meredith...

I'm fascinated with this name. I wonder if her close friends call her Crystal Meth.

[Pontiac]

Conservative Judge Alex Kozinski wrote a separate opinion defending the assignment plan, which he said "gives the American melting pot a healthy stir without benefiting or burdening any particular group."

This judge doesn’t sound especially conservative to me.

The US Constitution and by derivation there of US Law is about individuals not groups. And the woman and child in question were certainly burdened with a 90 minute drive in order to take the child to school.

[somerville]

I live in a white neighborhood in NYC. There is a high school that is all black... The kids come down from Harlem to attend. There is not one white kid in that high school.

I don't get this....seems like some schools are just as segregated as they were in the fifties.

[Lurker]

Conservative Judge Alex Kozinski wrote a separate opinion defending the assignment plan, which he said "gives the American melting pot a healthy stir without benefiting or burdening any particular group."

I've just flipped through my copy of The Constitution and I can't find 'giving the melting pot a stir' as an enumerated responsibility of the Federal Courts.

Perhaps my copy is outdated.

L

[Gaffer]

When Crystal Meredith moved to Louisville, Ky., and tried to enroll her 5-year-old son in kindergarten a couple blocks from their house, officials pointed her elsewhere, to a school that was a 90-minute bus ride away

That is why affirmative action, diversity action, whatever convoluted misnomer they want to call preferential treatment (via discrimination of others) will never be accepted by a large portion of America. It is contrary to fairness and is being applied to a group of citizens not responsible for past injustices against minorities.

[gdaddy]

It is bad for children to attend non-neighborhood schools. Period. The children come home after school to play and, hopefully, do homework. Having a child not attend a neghborhood school isoloates that child in the neighborhood ro some degree. So is the potential neighborhood isolation racist? Local schools. Local children. When will we get back to reality?

[Gaffer]

... When will we get back to reality?

Probably when they've got you and me out pickin' cotton in the fields...

[monocle]

Affirmative action is profiling which liberals passionately condemn.

[wintertime]

you see the right of the school kid to go to one's own neighborhood school as the decisive factor.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So....tell me. Why is it a "right" for middle class families to demand that others pay for their child's education. We don't expect government and tax paying citizens to pay for that middle class child's food, clothing, or housing.

What is it about education that makes threatening another citizen with the sheriff's sale of his home and/or business a "right"?

Answer: Powerful lobbyists who are staking out an entitlement for their members to cushy jobs and generous benefits and pensions.

As you drive down the freeway, please notice all the beautiful and expensive new cars and trucks. Please glance up and take a good look at the mini-mansions on the hill. If these parents can afford what you see, then they can afford to pay for their own child's tuition. Hand these people a tuition bill when they show up at a government school. Then sharply reduce the taxes on everyone else,

School taxes inflate the price of every item and service citizens use. Buried in the price are the business taxes that support the door to door transport and school services to parents who can well afford to educate their own children. Those who are hit the worst by inflated prices on commodities, services, and rents are the poor.

We are literately sucking the life's blood from others so that middle class and upper class little worthies can have their "blue ribbon" schools. This entitlement to their parents allows these families to live in the bigger homes you see perched on the hill, and drive the shiny expensive cars that drive with you on the freeway.

[Tannerone]

This judge sounds like he has the common sense of a drunk Inman who lost his favorite goat and had to use a pig for gratification.

[Bon mots]

... When will we get back to reality?

Probably when they've got you and me out pickin' cotton in the fields...

BINGO!

[gdaddy]

Too funny. Those folks paid the local property taxes.

[wintertime]

Too funny. Those folks paid the local property taxes.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So did the businesses located in these area. ALL of the taxes paid by these businesses is passed on in the prices of their products. **Everything** the poor ( and all of us) use and buy is made more expensive by school taxes.

Also, school taxes make it impossible for those earning less to live a better life because the cost of living in their home or apartment is inflated by school taxes.

[Beagle8U]

"Also, school taxes make it impossible for those earning less to live a better life because the cost of living in their home or apartment is inflated by school taxes."

So, are you saying that public schools should be closed or turned into private tuition schools?

I would go along with that idea.

[nathanbedford]

Libertarians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your public schools!

Your arguments that the state should cease funding public schools has about as much chance of surviving politically as does the concept of truth when it is locked in the same room with Bill Clinton. So I assume that you're not making a political argument, or maybe you are?

If you're making a constitutional argument, clearly it is within the constitutional prerogative of a state to tax its citizens in order to educate their children. The wisdom or ill wisdom - even when the ill wisdom is alleged in populist rhetoric-of such a practice does not determine its constitutionality. As a deep-rooted conservative, I think there are constitutional questions with respect to the federal government funding local schools, but, equally, I lost that argument ages ago.