Posted on 06/29/2007 1:26:44 PM PDT by SmithL
JUNE 28, 2007, will be remembered as a shameful day in the long, elusive battle to instill equal opportunity in American schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court's twisted logic in limiting a school district's ability to take race into account as a way to end racial segregation echoes the court's Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling of 1896. That ruling put the imprimatur on "separate but equal" policies that allowed racial discrimination and oppression to flourish for more than half-a-century more.
The 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, fortunately, drove a dagger into Plessy's heart -- until Thursday, when a court invigorated by two new conservative justices moved to resuscitate it.
...
The court's rulings represent a triumph for advocates of "colorblind policies," such as Ward Connerly, the former University of California regent who began the assault on the use of race in public institutions when he persuaded the Board of Regents to ban affirmative action at the university in 1995.
For years, Connerly has invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for people to be judged by the "content of their character" rather than the color of the skin. But wishing for a colorblind society does not make it so.
We, too, believe people should be judged by the content of their character -- in a society of equal opportunity. We are equally sure that the great civil rights leader would have been appalled by the Supreme Court's rulings this week -- and would be mourning the nation's backward movement toward school segregation.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Meaning that we believe in it, just not here. Meaning that we don't believe in it.
Cry, Liberals, Cry!
“I’m sorry you can’t go to that school because of your race.” (1957)
“I’m sorry you can’t go to that school because of your race.” (2007)
Progress?
I was just going to follow up your post with the passage from Isaiah. And then I saw your tagline!
SF Chronicle: “The U.S. Supreme Court’s twisted logic...”
Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Roberts’ logic seems pretty straight-forward to me.
I'm shocked that California would tolerate such towns/counties.The Census Bureau has a neat little function which allows you to get a detailed statistical profile of every city/town in the nation and it shows that Chappaqua is made up of:
Whites-91.8%
Blacks-0.9%
Asian-5.6%
"Some Other Race"-0.5%
"Two Or More Races"-1.1%
He cracked me up - and he was right, BTW.
More pablum from the Carbuncle for those who opt to have others prefabricate their opinions for them.
Differentiate yourself, and read the Opinion of The Court:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-908.pdf
Chief Justice Roberts, writing the Opinion, along with Justice Thomas, who joined in the majority, BOTH just shred Justice Breyer’s dissent.
Here are a few excerpts a friend sent to me via email:
From Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the Majority...
The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics. Racial balancing is not transformed from “patently unconstitutional” to a compelling state interest simply by relabeling it “racial diversity.”
JUSTICE BREYER’s dissent takes a different approach to these cases, one that fails to ground the result it would reach in law. Instead, it selectively relies on inapplicable precedent and even dicta while dismissing contrary holdings, alters and misapplies our well-established legal framework for assessing equal protection challenges to express racial classifications, and greatly exaggerates the consequences of today’s decision.
At the same time it relies on inapplicable desegregation cases, misstatements of admitted dicta, and other noncontrolling pronouncements, JUSTICE BREYER’s dissent candidly dismisses the significance of this Court’s repeated holdings that all racial classifications must be reviewed under strict scrutiny, arguing that a different standard of review should be applied because the districts use race for beneficent rather than malicious purposes, ...
This Court has recently reiterated, however, that . “all racial classifications [imposed by government] ... must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny”...
Joining with the majority Opinion, Justice Thomas writes:
The dissent accuses me of “feel[ing] confident that, to end invidious discrimination, one must end all governmental use of race-conscious criteria” and chastises me for not deferring to democratically elected majorities. Regardless of what JUSTICE BREYER’s goals might be, this Court does not sit to “create a society that includes all Americans” or to solve the problems of “troubled inner city schooling.” Ibid.
We are not social engineers.
The United States Constitution dictates that local governments cannot make decisions on the basis of race. Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it.
“Lee Rodgers always referred to the Bay Area as “the world’s largest
open-air freak show.” “
I do like the geographical layout of San Francisco.
It’s simply a roach motel for liberal nutburgers.
If needed, it can be walled off to the south and the Golden Gate
Bridge can be closed...leaving the holier-than-thou liberals in
a smug little ghetto on the tip of a peninsula.
Brown vs Board of Education was about school choice.
This ruling is about school choice.
How bizarre that it’s being portrayed in the opposite light.
This is disingenuous at best, and a lie at worst. Nothing in yesterday's opinion allows school districts to send minorities to black only and white only schools like in the days of segregation. They actually said the exact opposite, and reaffirmed Brown.
Clarence Thomas is always willing to attack and correct precedent that he finds to be originally decided the wrong way. He had no bad things to say about Brown, so this writer can just stuff it.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
While that may be true, implenting policy that is not blind to race, irrespective of which group it favors, is no better a tribute to MLK and the civil rights groups than George Wallace's "Segregation yesterday, segregation today, segregation forever!"
The best policy is that a public school serves all of the students (U.S. citizens and eligible legally present foreign citizens) in a defined geographic area. Give each high school (or middle or elementary school) the same amount of money in the budget and the same set of standards, and let them do their thing. This should all be decided and funded at the local (county or city) level.
That's real equal opportunity: give them the same level of facilities, the same amount of budget money, and the same set of academic standards, enforced by the numbers.
But of course, the race-baiters don't really want equal opportunity; they just want more money to push their godless, Marxist, anti-America, anti-white man agenda.
The New York Times was equally shrill and hysterical. Its “editorial”, however, was on page one, above the fold, with color pictures of the five Justices who joined or concurred with the Roberts’ opinion. The one-sidedness of the analysis of the opinion and intellectual dishonesty of the NYTimes really reveals how far this paper has fallen and the extent to which it has all but abandoned even the pretense of journalistic standards.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Last word, to go with my post: this should be coupled with a school voucher program, where the parents or legal guardians of an eligible student can pack up and take the student’s allocated funds to another school, if they are unhappy with the school that serves their geographic area.
Reverend King was a racist--if one follows the illogic of today's SF Chronicle editorial, though it surely would have lent credibility to this leftist editor in his opinion piece if the person speaking these immortal words had been white. /sarc.
.
Where does one even begin when addressing an editorial so unbelievable idiotic?
#####The U.S. Supreme Court’s twisted logic in limiting a school district’s ability to take race into account as a way to end racial segregation echoes the court’s Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling of 1896. That ruling put the imprimatur on “separate but equal” policies that allowed racial discrimination and oppression to flourish for more than half-a-century more.#####
How was Judge Roberts’ ruling twisted? What he said was that race COULDN’T be taken into account when assigning students to schools. That’s exactly what the court said in Brown, and exactly the opposite of what the court said in Plessy. Yet in the “twisted logic” of this editorial writer, Judge Roberts was the one twisting things around. In the Brown ruling, the court banned the use of race in public school admissions. That reversed Plessy, which allowed the use of race for such purposes. Brown was the law until the sixties, when “liberals” suddenly decided that they wanted to use race to force exact racial numbers in certain schools. So the court, by then more “liberal” than it was in 1954, approved the practice of court-ordered forced busing, which REQUIRED that students be assigned to schools based on their race. They claimed that in doing this they were enforcing the Brown ruling, which PROHIBITED assigning students to schools based on their race. Talk about twisted logic! This week’s ruling put the original Brown language back in place. It had nothing to do with Plessy whatsoever. To be like Plessy, the ruling would have had to sanction assigning students to schools based on race to keep them segregated. It did nothing of the sort.
#####Brown resoundingly concluded that “separate but equal” facilities have a deleterious impact on our most disadvantaged students.#####
Actually, the Brown court made that particular finding on the basis of sociology which was faulty, but I won’t get into that here. The reason I won’t is that this week’s ruling by Judge Roberts DIDN’T authorize separate but equal as governing policy. It merely held that if schools are racially imbalanced because more black people live on one side of town than on the other, and thus some schools are blacker than others and some whiter than others, that doesn’t constitute a separate but equal system. If the races are equal, as I’m sure the author of this editorial would assert with great enthusiasm, what difference does it make if there’s a racial imbalance in the schools simply because of the racial makeup of the surrounding neighborhoods? If it’s supposed to disturb us that the schools in Louisville aren’t precisely “balanced” racially because more blacks live on one side of town than on the other, shouldn’t it also disturb us that there are more blacks per capita in Mississippi public schools than in Vermont public schools? How about the racial disparity between schools in Iceland and schools in Cameroon? And what about other races? How many Chinese students are there in the public schools in Presque Isle, Maine? What Judge Roberts said this week was that race shouldn’t make any difference. The writer of this editorial seems obsessed with race and unable to think of people without dwelling on it.
#####But even schools that are separate typically are not equal. Schools in neighborhoods with a high proportion of black and other low-income minority students usually have far fewer resources than those in more affluent neighborhoods, where white students are usually concentrated.#####
Then spend the money you’d planned to spend on busing and on paying race-conscious bureaucrats and on diversity training on IMPROVING THOSE SCHOOLS. Also, if those schools in minority neighborhoods are so bad, why bus white students to them? Are you trying to harm those white kids?
#####Equally disturbing is that Thursday’s rulings were a response to a small number parents, who did not get into the schools they desired. Compare that to Brown vs. Board of Education, which at least addressed a festering problem that affected millions of Americans consigned to segregated, inferior schools.#####
Actually, it’s a pretty safe bet that the vast majority of the country opposed Brown at the time. The number of people involved in a particular case is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT, though I doubt there’s a single jurisdiction in the U.S. where most people want FORCED integration via busing and other such race-conscious methods.
#####We empathize with parents excluded from schools they desire for their children (although barring the use of race wouldn’t necessarily guarantee admission to a particular school). But their unhappiness should not be allowed to undermine one of the great advances in the fight against eliminating inequality in our schools and more broadly in greater society.#####
No, the writer doesn’t empathize with the parents whose kids were going to be hauled across town to go to school when there was a perfectly good school just up the street, all because of an idiotic racial bean count. And what “inequality” is this idiot editorialist talking about? If he means the schools are inequal in funding, then spend the money budgeted for “liberal” racial engineering such as busing and diversity education on improving those schools. How, exactly, does shifting the racial mix of the students do a damn thing to improve education? Are blacks incapable of learning unless whites are around?
#####The court’s rulings represent a triumph for advocates of “colorblind policies,” such as Ward Connerly, the former University of California regent who began the assault on the use of race in public institutions when he persuaded the Board of Regents to ban affirmative action at the university in 1995.#####
So the editorialist effectively admits that he supports the use of race in admission policies. Perhaps he could alert us to where the Brown decision authorized such a use. He’d have a hard time, since Brown, unlike Plessy but very much like this week’s ruling, BANNED the use of race for such purposes.
#####For years, Connerly has invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for people to be judged by the “content of their character” rather than the color of the skin. But wishing for a colorblind society does not make it so.#####
That’s true. Wishing doesn’t make ANYTHING so. You have to act on it, and the best way to have a colorblind society is to not pay any attention to skin color when deciding who gets into a particular school, as Connerly advocates.
#####We, too, believe people should be judged by the content of their character — in a society of equal opportunity.#####
This contradicts this editorial’s support for using race as a criterion for school assignments and admissions.
#####We are equally sure that the great civil rights leader would have been appalled by the Supreme Court’s rulings this week — and would be mourning the nation’s backward movement toward school segregation.#####
I have no doubt that Martin Luther King would oppose this ruling if he were alive today, but that’s because I don’t believe he was being truthful when he said he wanted a colorblind society. “Liberals” always say they want a colorblind society right before they advocate a policy that’s ultra-race conscious. Just like they say they’d like to see abortions rare just as they’re supporting legislation to require public financing of the practice. Just as they say they favor tough border enforcement just as they’re pushing for amnesty and encouraging their hometown to become a sanctuary city.
Luckily, Judge Roberts isn’t a phony, and when he says we should be colorblind, he means it.
typical print media
let’s see the fairness doctrine there
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