BACK TO BROWN (Reinhard)

The school districts told American children they could not attend certain public schools because of the color of their skin. Those are the essentials at the core of the Seattle and Louisville race cases the U.S. Supreme Court decided last week.

Those school districts were not discriminating on the basis of race in order to remedy the effects of past segregation. The Supreme Court allows such racial sorting if it's narrowly tailored and the only desegregation option. But Seattle never had segregated public schools, and Louisville came out from under a court-ordered desegregation decree in 2000. Still, school officials in these cities told children they could not attend certain schools because of the color of their skin.

Now, let's turn to Brown v. the Board of Education, the landmark 1954 case that struck down segregated, "separate-but-equal" public schools -- because some critics of last week's ruling have convinced themselves that the court's 5-4 majority rejection of the two cities' race-based systems somehow buries Brown.

Here were the fact at the core of Brown: The Topeka, Kan., school district told its student that they could not attend certain public schools because of the color of their skin.

Here's a harder question: How can the Supreme Court reject schoolhouse race-based discrimination in Brown and reject schoolhouse race-based discrimination in the Seattle/Louisville cases -- and the latter be a rejection of the former?

The fact that the discriminated-against schoolkids in the Brown ruling were African American, and that the discriminated-against schoolkids in the Seattle and Louisville ruling were white may be a swell explanation for some. But it shouldn't cut it for anyone who values logic, consistency or equal treatment under the law.

"[T]he Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race."

Those aren't the words of Chief Justice John Roberts' words in last week's majority opinion. Or the words of Justices Clarence Thomas or Anthony Kennedy in their separate concurrences. No, those spot-on words are from the plaintiff's brief in Brown.

It's the position Chief Justice Earl Warren's court held 53 years ago. It's the position the Roberts' court held last Thursday.

Critics of Thursday's ruling argue that schools should be able to assign students by race. These local communities' programs are voluntary, critics say. (Yeah, for everyone except the kids discriminated against on the basis of race.) The districts act with the best of intentions -- their race-based policies are an effort to make up for racial imbalances in housing and bring "racial diversity" to schools.

But Brown has never been a license for school boards, however high-minded they think they're being, to impose willy-nilly their vision of the proper racial balance. Not when that means discriminating against kids on the basis of their race and skin color. Not when it means treating kids as part of this or that racial group rather than as individuals.

Roberts made short work of Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent. His money quote: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

But Thomas' concurrence blistered the retreat-from-Brown nonsense. Brown prohibited segregation, he wrote, not racial imbalance. "Racial imbalance is not segregation, and the mere incantation of terms like resegregation and remediation cannot make up the difference . . . In the context of public schooling, segregation is the deliberate operation of a school system to carry out a governmental policy to separate pupils in schools."

Seattle and Louisville were trying to bring races together instead of keep them apart, but they still made student assignment decisions based solely on race. "What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today," Thomas stated.

Indeed, he argued that dissenters are the ones abandoning Brown. The plaintiffs in Brown endorsed the colorblind Constitution that Thomas favors; the defendants hewed to the Supreme Court's 1896 "separate-but-equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. "The segregationists in Brown embraced the arguments the Court endorsed in Plessy. Though Brown decisively rejected those arguments, today's dissent replicates them to a distressing extent."

Of course, fans of today's race-based "diversity" plans think they know better. Thomas, to his credit, will have none of it: "Even if current social theories favor classroom racial engineering as necessary to 'solve the problems at hand,' the Constitution enshrines principles independent of social theories. Indeed, if our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories."

A great decision for the principle of equality under the law and a colorblind Constitution. A great decision as we prepare to celebrate a Declaration of Independence that says, "All men are created equal."

Justice Breyer can shake his head and roll his eyes all he wants to but Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas are 100% correct in their comments on this ruling.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Let it ring throughout the land. Racial hatred is, if anything, worse than ever after decades of "affirmative action."

I agree with the decision 100%. I remember, as I got out of the military in 1975, I applied with several companies, South Western Bell Telephone being one, and was told they wanted to hire me but they couldn’t at that time because I was not a minority. Thank you governmental mandated affirmative action. I had applied, scored high on their preemployment test, did very well on the interview and was then told I was the wrong color. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination.

My son experienced the same thing after getting out of the military and getting a college degree in the 90’s. It leaves one with a very helpless feeling.

I wrote state and federal senators and reps and got lip service, they would look into it, blah blah blah. Never heard a word more.

Mr. Kennedy’s separate ruling means that Justice Robert’s common-sense maxim is not yet law of the land. Because of Kennedy’s half-steps of a ruling race can still be used to exclude a student from a school.

lib/dems are always creating new victim groups....isn’t this the reason they favor affirmative action...

yet...the hero of heroes...mlk stated...his dream was his children being judged on the content of their character not the color of their skin!!!!!

lib/dem arguements....as plausible as a fart in the wind!!!

Mr. Kennedy’s separate ruling means that Justice Robert’s common-sense maxim is not yet law of the land.

Kennedy joined most of Roberts's opinion, thereby making most of Roberts's opinion the Opinion of the Court. Where he didn't join was where Roberts (along with Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) rejected the use of race anytime by any type of school. Kennedy stated that race could be used as a plus factor (think Bakke). Kennedy's opinion doesn't void Roberts's opinion.

Kennedy's concurrence limit this ruling to blocking busing (which always is based solely on race). As for the race in education in general, we will have to wait for Kennedy, or one of the Liberals, to be replaced by a Conservative.

Right.

I hadn't seen the busing aspect discussed. Can you elaborate?

It is a very emotional issue for me, personally, that is on behalf of my late dad, who was a school superintendent in the district the state Department of Education decided to make an example of. He was caught between the flood force of the liberal NYC media at its rampant peak, and the rock of a bureaucracy hell bent on a power grab.

He, my dad, wanted to preserve some semblance of neighborhood schools, but the state, evidently, wanted both he and the concept of local neighborhood schools broken.

I hadn't seen the busing aspect discussed. Can you elaborate?

Certainly. These cases were about busing. That's how these school districts were achieving "racial balancing." Kennedy agreed with Roberts that treating individual students differently based on their race is Unconstitutional. The portions of the Roberts's and Kennedy's opinions that deal with racial classifications in education in general are arguably dicta* since these cases were only about busing. All that matters is that regarding the issue before the Court (busing) the vote was 5-4 against its Constitutionality.

*These are parts of a court opinion that deal with an issue that is not before that court. Dicta is not considered precedent.

That's just about forty years too late save my Dad's job, and to vouch that he was right.

Thanks for the explanation.

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