In case you haven’t heard already, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling today that has been said to partially overturn Brown v Board of Education. Quoting a Washington Post article on the subject:
Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in his majority opinion that by classifying students by race, the school districts are perpetuating the unequal treatment the Brown decision outlawed. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Roberts said.
I’ve been under the impression that explicit consideration of a student’s skin color was tolerable when setting out plans to reverse decades of racial segregation in school systems, due to the lack of other ways to accomplish the goal. If and when segregation was unlikely to to reemerge, at that time it would be appropriate to drop race-based considerations.
This form of reverse discrimination still sucked…although I might be a bit biased because of the headaches my family had to go through to get me into a good high school within the Memphis City Schools system, rather than the troubled school I was zoned to. However, it did make sense in an environment where segregation was deemed inherently bad.
Today, though, you have to wonder whether that is still considered true. Involuntary discrimination is evil, regardless, and it would be entirely inappropriate to see a return to the bad old days of “white only” schools. However, we have had had public discussions of the potential value of tolerating public schools focused on a particular culture or for particular genders, to provide a certain level of guidance that might be valuable in overriding local social challenges.
I’m not convinced of that, but as long as the opportunity afforded is equal… then maybe there’s some sense there.
In Justice Kennedy’s opinion, agreeing in part and disagreeing in part with the plurality, he pointed out that race and other demographic attributes could still be used when deciding where to locate new schools to facilitate diversity.
But perhaps it could be argued that society has advanced to the part where considering race is no longer the best tool to combat institutional racism.
I realize that there are a number of folks who are in a tizzy over the ultra-conservative Roberts Court having the gall to overturn Brown v. Board of Education… but I tend to disagree with that assessment. I’m cautiously optimistic that we may have matured enough to quit being so hung up about skin color, and instead look towards how best to address local challenges in educating children…even if those challenges may be correlated to certain demographic traits.