Last Week in Review: -1 for Integration

Also last week, on my birthday, June 28, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that schools in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. cannot seek integration with plans that explicitly consider race. So...how else do you achieve integration? That's like saying you can't plan for mixed-sex schools by considering gender. If you, as some programs do, discard "quotas" but reach instead for "goals," such as seeking a student body that reflects the population around it, then what's wrong with having a 50-percent white student body if the school is in a 50-percent white city? The programs in the states mentioned limited transfers on the basis of race and used race as a "tiebreaker" for admission to certain schools based on the racial composition of each school.

Chief Justice Roberts said such programs were “directed only to racial balance, pure and simple,” a goal he said was forbidden by the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. I don't understand his logic there. Racial balance is NOT equal protection? Seeking an integrated school body is unconstitutional?

So what, then, is a better way to ensure integration? Segregation is our inclination; we only come in contact with different people for a reason. Think about it. As a kid, if I didn't have to go to church or school I would only know my family. Someone forced me to do both things. Perhaps the only way to get around that is to plan schools based on economic income. Because you'll see poor blacks and Latinos in the same schools, no problem. And blacks with money move to the suburbs and raise assimilated kids who are as scared of their own people as Paris Hilton would be walking in Detroit. I think what the Court is ultimately saying is forced integration is not necessary. That people should go to school wherever they want; they should not be forced to interact with anyone whom does not naturally live, work or attend school with them. I can buy that, but then the only thing you'd know about black people is what you saw on BET. How scary is that?

According to The New York Times, Chief Justice John Roberts said, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." But Justice Stephen Breyer in the dissenting opinon said, "This is a decision this court and this nation will come to regret." He also said, so eloquently, that the Court "would substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation." In other words, the floodgates are open. Affirmative what? Kiss that goodbye.

And you already know Clarence Thomas was in the majority.