A SUPREME COURT OUT OF TOUCH
AND WHY DIVERSITY IS NOT A DIRTY WORD

Wait a minute. We thought the 14th amendment was added to our Constitution to reject segregation and to bring together a country that had been ripped apart and then divided by a brutal civil war. And we thought that Brown v. Board upheld these goals for our children's schools. And this administration wanted "big government" to step back and let local communities have more control over their own futures. So then, what gives?

Why is the current Supreme Court hostile toward two of our nation's school districts that took measured, minor, local and voluntary steps toward diversity and integration in grades K-12?

All one needs to do is look at a simple timeline of racial oppression in this country to realize that it is not just silly but dangerous to think we can or should "ignore" race or that diversity in the schools is a "done deal." 

Wall knew Justice Scalia was a little, um, unhinged, but when trying to get at the root of what "segregation" actually means in the Seattle case, Scalia compares public schools to country clubs:

"I mean, you know, if you belong to a country club, that – that has 15 percent black members, I could not consider that a segregated country club. So what you're complaining about is, is not segregation in any, in any reasonable sense of the word." (page 37)

I don't know whether this is worse, but in the Louisville case, Scalia suggests that the motivations of a school board trying to make its schools diverse are malicious: 

"I don't think there's a compelling reason in doing it [desegregating] at all. They are doing it for a racially selfish reason. They want their constituency, they want the 80 percent of black students, to be in the better schools." (page 36)

Um. If it were actually fiction or funny, we'd be laughing. Seriously, though, our children's future is at stake. Diversity works. You didn't just hear it from us.

For more on the mixed messages from the Supreme Court, go here.