Not so long ago school districts in the South, and elsewhere, assigned students to schools by race. That was wrong. In 1954 the Supreme Court got around to saying that it was wrong. The South, however, resisted complying, and eventually, out of frustration, the federal courts insisted that … students be assigned by race (and not just in the South) — this time to promote integration — and bused where necessary to promote racial balance. This second scheme of racial assignments was also widely thought to be wrong, and eventually the combination of public opinion and the courts put an end to it.
But racial school assignment still lives, even thrives, marching now under the banner of “diversity.” As with racial preferences in college and graduate school admissions, racial school assignments are now defended by liberals as the embodiment of civil rights. Today’s New York Times reports a victory for this version of civil rights in a federal district court in Boston.
The plan that Lynn [Mass.] adopted allowed all students to attend their neighborhood schools, but considered the race of those who sought to attend a different school. In most cases, students were not allowed to move into, or out of, a racially unbalanced school if the move would increase the imbalance at either the sending or the receiving school.
I have discussed this issue before, here.
I find two things noteworthy about cases of this sort. First, they reveal quite clearly that minorities are used — often, in fact, held hostage — to provide “diversity” to others. Several of the cases linked above involve Asian-American students who were not allowed to transfer to another school because it would have reduced the number of Asian-American students at their base schools, thus depriving the other students there of a sufficient number of Asian-Americans to whom to be exposed.
The second thing I find noteworthy are the differing responses to the first thing. To me, those “diversity”-based transfer policies are thoroughly obnoxious, the essence of racialism run rampant, a reductio ad absurdam of race-based “diversity.” And yet they are applauded and defended as embodying and implementing “civil rights.”
The Massachusetts attorney general, Thomas F. Reilly, whose office argued the case on Lynn’s behalf, said: “This is a great victory for public school students and for civil rights. Lynn’s integrated elementary schools have allowed Lynn’s youngest students to develop a deep appreciation and respect for people of different races, promoting tolerance among Lynn students.”
Chinh Quang Le, an assistant counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was quoted in the Boston Globe similarly endorsing race-based assignments:
“Our hope is that this opinion will encourage more school districts to seek proactively to address issues of isolation and diversity in their schools,” Le said.
So, “civil rights” has now come to mean assigning students to schools on the basis of race and denying transfers on the basis of race, often only so that the denied student may continue to provide “diversity” to others.
I would like to see the response if this social engineering experiment were conducted on Jews. “Oh, so sorry. Little Sammy can’t transfer because we don’t have enough Jews in his school for the other students to be exposed to. If he transfers, we’ll no longer have a ‘critical mass’ of Jews there.”
I’d also like to see someone explain why such an example would be any more obnoxious than what is now routinely defended.
[sarcasm]
Comrade! You that appearances are more important than results!
[/sarcasm]
Astonishing.
If you (the many fine readers here) haven’t seen this already, a judge ruled that the Dallas public school system is now officially “desegregated.” This ending 32 years of federal stewardship.
In 1971, the “segregated” Dallas school system was approximately 60/40 white/black. Today, the “desegregated” system is over 90% black. Reportedly, school administrators opined that it is difficult to be segregated when only a handful of whites are enrolled. Say what?
This situation, quite neatly, parallels and highlights the malignant “diversity” fraud. To wit, a school full of white and black students is diverse (racially) though not “diverse.” While a black monochrome is “diverse,” though not diverse. Ideally, neither would impact a single college admission. Though when the University of Michigan attorneys argue their position, which meaning do you think they have in mind? Have a wild guess?
Responding to StuartT.
According to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/06/05/national2244EDT0815.DTL
[quote]
The district’s racial and ethnic makeup has changed markedly since the original lawsuit. White students, who once made up about 59 percent of the population, are now roughly 7 percent; the percentage of Hispanic students has grown from 7 percent to 59 percent; and the percentage of blacks has decreased slightly, from 33 percent to 32 percent.
[/quote]
The reason for the change in white enrollment is probably “white flight” and is not at all related to the reasons for the decision.
Gus M: White flight is, I’m certain, the precise reason for the drop in enrollment. Yet does this motivation in any way lessen the segregated status of the Dallas schools? Or “desegregated” if you prefer. (presuming, of course, that whites still reside in Dallas)
To put it another way, there are school districts in my local area which, through simple demographics, are comprised almost entirely of whites. These schools are typically characterized as segregated, and absolutely as “non-diverse.” To address this “problem” we have busing and/or gerrymandered districting. I personally have no qualms or cares if a school is 100% black, white, or Eskimo. But calling one “segregated” and the other “desegregated” is quite disingenuous.
Stuart,
I just meant to comment on two aspects of your post. First, you said the district had become 90% black while it hadn’t, it had become majority hispanic.
Second, there is no correlation between the judge finding the schools “desegregated” and the racial makeup of the schools. The article mentions the demographic data as an aside and doesn’t appear to be the basis for the judge finding that busing is no longer necessary. Note, I didn’t read the opinion, but the article implies that the school district did inappropriate things in the past, which is the reason it was being watched by the school.
As far as my opinion on busing, I never liked it. I lived in Prince George’s County, MD growing up. It is a majority black county now. When I was growing up, the western half (closer to D.C.) was mainly black while the eastern half was not. Therefore, where I went to school, kids were bussed from the western half to the eastern half. As a kid, I had no comprehension of the reasoning, all I knew is that certain kids had to ride the bus to school every day.
AFAIK, that county no longer buses students either.
Stuart,
I just meant to comment on two aspects of your post. First, you said the district had become 90% black while it hadn’t, it had become majority hispanic.
Second, there is no correlation between the judge finding the schools “desegregated” and the racial makeup of the schools. The article mentions the demographic data as an aside and doesn’t appear to be the basis for the judge finding that busing is no longer necessary. Note, I didn’t read the opinion, but the article implies that the school district did inappropriate things in the past, which is the reason it was being watched by the school.
As far as my opinion on busing, I never liked it. I lived in Prince George’s County, MD growing up. It is a majority black county now. When I was growing up, the western half (closer to D.C.) was mainly black while the eastern half was not. Therefore, where I went to school, kids were bussed from the western half to the eastern half. As a kid, I had no comprehension of the reasoning, all I knew is that certain kids had to ride the bus to school every day.
AFAIK, that county no longer buses students either.
Gus: Thanks for the response. I’ll cede the black/hispanic figures (I was quoting from a Dallas Morning News article which simply delineated them as white and minority), though it doesn’t alter my point.
On your second point, I am going to disagree, and strongly. In support, I submit the following:
1)”The segregation prohibited by the United States Constitution, the United States Supreme Court and federal statutes no longer exists in the DISD,” Judge Sanders intoned. If he is not considering racial makeup, then what are his criteria for this determination? He does give us some clues…
2)Judge Sanders explicitely cited the racial makeup of the school board– three blacks, two Hispanics and four whites.
3)Judge Sanders also explicitely cited the racial makeup of the faculty and administration–74.5 percent of campus administrators and 54.7 percent of teachers are minority.
He does leave us in suspense as to whether he took this last fateful step and also considered the racial makeup of the student body, so I can only speculate. What would you guess?
As for busing–it’s an abomination, to put it charitably.
The school system in our city is 90% black, following “desegregation”. I’ve often thought about the irony of that.
My husband, who lived here when all that occurred, tells me that before court-ordered bussing, kids who wanted to transfer out of a school where they were in the racial majority into a school where they would be in the minority, had their transportation provided by the city. There was no de jure segregation. There was de facto segregation then, and there is now. I guess you can’t force some things.
By the way, bussing for desegration was an abomination for sure. My husband was bussed to three different schools during his 10th grade year. Whatever the agenda was, benefitting the actual students apparently wasn’t high on the list, and they knew it. He, like a lot of other kids, dropped out after that year; at least he took the GED. Some didn’t.
Opinions in multiplicity
Susanna Cornett, on the sort of diversity we actually need: I think that I, as a Southern conservative religious woman,
A followup to the post on desegregation
Earlier this week, I gave a quick link to the story about Boston’s governmental integration plan. I didn’t have that much to say about it – but John Rosenberg of Discriminations has much, much more on the story: I find…