Is it too extreme to claim, as I just have, that the Los Angeles Times supports racial exclusion?
Perhaps, but my claim is no more extreme or outrageous than the following hed and lede to a recent LAT story on the Seattle/Louisville racial assignment cases to be heard by the Supreme Court this fall:
Bush Administration Opposes Integration Plans
The solicitor general urges the Supreme Court to scrap schools’ voluntary programs that exclude some students because of their race.
By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer
August 25, 2006
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has urged the Supreme Court to strike down voluntary school integration programs across the nation that exclude some students because of their race.
I continue to find that use of “voluntary” fascinating. According to the way it is used in defense of these racial assignment policies, of course, the racial exclusion formerly practiced by Alabama, Mississippi, et. al., was also “voluntary.” Nor, so far as I know, have the defendant school boards in Seattle and Louisville introduced as evidence sign-up sheets where the white, Asian, etc., students volunteer to be excluded from some schools because of their race. And if there are such sign-up sheets, the plaintiffs in the cases refused to sign.
I promised, here, to have something to say about briefs filed in these cases. I haven’t forgotten, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Apparently, voluntary refers only to whether local officials act on their own instigation.
The preferences of the parents are somehow regarded as irrelevant, as if they were a different species.