More Expert Opinion...
Regarding the impending Supreme Court decision dealing with racial school assignments in Seattle in Louisville:
Amy Stuart Wells, a Columbia University professor of sociology and education who studies desegregation, said some are watching to see how a more conservative court’s decision will square with conservatives’ long championing local control.I think Prof. Amy Stuart Wells is absolutely correct. She doesn’t “get” it.“I don’t get where the Supreme Court thinks they [sic] can come in” to these districts that opted to integrate schools “and decide that race doesn’t matter,” she said.
I wonder if she “got” it when the Warren Court thought “they” could “come in” to local school districts in Delaware, Kansas, and South Carolina and “decide that race doesn’t matter.”
Meanwhile busing advocate Gary Orfield, late of Harvard and now of UCLA, says “[w]ithout these plans, it is very likely that public schools could again become resegregated in Louisville and Seattle over time.” Perhaps, renowned expert that he is, he could explain how Seattle schools, even “over time,” could become “resegregated” when they’ve never been segregated.
Say What?
'Segregation' should not be used when discussing schools in America today. We may have a lot of rotten things going on in our educational system, but segregation is not one of them. By definition, a segregated school has to operate under a government policy mandating separation by skin color. This type of thing doesn't exist. We definitely have an absence of diversity in many of the schools but calling that 'segregation' is insulting to those elderly Americans who actually went to segregated schools in the south.
Posted by: Matthew | July 10, 2009 3:44 PM