I don’t know how this will finally play out but there is a case before the Supreme Court right now, actually it may be two cases, asking for an answer to the question, “Is the use of race to determine admittance to a public grade school (K-12) constitutional?” It looks like there is a very good chance that the answer will be a divisive “no”. Divisive in the sense that it seems that Justice Kennedy may be the one casting the deciding opinion.

I have mixed feelings on this as I do many things but I have to agree that, under the circumstances being considered, using race as a deciding factor is not constitutional. Government can’t use things like race, sex or religion as a determining factor in assigning a public benefit. I can understand the desire for school systems to do this and I can even agree that it is probably good for society but it just doesn’t appear to be constitutional to me.

Public schools can’t discriminate based on things outside of the control of the individual. There is this little thing called the 14th amendment that prevents that. Everyone is guaranteed  equal protection under the law. Public schools can only discriminate on the basis of merit. That means grades or abilities.

What makes this difficult on public schools is that the constitution does not prevent individuals from discriminating based on anything when choosing where to live. This means that if people prefer living around people of similar cultural or racial backgrounds they have every right to do so. A lot of schools are under the gun to promote cultural and racial diversity. When the ideal model is neighborhood schools the fact that people tend to live in neighborhoods of people just like themselves then methods for creating this cultural and racial diversity becomes very difficult, if not impossible, while also keeping the model of neighborhood schools.

There was a time when schools were segregated even when the neighborhood those schools served were not. This practice is what led to the current predicament schools have found themselves in. While it seems fair to use race as a way to reverse the problem that segregated schools caused its really a different problem now. It isn’t the schools that are discriminating, its the individuals. So the solution rests with addressing the individuals, not the schools.

2 Comments

• 

  By Felix Miller, 12/7/2006 @ 4:21 pm

  Larry said:

  …if people prefer living around people of similar cultural or racial backgrounds they have every right to do so.

  That is the problem exactly. We have a society of largely segregated neighborhoods, in spite of Fair Housing Laws. Given the relatively lower ability of minority families to spend as much on housing as most of the majority, there is an economic factor guaranteeing neighborhoods that are segregated.

  This is a bad situation, limiting the interaction between disparate groups within the population. Each group remains isolated from the other, and the sense of community is not fostered.

  Given the composition of the SCOTUS, I expect there will be at least some limiting of the forced integration of schools.
• 

  By Larry D. Burton, 12/7/2006 @ 8:41 pm

  Felix, I have a few things to say about the developers that build subdivisions that have all houses selling for about the same price. I have even more to say about the developers that clump similar priced subdivisions together. In my opinion this is destroying society and going a long ways toward destroying our environment.

  Maybe I’ll say those things later on tonight if I feel wordy enough.

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment