Ferguson vindicated?

[fancycwabs]

I suppose that commenting on history as it's occurring is probably unwise, but really, the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education warrants some commentary.

I started elementary school in 1976, twenty-two years after the decision was handed down, and I went to what was a de facto white school in Mobile, Alabama--we had a black fourth-grade teacher, and the attached middle school had several black teachers (and a black assistant principal), but zero black students. Across town, there were a couple of "black" schools. These had not been set up by anything other than the gerrymandering of school districts, but the disparity existed until I graduated high school in 1988 from a more diverse school. Back then, we learned about Brown v. Board of Education in high school, and while I didn't wonder it at the time, I now wonder if the irony of those lessons was lost on students at Mary G. Montgomery (a "white" school) or Blount (a "black" school).

The Mobile County school board took a number of steps to try to rectify the problem without resorting to bizarre school district maps, mostly by adding special programs to the "black" schools in order to give them a specialized curriculum which would encourage white kids to make a special effort to attend the black schools, and (presumably) give the black students already at those schools a leg up on education. This was a qualified success, and resulted in slightly-more integrated schools over time.

That practice is probably illegal now, thanks to yesterday's decision.

In Memphis, the schools are somewhat more integrated, as are the neighborhoods--but I'm somewhat concerned about what the future holds in those pockets of the country where racism is still fairly rampant, and Clarence Thomas would think twice before walking down certain streets. Maybe he's not been to those places, or would prefer to pretend that they don't exist. Nevertheless, thanks to him and his associates, the state of education for African Americans took a pretty significant step backwards.

Comments

[genarti]

I hadn't heard about that ruling.

It's a complicated issue, of course, and everybody's got something of a point, but I don't really think the state of race relations in this country is such that this ruling is anything but a step backward.

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Brown v. Board of Education was not reversed by any means. Don't misrepresent what happened here, regardless of whether it was the correct decision or not.

What they do in NYC public schools seems to be best. In elementary schools, what school you go to is dependent on where you live, but in middle school or Junior high school, you can get into a magnet school (some are lottery schools, some are based on merit), but once you get to High School, you can go to any school in the city if you get accepted to one of its programs. I went to Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens (a once mostly white, now more and more Asian area) and the school population was very diverse because there was a Math & Science program, a Law & Humanities program (which I was in), and a dance program.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

The establishment of those "magnet schools" is typically race-based, in order to get white students to go to what demographically is a minority school. The funding for those schools is allotted based on their having a black or Hispanic or Asian majority in the school, unreflective of the population at large. Because this funding is established based on race, the Supreme Court has declared it illegal.

How is Brown v. Board of Education not reversed, again?

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Brown v. Board of Education was essentially negating the "separate but equal" decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Brown made it illegal for public accommodations, such as schools, to be segregated based on race.

The woman who brought this case before the Supreme Court, Crystal Meredith, was against the way the Louisville school system works for that very reason; her son, because he is white, was not allowed to transfer to a school closer to her home. The court held that this was unconstitutional on the very basis of Brown v. Board of Education, that deliberately segregating schools based on race (even if you call it "integration") is unconstitutional.

What does this mean for the way cities integrate their schools? It means they can't use race as a factor. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing -- it forces them to concentrate on other things, like economic status or academic achievement. It also requires schools to change the status quo and improve themselves, whether they be in the inner-city or the middle-class suburbs. Integrating public schools is a great thing, but it doesn't have to be done based on race, which is what this decision is saying. In NYC, which has very diverse schools, it is not based on race at all.

Anyway, whether you agree with this decision or what I have to say is irrelevant to this simple fact: Brown v. Board of Education has not been overturned by any stretch of the imagination.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

I object to this argument on two equally important counts:

1. Diversifying schools was the impetus of Brown v. Board of Education, and the decision made the Louisville schools more segregated, not less. Saying that mixing black and white students at the same school via busing is "segregation" (and then implying that integration was a synonym for segregation) is faulty logic, and intellectually dishonest.

2. His Mom's name is Crystal Meth?!?

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Diversifying the schools was the result of Brown, not the impetus. The impetus was an illegal, deliberate segregation of schools on the basis of race, relegating blacks to an inferior education. The decision was that "separate but equal" was, by definition, not equal. It made the maintenance of separate schools (and other public facilities) for blacks and whites illegal.

This recent decision is not about white parents who don't want black children in their children's schools (or vice versa), it's about an overzealous integration program that means children, on the basis of their race (for the sake of diversity), must travel clear across down to get to school every day. One anecdote in an article cited a little girl who gets on a bus for 75 minutes every day to get to school. When a parent is told their child cannot attend a school closer to their home because of the color of their skin, that is a sign that it's gone too far, IMHO.

Nevertheless, the important thing to note in all this is BROWN V. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION HAS NOT BEEN OVERTURNED. It's not an opinion, it's just a fact. If they wanted to overturn that ruling, they would not be shy about saying so outright. It is still illegal to maintain separate schools for different races. "Separate But Equal" is still unconstitutional. Period. Which is really my only point.

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Oh, and please don't ever use the phrase "intellectually dishonest" toward me ever again, as it rarely means anything besides "I don't agree with your argument, and furthermore, you suck."

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

Did I misread something or did you claim, somehow, that integration = segregation? I don't know what else to call that.

However, I will concede that the boards decision didn't overturn Brown v. Board of Education, per se. It overturned Singleton v. Jackson, the case that actually desegregated schools in the South by setting a deadline, instead of "with all deliberate speed."

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Er, no. I didn't say integration = segregation. I said that (or maybe I meant that) when integration turns into a quota system, it may as well be segregation, and it is just as illegal.

And you are missing what I'm trying to say. The state of the school systems at the time of those decisions was different; anywhere south of New Jersey, it was mandatory that schools be separate for whites and blacks.

Those cases say it is illegal to have a Black School and a White School, and this case says it is illegal to decide which school a child attends based on their race. One does not contradict the other. This decision is not going to result in schools being set up separately for whites and blacks.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

The particular case I cited was decided in 1970, some 16 years after Brown. It said that if the schools weren't being integrated naturally by the the laissez-faire system that the Southern states were using, then they were to bus white students to black schools, and vice versa, in order to achieve integration, because the schools were segregated by the nature of the neighborhoods being segregated. These segregated schools still existed in 1988, because of continued fighting over cases such as the one the Supreme Court decided the other day.

I cannot speak for the schools in New Jersey or New York, but I know what the schools were like in Alabama twenty years ago, and I know what they'd be like today without cases like the ones the Supreme Court just overturned.

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

There is no such case called Singleton v. Jackson heard by the Supreme Court. The case you cited has nothing to do with the history of this case. If you'd like a list of the cases involved, Wikipedia has a very comprehensive article.

The laws about desegregation are far more complicated than the laws on segregation. The laws on segregation are thus: it's illegal. Period.

The laws on desegregation, however, are very complicated, because if it's done incorrectly, it becomes a quota system based on race, and that's really not any better. There are specific rules on how you can determine where particular students go to school based on race, and these are the "narrowly tailored" and "compelling interest" requirements of the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court held that these busing programs did not meet these requirements, and furthermore they failed to find other alternatives for integration, rather than race.

Let me emphasize, as many of the decisions did, the distinction between racial imbalance and segregation. One is legal and one is not. And especially now, as more and more black families are entering the middle class, we need to find other methods besides race to make an equitable education system for all: white, black, poor, and not.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

Singleton v. Jackson was decided by the fifth circuit court of appeals (as I recall), and it was left at that. That's probably why it's not in Wikipedia, but hey, if it's not on Wikipedia, it must not exist, right?

However, that particular case had quite a bit of relevance to the day to day operations of desegregation in my school district, and the school district in which my parents taught, so I have a bit of familiarity with the case, which was referred to as the "Birdie Mae Davis" case in Mobile. The case was rolled into the collection of cases which became Singleton v. Jackson. Why it didn't reach the Supreme court, I don't know--they may have declined to hear it, or the losing party might have lacked the resources or wherewithal to appeal, but it is both real and relevant.

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Why are you being hostile and rude over this? I didn't say it didn't exist, I said it was not a Supreme Court Case.

Be that as it may, I would love to read the decision on Singleton v. Jackson, if you could find me a link.

Beyond that, I feel my original point has been proven and we can move on, yes?

[luckimunki.livejournal.com]

Also let me add that I don't necessarily agree with the opinion of the court, I'm just trying to set the facts straight here -- for both of us.