| News: Jefferson
County Racial Preferences It's Discrimination. It's Wrong (06-18-06)
Excerpts from the USA
Today commentary 06-18-06
by Sharon L. Browne of the Pacific Legal Foundation
"When Crystal Meredith of
Louisville tried to enroll her young son in Bloom Elementary School, she was told he
couldn't transfer out of Young Elementary, the school where he was already assigned.
"Why? Not because of his
grades or interests. It was because he is white. As a federal district court later
recounted the facts, he 'was denied admittance because his transfer to Bloom would have
had an adverse effect on Young's racial composition.'
"Did this happen in 1950, when
students were routinely barred from certain schools on grounds of skin color? No, it
was 2002. Called 'managed choice,' the race-based policy is the district's attempt
to achieve the so-called 'right" racial balance
of students, ensuring that schools have at least 15% African-American students and no more
than 50% African-American students.
"Not surprisingly, Ms.
Meredith objected to her son being turned away from a public school because of his skin
color. She filed suit, arguing that he had been denied his equal protection rights
under the U.S. Constitution.
"This month, the U.S. Supreme
Court sent a hopeful message when it agreed to hear this case and a similar one brought by
Seattle parents, setting the stage for a decision on the constitutionality of these
practices.
"Some say these race-based
policies are about diversity. They're not. They amount to blatant and illegal
racial discrimination.
"Sadly, Louisville and Seattle
school administrators aren't alone. Nearly 1,000 school districts today are using
race-based policies to assign students.
"Supporters of these policies
say that getting a balance of different races in each school can help the academic
performance of minority kids. That claim is questionable.
"Judges opposing Seattle's
race-based assignments cited this passage from a report co-authored by George Mason
University social scientist David Armor: '... racial composition by itself has little
effect on raising the achievement of minority students
or on reducing the minority-white achievement gap. Some studies show that there is
no relationship at all between black achievement and racial composition ... and other
studies show that there is no relationship between the black-white achievement gap and
racial composition.'
"The high court's decision to
take these cases is particularly important since lower courts have misapplied prior
decisions involving higher education institutions, using those rulings to wrongly justify
discriminatory practices in K-12 public schools.
"The court has repeatedly made
a clear distinction between universities and their academic freedom to exchange ideas and
K-12 public schools where students are required to attend. Further, the court has said
that race cannot be the sole factor in categorizing students, yet the Louisville and
Seattle K-12 schools have used race mechanically.
"In 2003, the Supreme Court
rejected the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions point formula that was even
less racially focused than the systems in Louisville and Seattle, where students have been
assigned to schools solely based on their color.
"More than 50 years after the
landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, our nation's justices can put an end to
government-ordered discrimination policies.
"In 2006, decades after the
civil rights movement, no one in America should be judged by skin color. That's a message
that everyone, from school administrators to children, needs to hear."
Sharon L. Browne is a
principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a non-profit, public-interest
organization based in Sacramento that filed briefs in both cases before the Supreme Court.
-- Excerpts from from
the USA Today commentary 06-18-06
by Sharon L. Browne of the Pacific Legal Foundation
Last Known Link:
USA Today 06-18-06 |
