"The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation’s schools to integrate. Today, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality."
"Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously."
'Today, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated."
Click here for the full editorial.
Also, click here for an informative Linda Greenhouse analysis in the NYT.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
New York Times Editorial ("Resegregation Now") Blasts Roberts and Majority
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2 comments:
Justice Stephen Breyer said that Brown v Board of Education would be undermined by the ruling. “It reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. It distorts precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, etc."
Poppycock! Who says the status quo is really working for all American chldren?
The question that this really raises is whether we as a country have the stomach to really fund public education in an equal manner for all students to make sure that even the less fortunate receive the same educational opportunities as those that are more privileged.
I agonize over the ethical dilemma of this choice as I am a taxpayer in a high performing, suburban school district (where I can chose to live because of the high quality schools) but I am also a school board director that wants all children across my district and my state to have the same opportunities as we give our students. This is a very hard issue. We should debate this dilemma further.
Education nowadays means more than public or private schools, means more than high school or college, it means a lot of other courses that people could follow in order to stand up professionally: business schools for example.
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