In fact, the case is more about a school system choosing to segregate itself, rather than integrate itself. While using race, the Seattle Schools have expressed skepticism about integration the concept of a melting pot, both in word and in deed.

I have read the briefs for those parents, and it is clear that the parents seek integration, not segregation. The parents are arguing that students should NOT be assigned to schools based on their race, not that they should be segregated based on their race.

The Seattle schools are multiracial, and would be so even in the absence of race-based school assignments.

In fact, the Seattle Schools’ use of race actually PROMOTES segregation by barring certain minority groups — such as Hispanics and Native Americans — from certain schools where they are already scarce.

This is because the Seattle School District treats all minorities as being alike, so if there are, in its view, “too many” black students in a school, then the school system makes it more difficult for students from other minority groups, like Hispanics and Native Americans, to get into that school, in order to limit the overall numbers of minorities. The fact that this is so is shown in page seven of the Center for Individual Rights’ amicus brief in support of the parents.

Moreover, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out in its amicus brief, the Seattle Schools have denigrated the very idea of a “melting pot” as being outmoded and “unsuccessful,” have derided individualism as being racist, and have claimed that planning ahead (“future time orientation”) is for whites only.

The Seattle School District’s bizarre, inflammatory racial remarks have been reprinted and discussed at the Volokh Conspiracy, a widely-read law blog, and in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News.

It is the Seattle School District and its race-based student assignment policies that are hostile to integration, not the parents challenging those racial preferences.