Round-Up
At ACSBlog, Martin Magnusson discusses last week’s argument in the Rockwell case here.
In this post at PrawfsBlawg, Jeremy Blumenthal highlights this new paper by Peter Hook called “Visualizing the Topic Space of the United States Supreme Court.”
Deepak Chopra, writing at the Huntington Post, adds his voice to the discussion about school integration here.
In the Evans-Novak Political Report, Robert Novak speculates here about what might happen if there is a Supreme Court vacancy in the next two years (scroll down to “Bush Administration” section; via Bench Memos).
Kenneth Jost of CQ Weekly discusses here the legal status of Christmas displays.
Finally, Emily Bazelon of Slate has her thoughts about recent developments in the detainee cases here.
Discussion of school integration would be enriched by also reading two letters to the editor in today’s Legal Times.
One interesting letter is from Seattle school teacher Rick Nagle, explaining how the Seattle Schools’ use of race actually undermines integration.
Nagle notes “that Seattle’s plan lets each student make two racial designations and change either at any time,” in order to manipulate the student-assignment process; “that Seattle established an African American Academy knowing that it would be segregated; that two high schools, each more than 90 percent nonwhite, may actually become more segregated; that the oversubscribed schools are already integrated by any common-sense understanding;” and “that whites and nonwhites are denied unique educational opportunities based on their race and are acutely aware of that.” Thus, Seattle’s use of race stigmatizes students and contributes to a “politics of racial hostility.”
The other interesting letter is from John Rosenberg, who points out the parents’ challenging the use of race in the cases pending before the Supreme Court are seeking the same thing that the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education were seeking: the right to attend a neighborhood school without being excluded on the basis of race:
Rosenberg points out that “the complaint of Linda Brown, the Topeka third-grader who gave Brown its name, was that she was barred from attending her neighborhood school and forced to attend a distant school because of her race. Ethel Louise Belton, the 10th-grader whose case was consolidated with Brown’s, was also assigned to a school nine miles away in Wilmington, rather than allowed to attend a school a short walk from her home, because of her race. Even less well remembered is that Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971),” commonly cited in support of race-based busing, actually “began when James Swann was not allowed to attend the school closest to his home because of his race.”
The above letters in the Legal Times can be found at http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/pov_letters.jsp .
It’s worth noting that Seattle’s use of race isn’t likely to be interpreted as promoting a melting pot or teaching that race is only skin deep, as Justice Stevens thought might be the result of racial diversity in his dissent in the 1986 Wygant case (where the Supreme Court barred a school board from using race in faculty selection, which the school board argued would promote “diversity” and provide minority role models).
Indeed, since the Seattle Schools have claimed that the “concepts such as a melting pot” are failures, it is likely that students will take away from Seattle’s use of race the lesson that race matters and that race is not skin deep, contrary to Justice Stevens’ rationale for using race in the Wygant case.
That is especially true given that the Seattle Schools have publicly claimed that it is racist to expect minorities to plan ahead the way whites do; that only whites can be racists; and that “individualism” — treating students as individuals rather than as members of competing racial groups — is a form of “cultural racism.”
The Seattle Schools’ promotion of racial stereotypes means that their use of race is even more stigmatizing than would otherwise be the case.
(The above racist claims by the Seattle Schools have been described in detail in newspapers such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News, in George Will’s syndicated column, and in web blogs such as Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish and Eugene Volokh’s law blog The Volokh Conspiracy).
Comment by Hans Bader — December 18, 2006 @ 10:42 am
Regarding Novak’s report:
Why would JPS want to be replaced by a Republican president? Even if he somehow thinks that a Democratic President is most likely to appoint a Brennan-mold liberal, I highly doubt he would expect to get lucky under a Republican to the extent that his replacement would be anyone to the left of Powell. Didn’t Stevens agree with Brennan more than with Powell?
Comment by Jacob Berlove — December 18, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
In my above comment (the first on this page), I discussed a letter in the Legal Times by “Rick Nagle,” a Seattle school teacher, explaining how the Seattle Schools’ use of race actually undermines integration, providing an additional reason for why their race-based student assignment plan is unconstitutional.
I misspelled the name of the author of that letter. His name is Rick “Nagel,” not Rick “Nagle.”
Comment by Hans Bader — December 19, 2006 @ 11:01 am
Deepak Chopra equates “racial balance” with desegregation in his attempt to justify the Seattle and Jefferson County Schools’ use of race in student assignment.
But neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court defines desegregation that way. Indeed, both the Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that using race to promote racial balance is disfavored and has nothing to do with desegregation.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act (in Title IV, Section 401(b)) declares that:
“‘Desegregation’ means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but ‘desegregation’ shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.”
Similarly, the Supreme Court stated that “racial balance is not to be achieved for its own sake” in Freeman v. Pitts (1992), and that “racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional” in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).
Desegregation is not the reason why the Seattle Schools are using race. They aren’t seeking an integrated melting pot of the sort advocated by Justice Stevens in his dissent in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986), where the Supreme Court barred the use of race in faculty layoffs.
Indeed, the Seattle Schools claim that the very idea of a melting pot is a failure, and their web site derides “unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot.”
The Seattle Schools have also publicly claimed that it is racist to expect minorities to plan ahead the way whites do; that only whites can be racists; and that “individualism” — treating students as individuals rather than as members of competing racial groups — is a form of “cultural racism.”
Thus, it makes little sense to defer to the Seattle Schools about whether to use race, as the Ninth Circuit did in its controversial decision upholding their use of race. They have not demonstrated the sort of good judgment that warrants any deference from the courts.
Comment by Hans Bader — December 27, 2006 @ 11:10 am