...What some parents will sometimes have to say to their children under these plans is something like this: 'You will be going to PS 111 instead of PS 109 this year, and here's why: Our community is trying to make sure that we get over the racial separation that has been such a troubled part of our history. So we want to make sure we have a pretty good number of white and black children in all of our schools. It's important, even though it sometimes means you don't get your first choice of a school assignment this year.' As I read the record, that is unlikely ever to happen more than once to any child white or black. What is the big deal? ...
The court's decision is everything conservatives should abhor. It is a form of social engineering dictated from Washington. It ignores the principle of local control of schools. It sets aside the judgment of elected officials, even though nothing in the text of the Constitution requires that result, and the original understanding at the time of drafting of the 14th Amendment is solidly against it. It equates the well-intentioned and inclusive programs supported by both white and black people in Louisville and Seattle with the whole grotesquerie of racially oppressive practices which came down, as Charles Black once said, in apostolic succession from slavery and the Black Codes.
If there is a just G!d, G!d save us from our trespasses.
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