Court School Ruling Isn't the Last Word
What does this case say about the legacy of the landmark 1954 desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education? Justice Roberts writes that he is upholding this historic decision. The dissenters say this case "undermines" the integration promised in Brown. Can the legacy still be protected under this ruling?
Not everybody has construed Brown the same way. In the 1950s there developed, shortly after Brown, a very restricted notion...an assumption that people could not exclude people based on race but they need not integrate. Over time, the courts developed a much more extensive definition of Brown that made it clear that it wasn't enough to declare that you were not discriminating, that in fact active desegregation was required. [This decision is] a very narrow, very conservative version of Brown that I don't think is in harmony of the popular view of Brown's meaning and legacy.
Justice Breyer writes that the decision "will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools." Do you think this will be the case? If so, what sorts of issues will this focus on?
The real issue for me is that on the one hand the momentum of this decision is to foster over time more segregation even in those locations that are willing to take active measures to desegregate.
But this again is a relatively small number of districts and in the larger scheme of things, the only way, I think, to seriously promote school desegregation—and it's important to realize that segregation has been increasing in schools since the 1990s began—is to go to the issue of housing segregation.
As a historian who looks at people and how people have struggled over time to make public education more inclusive, that reached its greatest success by the 1970s and 1980s following strong decisions by the court. My fear is that this decision is a step backwards from this expansive notion that public schools are here to educate all together.
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