[NOTE: This is a follow up to last week's column]
During the Supreme Court hearing on the voluntary school integration cases heard last Monday, I was struck by a question posed by Justice Antonin Scalia. For the past week, I have grappled with the question and its implication, struggling to figure out how I might have answered it.
Frank Mellen, the attorney representing the Jefferson County (Kentucky) Public Schools, was attempting to make a distinction between the use of race confronted in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the use of race by the JCPS plan aimed at maintaining a racial balance in schools of between 15 and 50 percent African American students. Brown was different, Mr. Mellen argued, because there existed two entirely distinct school systems, one white and one black. “That stigmatized the black children. It sent the message that the white race was dominant and superior and that the black race was inferior.”
At the word “stigmatized,” Justice Scalia piped up. He wondered whether the assumption underlying the JCPS plan was not itself stigmatizing. The JCPS plan, Justice Scalia said, was “based on the notion that a school that is predominantly black or overwhelmingly black cannot be as good as a school that is predominantly white or overwhelmingly white.” The potentially stigmatizing message sent by that assumption, Justice Scalia asserts, is similar to the message in Brown – that the white race is superior and the black race is inferior.
What Justice Scalia’s question exposes is that the JCPS plan to provide a quality education to all of its students is based upon the assumption that quality educational may not be available for students in a mostly-minority school. That assumption, Justice Scalia suggests and I agree, is potentially stigmatizing.
But the assumption Justice Scalia is so concerned about is not really an assumption at all, but a statistically-verified fact. Students in the typical mostly-minority schools do not receive the same quality educational opportunities as students in mostly-white schools or racially-balanced schools. This is measured in terms of teacher experience, teacher qualification, access to honors courses, diversity of curriculum, and many other ways.
So, after a week of wondering what made Justice Scalia wrong, I’ve concluded that he is actually right. Yes, it is stigmatizing to assume that black schools will not be as good as white schools. But, it is also stigmatizing – and far more damaging, in my opinion – to ignore the fact that mostly-minority schools typically are not as good as white schools and then confine black students to those mostly-minority schools.
In an ideal world, plans like that in JCPS would not have to exist to ensure that the most students receive a quality education. But we do not live in an ideal world. In the world we live in, Justice Scalia is likely to vote to strike down the JCPS plan. He will do so knowing that the effect will likely be an increase in the number of minority students attending mostly-minority schools. And he will do so knowing that mostly-minority schools in the United States in 2006 (the real world) do not typically provide equal educational opportunities to their students. In effect, his vote will be to send more minority students to schools providing fewer educational opportunities.
Justice Scalia would probably respond to such a charge that as a Supreme Court justice, it is not his job to consider the consequences of his decisions, but rather to interpret the Constitution. In other words, it is the world that must change, not his interpretation of the Constitution, if this unfortunate result for minority students is to be avoided.
This is precisely what makes Justice Scalia’s interpretation so dangerous. The fictional world for which he interprets law – a colorblind and ideal world – is appealing. It just is not the world in which the effect of this decision will be felt. But though Justice Scalia’s intepretation can wear the clothes of colorblindness and loyalty to the Constitution, it will achieve the exact same real world result as Jim Crow school segregation: separate and unequal schools with minority children being left behind.
4 comments:
So should the Supreme Court rule that JCPS's may take race into account until the statistics show that minority schools produce the same results as white schools? How do you feel about vouchers? If the education of minority children is your primary concern, wouldn't allowing minority children to attend private schools override any other concern as to the constitutionality of vouchers?
Two responses to two questions:
How the Supreme Court should rule - I'd like to see a decision that incorporates the reality that no plan that does not use race has been shown to produce the kind of racially-balanced and more-or-less equal schools that currently exist in Jefferson County. Until such a plan exists, the board should be allowed to use race as one factor among many others - as it does now - in making assignments. Your question basically asks - if separate really were equal, would it be unconstitutional? I'm not sure how to answer that one because I don't know that separate ever will really be equal in my lifetime.
On vouchers - I do not really have a problem with giving people vouchers. If we could use vouchers to get every child in the country a quality education, that would be fantastic. My fear is not the establishment of a state religion, but the fact that the more students that leave the public schools, the potentially worse off the students left in those schools would be. If we can find some balance there, I'm open to the idea of vouchers.
Are you really certain that there are such clear benefits to forced diversity. Thomas Sowell, who has been writting and studying this subject for many years does not believe these benefits exist. He says that there is no hard evidence that mixing and matching black and white students "produces either educational or social benfits". He also says that after decades of busing the test scores of black students bused to white schools have not shot up. The hard evidence is that "students of all races can succeed or fail in schools that are racially mixed or racially unmixed".
While the majority of all black schools under perform, there certainly are all or almost all black schools that perform better than average. Your column prompted me to do a search on this subject and I found many examples of black schools that perform above average. One particular public charter school in Raleigh N.C.caught my eye. It was a 98% black elementary school, with students from low socio-economic backgrounds, 70% single parent (Moms), school funding of $5200.00 per student compared with $8800. per student in the district, open to all students, and performing above the national average. This school was clearly doing something right. ( For one thing, inspite of its low funding it was paying teachers significantly more than surrounding schools.) Unfortunately, diversity programs were about to force this school to bring in more white kids or lose their charter. Although the school was open to all students, it was located in an inner city, low income, predominately black neighborhood with little chances of attracting many white students.
Now of course my silly little bit of research proves nothing other than there do exist all black schools that for whatever reason perform at or above the national average. We should learn what they may be doing right. If forced diversity programs really produce benfits for whites and blacks that exceed the costs, then I am all for it. If these programs do not produce the benefits they claim then we should lighten up on the dogma and develop other stategies.
As you acknowledge, there are certainly examples of mostly-minority schools that do very well for their students. I agree - these are schools we should be studying to see what they are doing right. Unfortunately, these are the exception rather than the rule. If what you are saying is that not all black students will be disadvantaged by going to mostly-minority schools, I think you are certainly correct. However, the vast majority of black students that attend mostly-minority schools receive a below average education.
As for the benefits of having integrated schools, here is what the research I am relying on says: (1) Educational benefits for black students while in school - measured by modest (not huge) positive effects on the achievement levels of black students that attend desegregated schools and no adverse effect on white achievement. These gains are strongest for students when integration happens at a younger age and voluntarily (as in Louisville); (2) Benefits for black students after school - measured by higher graduation rates, increased likelihood of earning a higher degree, and higher incomes. (3) Social benefits for all students - research shows that students who have greater levels of interracial contact in schoool have more tolerant and inclusive viewpoints about individuals of different racial groups than students who have less interracial contact. The students in Louisville reported as much in a survey - a majority reported that interracial school experience has been valuable and has made them better prepared to live and work in diverse communities.
These stats come from a brief filed in the Supreme Court by 553 university-level social scientists in an attempt to summarize the research.
Finally, talking about Louisville specifically, the schools enjoy enormous community support and the plan being challenged is widely accepted and praised by the community. This, I believe, is the most important benefit - schools that an entire community has a stake in. This seems particularly important to me, perhaps, because in the Memphis metro area, the city schools that educate enjoy very little support from influential whites in the community or from the white community at large. I know that this abandonment of the city schools has contributed to the relatively poor state of the Memphis city schools.
You say that "if forced diversity programs really produce benefits for whites and blacks that exceed the costs, then I am all for it." As I've described, I believe that such programs do produce benefits for whites and blacks, but as you've pointed out, there is always research to support the opposing viewpoint. I would ask, however - what are the costs from the Louisville plan? I would agree that busing a child an hour each day just to achieve diversity produces a cost, but the plans we see these days (including that in Louisville) do not involve busing of that magnitude. The only cost I see is that a tiny percentage of white students may not be able to go to their first choice school. In Louisville, it is something like 3%. The vast vast majority of parents in Louisville are having their children go to the school they prefer and that school is racially diverse. Those 3% of white students who end up in something other than their first choice school end up attending a school that may be a bit further from their house, but that is substantially equal to their first choice school. I understand that for the individual student who does not get his or her first choice school, that is a burden, but when considering the system on the whole, I believe that is a minimal cost to achieve the kind of broad community support the Louisville system enjoys and the increased educational impact that is correlated with black students attending racially-balanced schools.
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