Leaving Brown Behind - Part I

Today, the public schools of Jefferson County, Kentucky will take the national stage as the Supreme Court grapples with whether JCPS’s student assignment plan, a plan that takes race into consideration, passes constitutional muster. As an outsider who has studied the unsuccessful path to integration in Memphis, I hope that the Court recognizes the wisdom of taking action, as JCPS has, to achieve the goals set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision more than a half century ago.

The Brown decision in 1954 famously put an end to the practice of “separate but equal” schooling. In addition to declaring state-imposed segregation unconstitutional, the Court recognized the importance of education in preparing the next generation of Americans. “Education,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “is the very foundation of good citizenship.” The Court recognized not only the necessity of outlawing legally-sanctioned segregation, but also the value of integrated schools in helping students adjust to the multiracial communities beyond the school’s walls.

Many cities, crippled by white flight from inner city school districts, have long since given up on integrated schools. Memphis is one such city. When Memphis was faced with court-ordered desegregation in the 1970s, the community essentially fractured into a black city school system, a white county school system, and a very white private school system. In the three decades since, those divisions have become seemingly permanent. Not only are the students largely separated by race, but, as is the case across the country, schools with the highest concentrations of minority students tend to perform the most poorly.

In Jefferson County, however, the community has embraced the values the Supreme Court identified in Brown. Since 1984, when JCPS began tinkering with its own court-ordered desegregation decree in order to make the schools more attractive to more families, enrollment – but more impressively, white enrollment – stabilized.

When the desegregation decree was lifted in 2000, rather than allowing its schools to resegregate as occurred elsewhere, JCPS enacted the student assignment plan that is the subject of the lawsuit to be heard today. The stated goals of the plan are to provide a competitive and attractive public school system, to maintain community support for JCPS, and to prepare students for life in a democratic and racially diverse society. The courts below found the plan constitutionally acceptable, holding that the JCPS policy of integrated schools is “both important and valid.”

Social science has shown just how important integrated schools can be to communities and, more importantly, to students. Integrated schools have been shown to produce increased levels of tolerance among students of all races. Surveys of Jefferson County students have shown high levels of tolerance – more than 92% of students reported that they were “comfortable” or “very comfortable” working with students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

In addition, African American students tend to perform better and attain better educational outcomes coming from integrated schools. These benefits are especially pronounced in systems, such as JCPS, where integration is voluntary and begins at an early age. Indeed, the black-white achievement gap is shrinking in Jefferson County even as it persists elsewhere.

Many other cities, including my home town of Memphis, have proven unable to meet the aspirations of Brown. In contrast, Jefferson County keeps trying. With its student assignment plan and its continued commitment to integration, Jefferson County has sought to create a system that is largely integrated and equal, while other cities have regressed to a state of separate and unequal. The Supreme Court has the opportunity to embrace, as it did fifty years ago, the ideals embodied by the JCPS plan. For the sake of Jefferson County and its students, we should all hope it does.