<p>John Roberts is a very brave man.</p>
<p>Roberts is right that the only way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The bottom line is that in very many urban areas and even entire large metropolitan areas there literally aren’t enough white kids left in the public schools to “diversify” them. The Washington, DC metropolitan area a metropolis spanning a dozen or more counties in two states plus the District of Columbia has a majority minority school age population. Declining white birth rates and booming immigration boil down to - it is not possible to put minority children in majority white schools even if that could magically solve all the social, economic, and educational problems of minority children. It is not 1950 in more ways than one.</p>
<p>Heck the entire state of California is majority minority. How are you going to desegregate those schools? Bus them from Eureka to LA? Even if “The Man” is the problem in the long term he is not going to be the solution because there simply ain’t enough of him to go around in large geographic swatches of America. The times they are a changin’ and 1954’s solutions just aren’t practical in 2007 and will be less prctical with each passing year.</p>
<p>I just wish Roberts had been more honest about his radical leanings during the confirmation hearings.</p>
<p>Con </p>
<p>Imagine that…it’s radical to say “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”</p>
<p>George Orwell would have a field day with you.</p>
<p>Don’t you hate all those radicals in Michigan et al who voted overwhelmingly to get rid of affirmative action in admissions at public universities…</p>
<p>Wait a minute…Michigan’s a blue state.</p>
<p>What’s going on here?</p>
<p>Our nation is full of…radicals!</p>
<p>I wasn’t talking about this case in particular, higherlead. I was talking about a larger issue that transcends the constant CC racebaiting. </p>
<p>I was talking (as follow up to my previous post) about how Roberts has been voting to overturn established precedents with little justification or explanation. If you were paying attention during his confirmation hearings, you know that he presented himself in a very different light.</p>
<p>Overturning long-established precedent is radical. It’s almost the textbook definition of it. </p>
<p>Hence my statement that I wish he had been more honest about his plans for radical action if he were given the seat.</p>
<p>Sometimes radical is good (Jefferson and Adams); other times it isn’t.</p>
<p>con - non-discrimination on the basis of race was a radical idea when the Republicans pushed the 14th Amendment through in the 19th century and when they pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate under Dirksen. But it is 2007 now and a race blind government is such a broadly agreed on good that it is time to start practicing it.</p>
<p>I am not going to argue for a minute that affirmative action and school busing weren’t necessary to speed the process of breaking to social and legal barriers. They were. But this is 2007 and a very different world, not better in every way but certainly far better than the world of my youth with regard to race.</p>
<p>"Imagine that…it’s radical to say “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”</p>
<p>You know, the South Africans never saw what they were doing as wrong either…</p>
<p>Maybe we could change the statement to say “the way to ignore discrimination on the basis of race is to belong to the race that discriminates the most…”</p>
<p>I mean what do those “people” want anyway? </p>
<p>Sorry don’t buy into your pov. In the same way I don’t see a rush to fence the Canadian Border…</p>
<p>"But this is 2007 and a very different world, "</p>
<p>Boy, that’s a bunch of Maccaca… ;)</p>
<p>yea, it’s different, sure…</p>
<p>Opie</p>
<p>“The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”</p>
<p>What’s so complicated about that statement?</p>
<p>It seems that you want to continue discriminating on the basis of race and Roberts disagrees with your pov.</p>
<p>Why do you believe that discrimination is OK?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But the fact that the SCHOOLS that are majority minority perform much worse than others, is pretty disturbing. DC (the actual District school system) has some good public schools. In areas that are rich. And not majority minority. They also have some terrible schools. The good schools are under the same management - the difference is parents, pushing, insisting - and knowing people. The bad schools are in communities that have mostly been denied a voice. Historically, and now. There’s no way around it. Race and class, in areas like DC, are inextricably linked. The District spends more per student than most other school systems, maybe any other school system, something ridiculous like that. But if you look at some of the schools, you’d never know it. </p>
<p>Also the majority minority in the DC area is like, 51%. I think my school, is technically majority minority or close to 50/50, but this isn’t overwhelmingly so. It’s not like there are no white kids at all in the DC area.</p>
<p>"Boy, that’s a bunch of Maccaca… "</p>
<p>Who you callin’ “Boy” cracker?</p>
<p>Princedog - where are there any majority white public schools in the District? I know there are none at the High School level. Additionally I believe there are not attendence boundaries in the District, or if there are they are very lax. But you are right that not all the schools in the District are bad. Some are and some aren’t. The only thing you can count on is that a hugely disproportionate amount of the very large per student budget is spent on administration and not in the classroom.</p>
<p>The new mayor Adrian Fenty has now got control of the school system - why he wanted that thankless job I’ll never know, but I am going to be rooting for him. </p>
<p>If I am not mistaken even the Montgomery County schools, one of the wealthiest counties in the entire country are now majority minority. Of course a good chunk of those minorities are Indian and Asian software engineers and doctors, but we also have a large and exploding Hispanic population.</p>
<p>“Why do you believe that discrimination is OK?”</p>
<p>BECASUE i DRINK MILK! :)</p>
<p>What a stupid question. And “yes” I still beat my wife.</p>
<p>Things aren’t all that equal yet sport. I’ll believe you when the gop has equal numbers of black, asian, hispanic and white members. Until then your blowin smoke.</p>
<p>“when they [Republicans] pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate under Dirksen.” </p>
<p>That’s a nice bit of revisionist history.</p>
<p>Ask Southern voters who was responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and you’ll get the answer quick enough. Southern Democrats opposed to the bill flocked to the Republican party in droves. The bill itself was the inspiration for the founding of the religious right; Falwell and others entered the political landscape over their outrage about having to desegregate their religious schools or lose tax exemptions.</p>
<p>As Johnson put it when he signed the bill: “We have lost the South for a generation.”</p>
<p><a href=“Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Wikipedia”>Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Wikipedia;
<p>Very interesting when you break it down by region:</p>
<p>Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%)
Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) </p>
<p>Doesn’t look like Republicans were “pushing” anything. Most votes to pass the bill came from Democrats, and surprisingly, even in the North, a greater percentage of Republicans were opposed to the bill than Democrats. (Also in the South, but there was only one Republican senator total, so it’s not fair to count his NO vote as indicative of a trend among Senate Republicans in the South).</p>
<p>Additionally, the two people most responsible for the passage of the bill were President Johnson (Democrat) who made his strong support known, and Senator Mike Mansfield, who
</p>
<p>Although it’s true that Dirksen helped write the bill in its final form, Democrat President John F. Kennedy was the one who called for the legislation and sent the proposed legislation to Congress. Though certainly Dirksen helped in the Senate, the key action was the one taken by Mansfield. And in any event, Senate Republicans, who were the minority party in the Senate, provided only a handful of the votes needed for passage.</p>
<p>conyat - the opposition to the Civil Rights bill was mostly democrat. More republicans voted for it than democrats - evel liberal icons like Fullbright voted against it.</p>
<p>It is true that Nixon launched a Southern strategy to recruit social conservatives into the party but to think all political and regional differences in this country hang on race is to misunderstand America and Americans both Black and white. It is just not that simple a world.</p>
<p>As for Falwell you have really mischaracterized him because he certainly was not a bigot and it is a real cheap shot to suggest it. Not everybody who disagrees with you or with me for that matter are acting out of malice or small mindedness or ignorance. People of goodwill can frequently agree on the facts and the goal and still disagree on the right direction to go to get there - ever been lost on the road?</p>
<p>Honestly I appreciate your partisanship. I’m a little partisan myself as you might have noticed:-) and politics is a blood sport.</p>
<p>Oh yeah BTW the democrats had 67 seats in the Senate to 33 for the Republicans when the Civil Rights bill came to the floor. That is a veto and filibuster proof super majority. If they are the party of enlightenment they didn’t need any Republican votes.</p>
<p>What your own numbers show is that 82% of Repubkicans in the Senate voted for the bill versus 69% of Democrats. The party of Lincoln passed that legislation when Bill Clinton was cutting his political teeth at the feet of the filibustering William Fulbright.</p>
<p>The fact is from well before the Civil War until well after 1964 the democratic party was more than happy to play the race card anywhere from Arkansas to the Southside of Chicago or Boston if it would help them get elected.</p>
<p>BTW do you know which current US Senator said the following? </p>
<p>“Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”</p>
<p>At least the decision does not preclude voluntary segmentation of ethnic minorities for the purposes of the specific educational needs of that segment, and within the public system. That would have been an even greater concern of mine. What such schools often do is to provide an intense counter-culture to anti-educational attitudes in the home and/or community.</p>
<p>While I can understand the reasoning against specific quotas of representation, I hope that the 2 districts in question (as well as others) will endeavor to put as priority #2 (behind sibling enrollment), a request by a serious student for a school or district matching his proven accomplishment thus far. In many cases, btw, that will provide racial integration nonetheless.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the core of the decision in Brown - “separate is inherently unequal” is right or it’s wrong. If it’s wrong, then the Court has the opportunity to say so, but it didn’t. If it’s right, then the Court has the opportunity to approve of some remedies, or disapprove of others.</p>
<p>The 5-4 decision, written by Kennedy, makes it clear that the majority of the Court does not side with Roberts, still agrees that “separate is inherently unequal”, and that there are measures based on race that could be appropriate.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Private ones. Anyway, I meant in terms of the overall classification of the DC area as majority minority for kids who are under 5 (I thought this was the only subgroup so far that meets that criteria, maybe it has been expanded to school age). But I’m under the impression you would find that the better public schools have a higher percentage of white students. None of the high schools are, but most people who can afford it have fled to private schools at that point, or moved to Fairfax or Montgomery. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not sure. By my estimation PG county would be closer to that classification than Montgomery but I don’t really know. I don’t suppose that what we would classify more aptly here as “underrepresented minorities” have a majority in MoCo. </p>
<p>Either way you basically see that class and race (by subgroup, not just “minority”) are linked. That does not mean there are no poor white people obviously, or rich black people. But there is a pretty undeniable link here. There is also an idea of poverty as a cycle, which I buy, and that has kept down some communities for a long time now. Some of these people in the poorest areas of DC are like third generation Washingtonians. And their grandparents and parents didn’t have good schools under segregation, and today these communities still don’t have good schools because they lack the political power to overcome the corruption and mismanagement (since they were largely disadvantaged from the start) at the administrative level like some other communities have. I too hope Fenty can make some changes, but I fear that having one elected official get too much power has the potential to create even more of a situation where the powerful get more attention by extension of their political clout. I think Fenty has a lot of hopes right now, but he may find it’s difficult to play the game the way he wants to. The biggest problem in DC is balancing some of the most powerful people against some communities with extreme problems.</p>
<p>“Ultimately, the core of the decision in Brown - “separate is inherently unequal” is right or it’s wrong. If it’s wrong, then the Court has the opportunity to say so, but it didn’t. If it’s right, then the Court has the opportunity to approve of some remedies, or disapprove of others.”</p>
<p>Actually there is another possibility. “Separate is inherently unequal” and unequal treatment under the law is okay with Roberts and Co. (But I give them more credit than that.)</p>