I have yet to read last week's decision in full, being preoccupied with other matters, but I have read enough of it combined with some professional commentary and some trenchant remarks by fellow members here to form an initial reaction. In any case, oftentimes, ironically as with Brown itself, apparently, seeming ages have to be traversed, and countless words expended before some decisions' import can be appreciated even by the most demanding and discerning observer.
For the sake of clarity and honesty, I will state my orientation up front: racial discrimination in all its forms and transmutations burdens this nation still, the darkest aspect of our history (along witth the treatment of our native population), one that bears down hardest on the most vulnerable: our bright-eyed, hopeful children, often about to be figuratively crush in the maw of "business as usual in America."
For one slice of that sorry, still-unfolding legacy, our federal Supreme Court stood proud -- and unanimous -- in 1954, overturning the formerly constitutional (which I take as a measure of our then-degradation) "separate but equal" doctrine and in the strongest possible terms ordered desegregation of schools, which were viewed as a special category of cases dealing with our children and the basic tools, experiences and nurturing they would need to grow to strong adults able to capitalize on the opportunities life offers here, and to maximize their productivity and promise. In that case, Brown v. Bd. of Ed., the Court in essence ordered all formerly segregated school districts to integrate, plain and simple. Despite the historic success of traditionally and predominantly black colleges like Howard, Spelman, Morehouse, and a host of others, the Court found that a policy of separation in elementary and secondary public education was invidious to black children and inimical to our principles and goals as a nation.
The Brown Court itself did not address segregation-beyond-legal-edict, such as the ghettoization we have in never-segregated-by-law in pockets of New Jersey (another story unto itself involving a state Supreme Court mandate to equalize funding through each and every public scholl district in the state), which leaves a de facto pattern of segregation with, say, 80% black in Newark but 90% non-black in Livingston. These school patterns are dictated by rresidence patterns dictated by economic and social reasons, mainly, but are no less insidious in the results they yield, often even moreso, than the problem addressed in Brown itself. I don't know the starkness of the situation in Seattle caused by residential patterns, but the situation there (Seattle) is an example of school districts (I assume) not-previously segregated. Louisville, however, was previously segregated (I assume).
One would think the Louisville situation, on the very terms of Brown itself, would have been accepted by the Court because of its history of official discrimination. Importantly, Louisville had a VOLUNTARY integration system as the Court reviewed it, that is, one VOLUNTARILY adopted by the school board exercising its presumed expertise in these matters and the discretion that (formerly) went with it under the Brown regime. Clearly, to me, in light of Brown, the presumption of regularity had to run in favor of the school board.
For Seattle, the circumstance appears to me, without studying the matter closely, to be one where a notion of "floating, cultural harm," decoupled from the invidious reach of official discrimination that is present for Louisville, would have to be adopted to allow its VOLUNTARY integration plan. While this plays with the notion bad-actor and harmed party present in all civil litigation (since the Seattle school district without the integration plan still would not be a "bad actor"), this problem dissolves into a mere trifle when the time-honored concept of "compelling state interest" is used by a school district voluntarily to achieve the goals that Brown set out to emblazon in the American consciousness.
