Nearly three years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the narrowly tailored use of affirmative action by universities to obtain “educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” Since then, the University has passed a diversity plan that, among other stipulations, recognizes that “those historically disempowered sometimes need affirmative actions to help them.” But as ongoing and sometimes-heated debate about the new Diversity Plan has demonstrated, the use of race and other characteristics as the basis for favoring one person over another remains a controversial matter.
Some professors who opposed the Diversity Plan proposed an alternate one emphasizing “filling the pipeline” with students and potential future faculty members from underrepresented groups; this plan involved reaching out to eighth-grade students to encourage them to attend college.
Thus both proponents and opponents of affirmative action agree on one concept: People from some groups, both racial and otherwise, have experienced societal circumstances that place them at a disadvantage, and the best way to combat this detriment is to reach kids at an early age and facilitate their success.
Yet the Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear two cases that threaten to set back such attempts to better children’s early education. The two cases, each of which challenge the constitutionality of using race to determine K-12 school assignments in a specific city, strike at the heart of several decades of attempts to desegregate school districts.
Blacks faced more than 100 years of legal segregation in the United States that ended in the 1960s. When Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders pushed north, however, they encountered a far more insidious form of prejudice: de facto segregation, or isolation of certain groups by social norms instead of the law. Real estate agents encouraged white people to move out of the inner city into the suburbs, leaving poor, black urban areas in which local schools were primarily attended by black students. These schools underachieved, resulting in government-enforced efforts to bus black students into white schools. This led to gradual integration.
But de facto segregation persists today. A map showing the ethnicity of Chicago neighborhoods in 2000, for example, reveals that blacks, Hispanics and members of other ethnic groups live in condensed, saturated neighborhoods. The same pattern is repeated throughout other major U.S. cities, including Portland.
Efforts to desegregate schools are still needed. Unlike the University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs classes, which we criticized for discriminating against white students by offering students of color special smaller classes, integration of public schools does not give one group special privileges that it denies to another group. Instead, it is intended to give all students an equal chance at receiving a quality education in an environment that, like the world itself, is diverse in skin color.
Sharon Browne, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation who asked the court to hear both cases, has said “they are teaching our kids that race still matters. If they can continue to do that, we will never get to a place where the country is colorblind,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
While true diversity includes race, ethnicity, religion, politics and other factors, Browne’s classic plea for a colorblind society is sadly idealistic. The facts speak for themselves: Until U.S. society becomes integrated generally, we need to use means to ensure all students receive an equal chance to study in an environment conducive to learning.