Refighting Yesterday's Battles

Jim Crow is dead. Why not bury him?

Jeff Taylor | December 8, 2006

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/p> p class="MsoNormal">This diversity argument has trickled down from recent affirmative action battles at the college and university level. There diversity is deployed in order to justify race-conscious admission policies. Whatever its merits in higher education, and they are surely scant, the diversity track is positively toxic for K-12 education. o:p>
/o:p> /p> p class="MsoNormal"> o:p> /o:p>College admissions is much more art than science and one could plausibly argue – although I would not – that including racial diversity as a minor factor in admission decisions is at least possible, if not desirable. However, plug race – or its oft-used proxy, free or reduced lunch populations – into the decision-making matrix of public schools and things can quickly go haywire. /p>

As Gauvreau notes from his current perch as a member of the CMS school board he once sued, racial score-keeping, even masked as amorphous "diversity" goals, can quickly come to dominate school system policy decisions. Everything from school construction, to curriculum, to staffing, to student assessment gets tied up and tied down in the diversity web.

Particularly resistant race-neutral accounting in a "diversity" environment is the belief that low-income minority populations are being short-changed, separate but equal style, when it comes to school district spending. In fact, district after district nationwide spends more per pupil on low-income populations, often by thousands of dollars per child per year. For example, Gauvreau estimates that some inner city elementaries in CMS receive 30 to 50 percent more money per pupil than some suburban elementaries.

Yet you would never know this by reading some of the briefs filed in support of the racial diversity policies the Court is now examining in Seattle and Louisville. In fact, one brief even cites CMS as the kind of "re-segregated" system the Supreme Court could set right by giving diversity policies the Court's blessing.

Instead, the Court should make very clear that a diversity goal is simply government sanctioned discrimination, and thus is runs afoul of the Constitution.

Moreover the Court should do so in clear, precise language. No multi-stage "test" of the kind the Court loves to fabricate. This is not a decision that will serve as a template for sharp congressional staffers to use to draw up some conforming legislation. Rather thousands of confused, imperfect, and – frankly – loony local school boards will have to understand that calling racially weighted policies "diversity" is no safe harbor.

Do that and America can turn to face head-on and without diversion, the tremendous challenge of educating every citizen of the Republic.

Jeff Taylor is editor of Reason Express.