Another View

The Associated Press offers looks at editorials from newspapers around the world and across the nation.

On voluntary segregation in schools
In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that students could not be assigned to public schools solely because of their race. Recently, a deeply divided high court ruled, 5 to 4, that this is still the case.

However, the social context has changed dramatically over the intervening 53 years. Then, the racial criterion was a tool to keep black and white students apart.

Now, school districts, often pursuant to court orders, assign on the basis of race to ensure that black and white students attend school together. ...

Whether this ruling is a step backward will be seen in a new context.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing vote, concurred skeptically, almost reluctantly writing that, if the majority opinion is taken as permission for school districts to ignore de facto resegregation and if the opinion “suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken.”

It is of profound importance to a diverse nation committed to equality of opportunity that Kennedy’s views serve as a point of oversight.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel Knoxville, Tenn, On the Net: http://tinyurl.com/yomvj9