affirmative action

Conservative America has scored another resounding victory in its war against racial and economic diversity in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, has turned the promise of 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education on its head.The conservative majority of the Court – Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Uncle Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. – rejected diversity plans from Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky – a school district that was once racially segregated by law. Ironically, the majority relied heavily on the landmark Brown v. Board decision that made segregation illegal in U.S. schools, even as they undermined the spirit and principles of that monumental Supreme Court ruling.

The court overturned lower court judgements which had sided in favor of the two school districts. A white woman in Louisville complained that her son was denied a transfer to attend kindergarten in a school that didn’t have enough Black pupils to keep its Black population at the district’s required minimum of 15 percent. A group of Seattle parents had opposed their district’s “tiebreaker” system, which aims to keep the nonwhite proportion of its ten high school student bodies within 15 percentage points of the district’s overall makeup, which is 60 percent nonwhite. Continue reading