Talking Points: TALKING POINTS: School Desegregation

In its upcoming term the United States Supreme Court will consider what efforts local school systems may voluntarily take to promote diverse schools and avoid racial segregation. In deciding these cases, from Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, the Court will determine whether these communities’ efforts promote the goals of the Constitution’s equal protection clause, or violate that clause’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Oral arguments for both cases will be heard on December 4^th.
Washington Date Line Article

COMMUNITY

Community is a widely shared value, which means that we’re all in it together. Our nation’s greatest strength is the diverse talent and background of our people, and the nation benefits most when we come together across lines of difference in pursuit of the American Dream. Louisville and Seattle are local communities working together to promote inclusion, understanding, and quality education for all.

These cases are about local communities building schools that reflect our nation’s highest values. They’re teaching our kids to live together, learn together, and play together in an increasingly diverse world. That’s good for our kids, and it’s good for our country. And it’s fully consistent with our Constitution.

These communities are taking modest efforts to bring our kids together across differences. By choosing inclusion instead of separation, they are building the kind of community that we all want to live in: a community of cohesive, well-educated, and prosperous young people prepared for the future.
These communities understand that we’re all connected in our country, and that our fates are linked. The better we know and understand each other, the better we can live and work together, and the stronger our country will become.
These are parents and education leaders in local communities deciding what kind of environment should prevail in their schools, what kind of values their schools should reflect.

And in deciding that schools should be inclusive and racially diverse—as their communities are and as our nation is—these communities are reflecting values that our nation has embraced for over half a century.

The Opportunity Agenda: Community

VOLUNTARY SCHOOL DIVERSITY

These cases are about voluntary school diversity.

All kids go to school, and every child in these districts has a seat at the educational table. These cases are about whether that seat is in a racially segregated classroom, or whether communities can try to make schools inclusive, reflecting the diversity of our cities and our nation.
These programs were voluntarily adopted by these communities, and apply when parents and students choose to attend or transfer to schools other than their local schools. The programs use modest measures to promote a diverse education, while giving priority to parental choice and neighborhood schools. In Louisville, for example, 95% of elementary students attended their neighborhood school or their first-choice neighborhood school. In Seattle the program affected only about 300 of the community’s students, and 80% of incoming ninth-grade students attended their first-choice high school.

The leaders of these communities had a choice to make: they could create segregated schools, or they could create inclusive diverse schools that teach our kids how to learn, play, and solve problems together. They made the right choice morally and under our Constitution. Duke University News
The Supreme Court has held that promoting a diverse education is a compelling governmental interest—among our most important common goals as a society. That’s what these communities have done, and they’ve done it through modest efforts that are narrowly tailored to achieve their important goal. Improving education for all children.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

BENEFITS OF INTEGRATED/DIVERSE EDUCATION

Research shows that the critical-thinking skills of all students improve in racially diverse classrooms. Diverse learning opportunities make all students better problem solvers and communicators.
Kids in diverse schools are less likely to develop racial stereotypes or prejudice than kids who aren’t in daily contact with people of other races. They’re more likely to have friendships with kids from other races, and they’re more willing to live and work in integrated settings.

Americans for a Fair Chance

Americans of all races support integrated schools. Public-opinion polls show widespread support for the ideal of integration, and the majority of parents whose kids are in integrated schools say that those schools have improved the quality of their child’s education.

Public Agenda Poll

Our society and world are increasingly more diverse. Our emerging workers, entrepreneurs, and leaders have to be prepared to function easily in diverse environments. These schools are giving kids that preparation, and it’s good for our prosperity as a nation.

American Civil Liberties Union

Documenting Segregation

Our schools are more segregated now than they were 20 years ago. A 2005 study examining racial isolation of African American and Latino students in the nation’s 239 largest school districts found that, despite considerable integration through the mid-1980s, virtually all large school districts have experienced increasingly lower levels of integration. Since 1986 African American and Latino students have become more segregated from whites. This trend will not reverse itself without proactive solutions like the ones that communities like Louisville and Seattle are using.

Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Brown v. Board of Education and Our Civil Rights Legacy

Information on Brown v. Board of Education

It is important to root these cases in today’s America, while connecting them to our country’s historic march toward equal opportunity for all. Brown’s strongest application is in explaining why these programs clearly realize the goals of the 14th Amendment and are constitutional.
As the Supreme Court recognized in Brown, the 14th Amendment’s purpose is to bring us together as a country and to teach us about each other. Brown made clear that our Constitution rejects segregation and embraces diversity. That’s what these communities are doing, and these programs embody our country’s highest constitutional values.
The Supreme Court recognized in Brown v. Board of Education that the purpose of the equal protection clause is to bring us together as a nation of diverse peoples. That’s what these teachers, parents, and education leaders are doing, as they provide a vision of unity and cooperation for their children that we can all be proud of.

INTENTION TO DIVERSIFY

Years of experience show that many communities can’t achieve inclusive diverse schools without making that an explicit goal and working toward it intentionally. These communities consider race only when not doing so would result in harmful segregation in a particular school.
We can let race divide and separate us, or we can come together across lines of difference. In considering race only when and where necessary to prevent segregation, these schools are choosing to bring us together.

The Diversity Advancement Project

Research shows that segregated neighborhoods flow in large part from past and present housing discrimination. In Seattle, for example, Asian Americans tend to be concentrated in the south, due in part to early land-use policies and discriminatory zoning. In creating schools that look like America, these communities should have the freedom to break down those historic barriers.