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THE LONG JOURNEY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

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THE LONG JOURNEY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

By Carol Anderson

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African American students riding a school bus, where high school was closed due
to integration.
SourceGrey Villet/Time Life/Getty


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because when the cause of a problem is messy and complicated, the solution has
to untangle the spaghetti of it all.

By Carol Anderson

May 17, 2014

Not long ago, in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the Supreme
Court voted 6-2 to uphold Michigan voters’ determination to ban “preferential
treatment” in public education, government contracting and public employment. It
was the shot heard ’round the country — straight to the heart of affirmative
action.

But education as a racial battleground is nothing new. And on today, the 50th
anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, it’s worth remembering this all over
again. In the 1970s, communities were in anguish, sometimes in flames, over
busing. And as children traveled miles and miles from home to get a primary or
secondary education, parents, school boards and the courts were embroiled in
litigation.

> We have allowed our attention to wander from where the real trick is taking
> place: in our struggling and unequal public school systems.

Yet now as then, we find ourselves obsessing over the remedy without
sufficiently considering the real problem. Neither busing nor affirmative action
can compensate for the reality and the consequences of separate and unequal
schools in America. Which means it’s time to dig into the question: What are the
myriad complicated factors tying into education as a “fundamental right”? 


THE REAL PROBLEM

As if mesmerized by a conjuror, we have allowed our attention to wander from
where the real trick is taking place: in our struggling and unequal public
school systems. Instead of keeping our eyes on the magician’s hands, we have
become distracted by the smoke and mirrors of “merit” and “reverse
discrimination.” (As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 1979 brief, affirmative
action ‘is based upon concepts of racial indebtedness and racial entitlement
rather than individual worth and individual need’ and is thus ‘racist.’”)

A quarter of high schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino
students do not offer any Algebra II courses, according to a recent report by
the U.S. Department of Education.

Scalia — and last week’s court decision — is wrong. Critics of affirmative
action rest their arguments too heavily on merit: They note the disparity
between the test scores of aggrieved whites, who were denied admission to some
of the most prestigious universities in the United States, and blacks and
Latinos, who were accepted.

 

Yet how can we equate “merit” with test scores when we know how lacking minority
school districts are in the courses necessary to do well on standardized exams?
A recent report by the U.S. Department of Education noted, “A quarter of high
schools with the highest percentage of black and Latino students do not offer
any Algebra II courses.” And still more: “While 81 percent of Asian-American
students and 71 percent of white students had access to a full range of math and
science courses … only 57 percent of black students had access to a full range
of courses. Less than half of Native American students had full access.”




THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

Merit cannot be measured simply by how well you perform on tests. We need to ask
what contributes to a student’s showing of merit? Schools, in large part, which
are grossly unequal because of marked discrepancies in property taxes, which
provide the lion’s share of funding for our public school system. Which all goes
to show that cause-and-effect, when it comes to education and affirmative
action, is a squishy and confusing concept. 

And the courts have grappled with — and acted on — the complex causes of
educational inequality before. In the 1990s, Ohio’s Supreme Court ruled that the
state’s reliance on property taxes to finance K-12 had created major
disparities, violating the “fundamental right” to an education.

> History tells us that from property taxes to busing, progress requires more
> than a few early interventions.

The issue, of course, is that property values in predominately African-American
neighborhoods are often lower than those in white areas and, consequently,
generate fewer dollars to support the schools. Those lowered property values,
unfortunately, have been the result of a range of pernicious but supposedly
race-neutral public policies.  One of the most devastating was the decision
concerning where to place undesirable goods and services. In Houston, for
example, zoning laws put one toxic waste dump after the next in African-American
communities.

 


HOW IT ADDS UP

What we are seeing today is a cumulative effect, built over years of slavery,
Jim Crow laws and discriminatory public policy — which together create massive
disparities in economic resources and, hence, our schools. In the aftermath of
the 1954 Brown decision, it took a series of four Supreme Court decisions (1964,
1968, 1969 and 1971) to finally break the back and subterfuge of Southern
resistance to the decision to integrate schools. When busing finally came,
though, 17 years of legal wrangling and racial chicanery dressed up in the
neutral language of “pupil placement” had left black children and their
educational needs out in the cold. 

Which means that today, we are left trying to roll back a centuries-old legacy.
History tells us that from property taxes to busing, progress requires more than
a few early interventions. It takes repeated action from the legislature and
courts to address the profound inequality in our public school systems. And if
the discussion continues over “merit” in today’s terms, the rancor over
affirmative action will remain a tale full of sound and fury signifying
nothing. 

This version of the story has been slightly edited to mention the 50th
anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

 * Carol Anderson, OZY Author Contact Carol Anderson


May 17, 2014

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