US rejects school action on race

US rejects school action on race

news.bbc.co.uk

The US Supreme Court has narrowly ruled that the race of a child cannot be used to determine where he or she will be sent to school.

The decision, one of the most important civil rights rulings in years, may affect millions of children in the US.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Im not sure what to make of this being a European? So is this good or bad?

I personally , from the article, would say that its better that it would be determined on a childs grades and not because of its skin colour.

Getting rid of race based decisions is a good chance to get rid of these devisions inside peoples minds in my opinion.


news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well will this issue get bigger leading up to election time?

Democratic presidential candidates spoke out against the court's 5-4 judgement, with Senator Barack Obama describing it as "wrong-headed".

Source

Speaking at a presidential debate hours after the ruling, leading Democrats criticised the court.

"Once again, the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court has shown its willingness to erode core constitutional guarantees," said Senator Hillary Clinton.

Mr Obama, hoping to become the first black US president, said the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education ruling that outlawed segregation in schools was the reason he had succeeded in public life.

Originally posted by Fett Pinkus
Im not sure what to make of this being a European? So is this good or bad?

It's good. Obama and Hillary don't like that it was rejected, so you know that it's good for America.

Seriously - a society that is run colorblind is the ultimate goal. To have no one care what color a person is .. but to treat everyone totally equal.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Seriously - a society that is run colorblind is the ultimate goal. To have no one care what color a person is .. but to treat everyone totally equal.

The question remains how do we get there? As a person who grew up in the south during the civil rights movement (I'm white BTW, not that it really should matter) I experinced desegregation first hand and while I question how it was implemented its goal was and still is good.

If we are to eliminate racial prejudice, still the best place to start is with our children.

[edit on 29-6-2007 by grover]

Originally posted by grover
If we are to eliminate racial prejudice, still the best place to start is with our children.

I totally agree. But what is integration teaching the children? That race matters.

As the article said, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

If children can't go to their local school district because they're not the "right color", what's that teaching them?

Better the parents take an active roll in teaching the kids about acceptance and equality of all people.

Thats a good argument except for one point; when desegregation started here in the south, instead of letting their children go to schools with black kids a lot of white southern parents pulled their kids from public school and put them in private ones. Thats what my parents did until the cost got too much and I was sent grudgingly back to public schools.

Well, then your parents weren't teaching you acceptance and equality, were they? My point is that it's not the government's job to rid the country of personal racism. It's ours.

(I should have said "forced" integration or "desegregation" in my first post.)

I was lucky. For some reason my parents taught me to think for myself and they have been regretting it ever since.

My late wife was Chinese/Portuguese/English/Dutch and Black. My parents for a variety of reasons never met her, though she and my mother talked quite a bit. I sent a photo of her to my father and his response was that I married a g––d--- n-----. I hung up on him and we didn't talk for 7 years after the fact. Later he did apologise though. By then we had separated (though we never divorced) and a few years later she passed from cancer of the brain.
The point of this is that in the process of helping raise her 4 children, I experiniced first hand the prejudice still directed towards black kids in school; and trust me it isn't pretty. Even gays get more respect.

[edit on 29-6-2007 by grover]

That this still happens is obscene and makes me ashamed I am from the south.
This is from:

commonsense.ourfuture.org...

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree....

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles....

[edit on 29-6-2007 by grover]