Not quite emancipation

Not Quite Emancipation N Brown v. Board of Education the Supreme Court decided that racial discrimination by the government in student school assignments was unconstitutional. Quibbles aside about the Court's legal and sociological analyses, that was the proper decision. But in Brown II, decided a year later, in 1955, the Court stated that a school system was not to be required to alter its school assignments so as to pass constitutional muster "at once," but only "as soon as practicable" and "with all deliberate speed." The problem here, as Professor Lino Graglia observed, is that "if racial discrimination in the assignment of pupils to schools is unconstitutional, the remedy seems obvious and simple: assignment not based on race ... this could mostly have been solved in a few weeks or months." Instead, the Court generated a decade-long effort by federal courts to develop convoluted school-desegregation "plans" and to assess the "good faith" of communities in preparing such plans. Inevitably, in later Court decisions, the confused direction of Brown II metamorphosed into requirements of racial integration and "balance" achieved through such devices as forced school busing and prohibition of neighborhood school assignments.

Lower federal courts have now been directed by the Supreme Court to end their supervision if school districts can demonstrate that they have complied in good faith" with previous judicial orders and eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination ... to the extent practicable." The plaintiff in this case, the Oklahoma City school system, has been under federal control for thirty years.

What the decision means is that some number of the five hundred or so school districts subject to federal supervision will now proceed to federal court and embark upon five more years of litigation with civil-rights groups in an effort to persuade a federal judge that they have met the vague new standards set forth by the current 5 to 3 Court majority. The assistant attorney general for civil rights has pointedly indicated that there will be no support for these efforts by the Department of Justice. It would be our guess that most school districts will not bother, either because their leadership shares the values of the contemporary civil-rights community or-most likely-because their areas have through white flight" become so overwhelmingly black that it really doesn't make much difference one way or the other.

Let us not appear churlish with the Supreme Court. Justice Rehnquist's decision was a welcome one particularly his emphasis upon local control of schools and his focus upon official, state-sponsored discrimination-and some viable school districts will, as a result, eventually be allowed to re-administer their own affairs. It is only that much damage has already been done to the educational and social fabric of the country by the Court's school-desegregation decisions; little of that can be repaired by one decision. Looking beyond the Valley Presumably in some dark drawer A plan is ready once the war Permits Dan Rather to relax And contemplate his income tax; But if I were a betting man Whose nerves require breakfast bran To play a hand with self-restraint, I'd lay you ten to one there ain't. W. H. VON DREELE