On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that public schools could not use a student's race as a factor in determining where he/she are allowed to go to school.
The Seattle Public Schools had been using race as a determining factor for several years, often deciding that the pigment of a student's skin color was of more importance than his/her academic progress, talents and interests and whether his/her placement in a new school would separate him/her from the people he/she grew up with.
Thanks to common sense from the highest court in the land, the Seattle Public Schools will need to start really adopting the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King did not envision a future where white children would be told that they don't have the rights of others because they have the same skin color as slave owners who have been dead for hundreds of years.
He envisioned, as he said in his "I Have a Dream" speech, a day when "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."
The obsession with race that the school district demonstrated for the last decade did not uphold the dream that King laid out. It perverted it, teaching children to notice the differences between one another over the universal qualities that even Queen Victoria felt when she cried after reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Hopefully, with constructionist judges back on the bench in the Supreme Court, American society will begin to return to some level of sanity. John Roberts' declaration of common sense, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," could be the beginning of a new age of reason, where children are valued as equal.
Since the landmark court decision, the Seattle School District has brought in a new superintendent, Maria Goodloe-Johnson. In a recent call-in interview with National Public Radio affiliate KUOW-FM, Goodloe-Johnson pledged to continue pushing for diversity in the schools by improving the academic quality of all schools.
This is great news, and if the district really gets serious about it, it could mean great changes. For as long as I can remember, there have been one or two schools at the elementary, middle and high school levels that have large waiting lists, while all the rest fall behind. Determining entry into schools by race didn't solve that problem and may have actually made it for worse for many students.
There is no reason that Garfield and Roosevelt high schools should be desirable, while everywhere else falls behind. There is no reason why any public high school shouldn't have an Advanced Placement program, a special education program that parents can trust to take care of their children or a general curriculum that serves all students.
All of our schools can become great beacons of learning and tolerance if we allow them to be, but dividing people by race isn't the way to do it.
Michael Powell can be reached at mptimes@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
