Supreme Court is redefining how U.S. seeks racial balance

If the questions being asked by U.S. Supreme Court justices Monday during arguments on a school desegregation case can be taken as a measure of where this country is headed in matters of diversity and affirmative action, Youngstown might as well throw away its second list of applicants for police positions now.
A majority of the justices -- including Clarence Thomas, who owes his seat on the court to a once-perceived need for diversity -- obviously has little tolerance for anything that smacks of racial preferences or affirmative action.
The cases argued before the court Tuesday involve diversity or racial-balance policies at two school districts on different sides of the country, but the principle involved is being debated in Youngstown regarding hiring practices for the police department.
Six decades later
The court appears ready to abandon a 62-year commitment to school desegregation in this country. Chief Justice John Roberts set the tone by turning Brown vs. Board of Education on its head.
In discussing Seattle's Open Choice program, in which some students were denied their first choice of schools because the district attempted to keep schools from becoming predominantly white or predominantly black, Roberts asked, "How is that different from the 'separate-but-equal' argument? ... Everyone got a seat in Brown as well." Roberts was not impressed when the school district's lawyer replied that Brown was a response to segregation, which is harmful to a society, while this program was designed to prepare students to live in a diverse community.
Roberts' line of questioning Monday should come as no surprise. In June, Roberts dissented from a ruling in which the court struck down gerrymandering in one Texas district because the Legislature drew a district that tended to disenfranchise Hispanic voters. "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race, & quot; Roberts wrote, not in criticism of the Texas Legislature, but in criticism of the court majority that found the Legislature in the wrong.
The concept that separate but equal was inherently unequal is being replaced by a philosophy that local school districts are wrong to prepare their students to live in a black and white world if one white student or one black student can claim that diversity does him or her more harm than good.
Integration, affirmative action and racial preferences have long been hot-button issues. All grew out of a belated recognition in the 1950s that segregation was a blight on a nation that was founded on the concept that all men are created equal.
Worst-case scenarios
Unfortunately, efforts at integration in education and employment can produce unacceptable aberrations. In the Seattle school case, for instance, the anecdotal horror story was the student who had to catch her school bus in the predawn darkness and return home after dark, in the name of racial balance between the school that she lived closest to and the one she was bused to across town. In the Youngstown Police Department, it was the story last year of a black woman who scored 127th on the Civil Service test, but managed to get hired over people who were in the top 10.
There should be no question that it is to Seattle's benefit to have integrated schools and it is to Youngstown's benefit to have a police force of men and women, black, white and Hispanic.
But clearly the Supreme Court will strike down almost any system of racial preference that results in even one individual being able to claim that he is being discriminated against because of race.
Just as clearly, Youngstown's system of using two appointment lists, one for white males and one for minorities and females, would fail the Supreme Court's test. Youngstown is going to have to find a new way to pursue diversity in its hiring practices.