Color Lines: A Look at the Supreme Court’s stance on Affirmative Action

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 is not a title that most people recognize. While this recent court case has not captured headlines it decision remains exceptionally important. The decision sheds a great deal of light on where the current Supreme Court stands on issues such as affirmative action. Previously in cases such as Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court acknowledged and allowed race to be used in college admission. The court admitted that this was important to students eduction. Additionally, it was important to our nation that all races be included equally in higher eduction. This case permitted the use of affirmative action in college admission use. Seattle, though it never formally segregated its schools racially, found that its schools were largely drawn along racial lines. That is not to say that the schools were designed to be white or black, but rather school attendance was determined by one’s neighborhood and for the most part blacks and whites lived in different areas. As such, black and white children attended different schools. Seattle saw this as an issue and sought to address this by using a student’s race as a tie-breaker when considering where certain children were to attend school. Some parents sued claiming that this violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The court was left to ponder whether the need for diversity, which it found compelling interest when applied to colleges in Grutter, allowed race to be taken into consideration for elementary schools through high schools. The court by a 5-4 majority struck down the use of affirmative action in schools. The court was split along all to familiar lines with Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, & Kennedy striking down the standard and Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer upholding it. Justice Roberts, the author of the majority opinion, noted “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”. He argued that as Seattle had not previously segregation children there was no need to use race to assign school admission. Justice Thomas in his concurrence went as far as to say that to use race in the manner Seattle attempted to was reminiscent of the arguments made before the court by segregationists in Brown v. Board. Justice Thomas further went on to note that he takes a view that the constitution is color-blind. He argued that the constitution knows no and tolerates no classes among its citizens. In this decision the court overlooked the fact that our society is not color-blind. The court’s opinion is fine in an academic vacuum; however, America is far from a racially egalitarian society. Black men are still prosecuted and incarcerated at a far higher rate than the rest of society. The income and wealth gap between white and black families remains substantial. One cannot legislate so abstractly when inequality is so great. The court has applied a color-blind standard to a national that is still marred by its history of slavery, segregation, and racial oppression. Though Justice Roberts may argue, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” it will take far more than that for our society to overcome centuries of inequality. Seattle took action because the city authorities believed that there was a problem. Despite never legally segregating students they recognized that their city remained racially segregated. They attempted, in the spirit of Brown and the 14th Amendment, to introduce students to each other in an attempt to ameliorate racial prejudice. As W.E.B. DuBois once noted, “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line”. DuBois would be dismayed though likely not surprised that the color-line remains a problem if not the problem of the 21st century as well. If we must act within the confines of a color-blind constitution in a society that is still haunted by the very tangible presence of segregation then it appears that that color-line might be here for quite some time. 

Sources: 
Bartleby.com, (2014). Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. [online] Available at: http://www.bartleby.com/114/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2014].

Law.cornell.edu,. 2014. 'PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS V. SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. NO. 1 | LII / Legal Information Institute'. Accessed December 10 2014. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/05-908.

Law.cornell.edu, (2014). GRUTTER v. BOLLINGER | LII / Legal Information Institute. [online] Available at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/02-241 [Accessed 10 Dec. 2014].