The law of the land

While I was unable to personally attend last night's Orange County Board of Education meeting, it was reported by someone present that Liz Brown again began advocating for assigning children to some Orange County schools based exclusively on their race.

When I posted the video of her describing her plan, I wrote that Liz has "either a profound ignorance of educational law, or a philosophical disdain for decisions of the US Supreme Court." However, it now appears that she only has disdain for Court decisions that do not reflect the "deep inside" morals she wants to impose upon others.

During last night's meeting, Liz inevitably turned the discussion of feedback received on the Board's "community listening" tour to the topic of her race-based school assignment plan. It seems that someone on the Board had the audacity to point out the illegality of using race in school assignment, only to have Liz quickly turn upon them. In response to another Board member's refusal to discuss a plan that clearly falls outside the law, Liz shot back "Brown vs. Board of Education is still the law of the land!"

Yes, it is.

And, even though you may disagree with it, so is Parents vs. Seattle. The two are not mutually exclusive. The US Supreme Court's decision from June clearly states that you "simply can't consider race in deciding which school kids go to" - whether it is forbidding African American kids from attending high school in Little Rock, or banning white kids from Hillsborough Elementary.

As if the Justices foresaw Liz's willingness to bend words to her liking, the Court provided Orange County with some clarity in terminology around the issue facing its schools. Comments in brackets are mine alone, as is the bold text for emphasis:

"Because this Court has authorized and required race-based remedial measures to address de jure segregation, it is important to define segregation clearly and to distinguish it from racial imbalance.

In the context of public schooling, segregation is the deliberate operation of a school system to 'carry out a governmental policy to separate pupils in schools solely on the basis of race.' In Brown, this Court declared that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Racial imbalance is the failure of a school district’s individual schools to match or approximate the demographic makeup of the student population at large. Racial imbalance is not segregation. Although presently observed racial imbalance might result from past de jure segregation, racial imbalance can also result from any number of innocent private decisions, including voluntary housing choices [or parental choice of a preferred academic calendar].

However, racial imbalance without intentional state action to separate the races does not amount to segregation. To raise the specter of resegregation to defend these programs is to ignore the meaning of the word."

Whether you like it or not, "the law of the land" says you cannot assign students to public schools based on some concept of "racial balance." Until a higher power gets this point through to Liz Brown's closed mind, she will keep dividing our community and the struggling children of Orange County will continue to be failed by the people elected to help them succeed.

Finally, it sounds like the Court is prophetically warning Orange County about Liz Brown, "if our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories."