Harry Reid Needs a Refresher on Brown v. Board

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued the following brief statement regarding the Supreme Court ruling on the racial diversity cases:

"The Supreme Court decision in the school desegregation cases is appalling. Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, it has been settled law that the Constitution requires racially mixed schools. Today's decision turns Brown upside down and ignores decades of constitutional history. If this isn't judicial activism, I don't know what is."

First, let us dispense with the "Judicial Activism" notion that Reid seems to push. Judicial activism is NOT any decision you disagree with, but rather judicial activism is taking liberty with a judicial decision to push a preferred policy outlook of the judge.

But also, Reid needs to be refreshed about the meaning of Brown v. Board. Brown v. Board dis not say schools had to be racially mixed. What Brown said was that the government could not use race as a factor in assigning children to a school. This is from the brief of Thurgood Marshall in Brown v. Board:

The Fourteenth Amendment precludes a state from imposing distinctions or classifications based upon race and color alone. The State of Kansas has no power thereunder to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities to its citizens.

If Kansas had no power in 1954, Seattle and Louisville have no power today to use race as a factor in affording edcuational opportunities.

While it is true that the Constitution had not been intepreted (sadly) to require color blindness, Brown does not require racially mixed schools. It is important to note that the Seattle and Louisville schools were not racially segregated by any means, rather the programs those cities put in place sought to achieve a student body in each school roughly proportional to the population as a whole because "diversity is good."

When people like Harry Reid bastardize the meanings of important laws and cases, it makes people less knowledgeable about whatthe law really means. If the goal of policies like these is to end racial discrimination, the perhaps Chief Justice Roberts' advice is best to be heeded:

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race....” (Emphasis added)

Sounds a lot like "Enough is enough" from the Wisconsin Right to Life case from earlier in the week.