The Courts Declare Shelby County Schools Unitary!! (What World Are They Living In?)

Local Memphis media this past week has been reporting that the Fifth Circuilt Court of Appeals overturned Judge Bernice Donald's ruling continuing federal oversight of Shelby County Schools, and declared the school district unitary (a fancy legal term for integrated or free of discrimination). White response has of course been positive, but I have to choke back a laugh and wonder how the courts can ignore what is painfully obvious for all to see. Previous court decisions have said that "unitary" school systems should not have schools identifiable by race. Southwind High School in southeast Shelby County on paper is 80% Black. I say on paper, because in reality, I am reliably told there are no white students in attendance. The 20% white enrollment has either fled the district or attends private schools. Shadowlawn Middle School had a 65% Black enrollment last year, and has an 80% Black enrollment this year. Keep in mind that all of this is occurring in a school district serving a population that is overwhelmingly white (the Shelby County Schools serves only that portion of the county outside of Memphis). For there to be majority-Black schools in suburban Shelby County, one has to be trying to have majority-Black schools, and that is exactly what is happening. The county school board draws boundaries in such a way as to limit contact between white and Black children in the public schools. The removal of court supervision leaves no one "minding the store" with a district that blatantly violated the law while they were under court supervision. When someone defies the law while enforcers are watching, it is ludicrous to remove the supervision and expect that they'll do the right thing. The sad fact is, neither Memphis nor Shelby County has ever done the right thing when it comes to Black people. 

The Repeal of Brown vs. Board-America's Tragic Return to Segregation

Last summer I railed against the construction and zoning of Shelby County's all-Black Southwind High School, which the county school board seemed to be using to "whiten" Germantown, Houston and Collierville High Schools. Now the Metropolitan School District in Nashville is undergoing a similar crisis in which Black parents are objecting to a district rezoning that sends almost all of the district's Black students to all-Black schools. Letters written by white people to the Nashville Scene reveal that many of them applaud the rezoning, and for distinctly racial reasons. One woman asked rhetorically why the "liberals" don't want white people to be able to preserve their "white heritage", while another stated that going to school with white people won't fix what's wrong with inner city Black youngsters. The tragic truth is that school boards are using neighborhood zoning to resegregate public schools, and they're getting away with it. At a time when the courts should be more vigilant than ever, they are removing school districts from court supervision, and those districts are then proceeding to resegregate, presumably because most school boards are elected, and this is the politically-expedient thing to do, a popular move with white parents in many districts. Conservatives often argue that Black children don't have to be in the same classroom with white children to learn- and if we're talking about learning facts (times tables, history, the law of thermodynamics, etc.) that's true. But learning also occurs when children interact with other children, especially those from a different background, and that learning is crucial. It is this learning that is lost when parents homeschool, or when children attend one-race schools. The current reality in the tragic situation is highlighted in situations like that of Southwind near Memphis, where the frehsman enrollment this year is down 200 students from projection. Evidently, many Black parents sold their homes and moved rather than subject their children to the indignities of a segregated, overcrowded school. It is a tragedy when people have to sell their homes and move to exercise a right to integrated schools that the constitution supposedly already gave them. If we insist on continuing to separate white and Black children in schools, we will reap a terrible harvest of hate from it in the future.