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Focus On Performance, Not Race

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 9, 2007

Oliver Brown was angry. His daughter, Linda, had been denied admission to Sumner Elementary, an all-white school four blocks from his house in Topeka, Kan., because she was black. The board of education ordered her to Monroe Elementary, an all-black school two miles away. Worse still, she didn't get bused and had to walk.

Oliver and 12 other black parents filed suit. The result was the historic 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that ended legal segregation
I give this quick history lesson because some folks in Pinellas County seem to have forgotten what the Brown decision was all about. The Pinellas school district is about to institute a student assignment plan that will not take race into consideration. Groups like the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are afraid that if parents are allowed to choose schools close to home, some of them will reflect the racial makeup of the neighborhoods in which they located and therefore become "resegregated." They feel the district has an obligation to promote diversity by any means necessary.

So, according to their anachronistic way of thinking, if Linda Brown's granddaughter lived in St. Petersburg and wanted to go to a school a few blocks from her home, she wouldn't be allowed to go there if her presence might tip the "racial balance" of the school, and, like her grandmother, be denied admission to the school of her choice because of the color of her skin. Some progress.

Choice Trumps Diversity

Although segregation by force of law has long vanished for the nation, many people still have a problem with schools where black kids are the majority, and, incredibly many such thinkers are black.

While many a legal scholar has argued since the 1950s that the Brown decision was never intended to require forced desegregation of schools, others maintain that it mandates that government make an effort to integrate them. That's why Brown has always been sort of Rorschach test for one's views on educational diversity.

Regardless, the Supreme Court spoke again on the matter back in July, ruling that school districts in Seattle and Louisville couldn't use race as a factor in school assignments. So when the Pinellas County School Board meets Tuesday to finalize its new plan, they would be wise to avoid a racial numbers game.

Time To Focus On Performance

It's past time for civil rights organizations to acknowledge that schools have been desegregated, at least in the legal sense. The old dual systems under which Linda Brown and millions of others suffered are long gone, even if many schools aren't as integrated as they might like. They also need to stop acting as if the absence of white students is more important than the presence of academic achievement for black children's future.

Don't get me wrong; racial diversity in education is fine, and if it happens, it happens. What should be the most compelling interest, however, is creating academically rigorous and safe schools in our own communities.

Currently, less than half of black males who begin ninth grade in Pinellas finish high school. Sitting next to white students won't improve those numbers, but a neighborhood school tailored to a community's needs might.

It's 2007, not 1957, and the only numbers we should be focusing on are test scores, not racial head counts.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune editorial writer.

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