Neosegregation

When the Supreme Court's Scalia Five selected George W. Bush President in 2000, it had a lot of consequences: preventive (i.e., criminal) war in Iraq, torture, illegal wiretapping, unprecedented corruption.

And now the Republican Supreme Court is following in the footsteps of the Taney Court that handed down the Dred Scott decision in 1857: Supreme Court strikes down school integration policies by David Savage and Joel Havemann Los Angeles Times Online 06/28/07.

The Republican Court's decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al, was decided on a 5-4 decision with Justice Kennedy not fully concurring with Chief Justice Roberts' opinion for the other four in the majority, which goes a long way toward banning laws against racial discrimination entirely. But there's no question in my mind that this is seriously bad. (Just for fun, if you have the sadly perverse sense of fun with which I'm sometimes blessed, see how long it takes you to find the actual name of the case in a news article. Without Googling the case name.)

Old-fashioned segregation didn't die out. It - or, more precisely, they, the segregationists - migrated to the Republican Party and kept pushing for the same things. The President has just decided for a Constitutional showdown with the Congress over the US Attorney firings, which were largely about the Republicans' attempt to intimidate black and Latino voters from going to the polls through phony "voter fraud" prosecutions.

Now the rightwing-activist Republican Supreme Court is attempting to make the segregationists' wet dream into Constitutional law: banning legal measures against racial discrimination.

His soul goes marching on: Ross Barnett, Mississippi's most notorious segregationist Governor

I'm dating myself, I know, by saying that I actually attended racially segregated schools in Mississippi for most of my years growing up. Thank God - and a decent Supreme Court of years past, and federal governments that were willing to enforce the real existing Constitution - it is dating myself to say that. But for many of those years attending segregated schools, the segregation was "voluntary". The previously all-black schools and the previously all-white schools continuted to operate separately, the former with all-black teachers and officials, the latter with all-white. But students could voluntarily choose to attend either school.

This was non-discriminatory, you see. At least in pretty much the same terms the Republican Supreme Court embraced on Thursday. No one was prohibited from attending either school based on race. A few black students elected to attend the "voluntarily" majority-white school. Oddly, every single white students "voluntarily" chose to attend the majority-white school, too. Funny how that kind of "choice" works out, isn't it.

So, I'm sure a lot of people think we're think we're too far along on such things to ever go back to such a thing. It would be Yankees mostly who think that. That's one thing I've always liked about Yankees. They tend to want to look on the optimistic side of human nature when it comes to such things.

But I guess I suffer from Mississippi prejudice. Or, at least, Mississippi-experience prejudice. And I know damn well that unless these trends are reversed that we will wind up like that again in parts of the country. Including but not restricted to the South.

"Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation for-evuh": George Wallace in the "good ole days" the Republican Supreme Court wants to take us back to

Voter suppression? Schools forbidden to act against racial discrimination? Prosecutorial abuse to prevent blacks from voting? The federal Civil Rights office being used exclusively (for all practical purposes) to fight alleged discrimination against whites, who are still the overwhelming majority in the country?

This Brave New World ain't new. We've seen it before. It's called the segregation system. It won't look exactly like the system in the Deep South circa 1955. But the proverbial handwriting is on the wall. And it looks pretty doggone close.

I'm glad to see that New Pravda (the New York Times) is still good for something. They provide a link to the opinions at Findlaw.com. But it won't link directly there from the URL. You have to go to the Times article and click on the "Related" link in the left margin. (I'm not even sure that's a permalink; it may go behind subscription in a week or so.)

We should also keep in mind that the theory of Constitutional law that the Roberts Four embraced on this case is one that has been pushed heavily by the Christian Right and their various legal front groups. This is part of what Whites-Only Christianity looks like.

This is your country on OxyContin, people. And I literally will not be surprised if we hear that junkie bigot Rush Limbaugh and Mad Annie Coulter start to demand segregated drinking fountains. "Voluntary", of course. I mean, shouldn't people have the choice to use separate drinking fountains if they want? I mean, just because the signs say "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" doesn't mean it's complusory. (And, yes, I've seen those, too. Live and in operation, not just in museum displays.)

Think I'm exaggerating? Check out this video from the PBS Newshour and see if the white guy defending the decision doesn't make your skin crawl: Supreme Court Rejects Race-Based Criteria in Schools 06/28/07. And this is what the "respectable" segregationists are saying ...

I don't want to make this sound worse than it is. The Roberts Four didn't succeed in overtly reversing Brown v. Board of Education, after all. But bad as it is, is bad enough.

Tags: racism, segregation