A 5-4 decision guts the vital Brown vs. Board of Education case that attempted to desegregate public schools.

The Supreme Court Just Took Us Back to the Days of Segregation
By Adam Bonin 

In a 5-4 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday, the Supreme Court told local school districts that they cannot take even modest steps to overcome residential segregation and ensure that schools within their diverse cities themselves remain racially mixed unless they can prove that such classifications are narrowly tailored to achieve specific educational benefits.  But they swear they haven’t overturned Brown v. Board of Education. Writes the Chief Justice:

Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again.even for very different reasons. For schools that never segregated on the basis of race, such as Seattle, or that have removed the vestiges of past segregation, such as Jefferson County, the way to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis … is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

To which, in sad dissent, Justice Stevens responded:

There is a cruel irony in The Chief Justice’s reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.” This sentence reminds me of Anatole France’s observation: “[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court’s most important decisions….The Court has changed significantly since it decided School Comm. of Boston in 1968. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.

The court’s 185 page opinion is here, and I’m still digesting it.  Judge Kennedy concurred in the result but not in parts of the opinion, holding that eradicating racial isolation could be a compelling interest, but that the school districts had not proven the need for racial classifications here.  [The other four conservative justices held that racial balance, as a goal in and of itself, can never be constitutionally valid.]  Otherwise, he bloviates: “Under our Constitution the individual, child or adult, can find his own identity, can define her own persona, without state intervention that classifies on the basis of his race or the color of her skin.”

In another separate concurrence, Justice Thomas explains that schools in which blacks are racially isolated might actually be a good thing for such students, and gets snippy with the Court’s liberals: “Regardless of what Justice Breyer’s goals might be, this Court does not sit to ‘create a society that includes all Americans’ or to solve the problems of ‘troubled inner city schooling’.  We are not social engineers. The United States Constitution dictates that local governments cannot make decisions on the basis of race. Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it…. Justice Breyer’s good intentions, which I do not doubt, have the shelf life of Justice Breyer’s tenure. Unlike the dissenters, I am unwilling to delegate my constitutional responsibilities to local school boards and allow them to experiment with race-based decisionmaking on the assumption that their intentions will forever remain as good as Justice Breyer’s.”

For the rest of the story, click here. 

The latest blog column is “Who Won The Battle?”, where we will listen to new and classic hip-hop battles and decide who won.

First up is an interesting one, Eminem vs. Benzino.
To hear Benzino’s diss track, click here.

To hear Eminem’s diss track, click here.
WHO WON THE BATTLE????

Today’s photo of the day is Marvin Gaye, one of the coolest dudes to ever walk the earth…May he rest in peace!

Today’s video of the day is a hip-hop classic from the greatest group of all time!!!

Last week, the Center for American Progress released a study that confirmed what many of us already knew: the nation’s radio airwaves are dominated by conservative talk. According to the study, 91% of the America’s news/talk radio programming is comprised of conservatives. As of Spring 2007, 2570 hours of conservative talk are offered per week in comparison to 254 hours of progressive talk. A separate analysis of the top ten radio markets revealed that 76% of the programming is conservative and only 24% is progressive. In response to this staggering imbalance, many people have called for a revival of the Fairness Doctrine, a federal policy that forced broadcasters to allow equal broadcasting time to opposing views.

Established in 1940, the Fairness Doctrine required government regulation in order to ensure that broadcast companies, of which there were only three, operated in the public interest by adequately informing citizens of important news. The doctrine, which had been in place since the establishment of the FCC, was vetoed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 when Congress attempted to mandate it. Soon after, Right-wing demagogue Rush Limbaugh began to syndicate his radio show in unprecedented fashion, leading the charge toward a conservative media revolution that has overdetermined American politics and left few progressive bodies standing.

Of course, pundits on the Right insist that this spike is due to the demands of the so-called Free Market. Observers like National Review’s Rich Lowry argue that conservative radio is ubiquitous simply because the American people want to hear Right-wing voices more than anyone else’s. Unfortunately, the numbers say otherwise: 56 percent of the American public and 53 percent of regular talk show listeners identify as liberal or moderate. Why wouldn’t they want radio options that reflect their political orientations?

Not coincidentally, the rise in conservative radio has been paralleled by an equally sharp drop in local ownership over the past twenty years. Since the 1980s, the number of large media companies has shrunk from over fifty to lesser than ten. At the same time, thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, locally owned networks have been swallowed up by companies like Clear Channel, which owns more than 1,200 radio stations around the country. This reorganization of ownership has rendered the market anything but free. In addition to cutting jobs and wages, the consolidation of media outlets has devoured small companies and eliminated ownership opportunities for women and people of color. Why does this matter? According to the Center for American Progress study, locally owned companies, as well as those owned by women and people of color, are considerably more likely to provide non-conservative programming.

Simply put, conservative radio dominates because American people don’t have a choice.

Although the Fairness Doctrine remains our best option for sustaining any semblance of media democracy, it is not without its limitations and shortcomings. By legislating our demands for equal time for the “other side,” we reify a liberal/conservative binary that effectively obscures the existence of perspectives that fall outside of that shortsighted dichotomy. Also, by intervening in the programming decisions of corporatized radio outlets, we fail to address the more profound structural problems that accompany neo-liberal globalization. Nevertheless, the Fairness Doctrine will provide us with a much-needed respite from the conservative media assault that has undermined democratic discourse and social justice.