Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Return of Jim Crow
On June 28, the Supreme Court, led by Bush Administration appointees, restricted the ability of public school districts to use race to determine which schools students can attend. As the court's minority pointed out in sharply worded dissents, that decision will, as the majority no doubt intended, sharply limit racial integration of public schools across the nation.
Where does the Discovery Institute -- you know, the ones who claim Darwin's theory of evolution is racist -- stand on this issue?
Well, John R. Miller, a member of Parents Involved in Community Schools, which sued the Seattle school district over its racial tiebreaker plan, is guess what, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and he's written an Op-Ed in the Seattle Times to tell us.
Discovery's Miller wants the country's history of racial segregation forgotten. Where once the opponents of integration blocked the school house doors to proclaim "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" they now demand an absolutely color blind system for placing children in public schools. And if that just happens to re-segregate public schools across the country, as white supremacists such as George,Wallace, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, and Strom Thumond fought to do, well that's just too bad.
"As someone who grew up in Mississippi and Alabama during the civil rights movement," evangelical theologian Charles Marsh recently told Robin Reid at Politico, "my reading is that the conservative Christian movement never was able to distinguish itself from the segregationist movement, and that is one of the reasons I find so much of the rhetoric familiar -- and unsettling."
Those on the Christian right, such as Miller and the Discovery Institute, standing on the shoulders of the segregationists who came before them, want to whittle away at the gains made by the Civil Rights movement.
To do that they've learned to appropriate the language of the civil rights fighters they once opposed. These days they talk more about Lincoln and diversity than race mixing and miscegenation. Neighborhood schools have replaced state's rights.
They no longer erect billboards calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, instead they try to take credit for the Warren Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling even as they twist its intent and labor tirelessly to lead us back to the days of Jim Crow.
Where does the Discovery Institute -- you know, the ones who claim Darwin's theory of evolution is racist -- stand on this issue?
Well, John R. Miller, a member of Parents Involved in Community Schools, which sued the Seattle school district over its racial tiebreaker plan, is guess what, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and he's written an Op-Ed in the Seattle Times to tell us.
Discovery's Miller wants the country's history of racial segregation forgotten. Where once the opponents of integration blocked the school house doors to proclaim "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" they now demand an absolutely color blind system for placing children in public schools. And if that just happens to re-segregate public schools across the country, as white supremacists such as George,Wallace, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, and Strom Thumond fought to do, well that's just too bad.
"As someone who grew up in Mississippi and Alabama during the civil rights movement," evangelical theologian Charles Marsh recently told Robin Reid at Politico, "my reading is that the conservative Christian movement never was able to distinguish itself from the segregationist movement, and that is one of the reasons I find so much of the rhetoric familiar -- and unsettling."
Those on the Christian right, such as Miller and the Discovery Institute, standing on the shoulders of the segregationists who came before them, want to whittle away at the gains made by the Civil Rights movement.
To do that they've learned to appropriate the language of the civil rights fighters they once opposed. These days they talk more about Lincoln and diversity than race mixing and miscegenation. Neighborhood schools have replaced state's rights.
They no longer erect billboards calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, instead they try to take credit for the Warren Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling even as they twist its intent and labor tirelessly to lead us back to the days of Jim Crow.
