Reply #5: This destroys magnet schools to the misfortune of our children. [View All]

Supreme Court overturns race-based school admissions
Nick Juliano
Published: Thursday June 28, 2007

In a narrowly divided opinion handed down Thursday, the Supreme Court overturned school district policies that made race a factor in admissions, CNN reported.

The 5-4 decision backed parents in Seattle and Louisville who argued that their children were unfairly denied positions in "magnet" public schools because of their race. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which found the school districts failed to show that classifying students on the basis of race was the only way to maintain racial diversity.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts wrote, according to SCOTUSblog.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Supreme_Court_overturns_racebased_school_admissions_0628.html

Here we have men who can afford to send their children to private schools depriving much poorer inner city children of the opportunity to go to school in small classrooms with a group of highly motivated students of various backgrounds and races. The magnet schools have been refuges from the racial strife and race to the bottom that is prevalent in our public schools -- and now these rich guys have destroyed magnet schools. I expected more humanity than this from Roberts. The righties on the Court should be ashamed.

We wanted the best for our children. We had no money for private schools and don't believe in them anyway. So we fought hard to get our children into magnet schools and backed it up with lots of encouragement and even pressure at home to study and do well in school. Thanks to the magnet school program, my children were top students in high school and have gone on to excel in college, and their lives. My oldest is a doctor. The magnet school she went to was housed in our local high school. That high school overall was rated around the time she attended it as one of the 50 worst in Los Angeles. Yet she excelled and is contributing in a truly meaningful way to our country.

Doing away with magnet schools is a mean, vicious act that will hurt inner city children of all races who are gifted or who are very interested in a particular field or direction at an early age. Shame on the justices who cannot see out of their ivory tower. They have done a terrible disservice to America's children and to America.

Roberts is right that the way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating. But, he misses the point of magnet schools. They are the place where children learn to stop discriminating -- at least that is what my children learned. By destroying the magnet program, Roberts actually furthers discrimination.

The children who learn to love diversity through their experiences in magnet schools become the leaders of our communities. It is the love of diversity, the lack of discrimination of these children that threatens these right-wingers who enjoy their position and wealth based on their privilege and links to discriminatory institutions and traditions. It is also the love of diversity that is instilled in these children in magnet schools, however, that will make this diverse country a stronger nation bound together by common experience in an institution in which diversity is intentional. It is such a shame to see the end of magnet schools.