BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Affirmative action and school desegregation programs across
the United States have received several blows recently. These
include a federal court ruling in Boston and a reactionary
ballot measure that passed in Washington State last month.
On November 19, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the affirmative action admissions policy at Boston Latin, the nation's first public school, "risks setting a precedent that is both dangerous to our democratic ideals and almost always constitutionally forbidden." Circuit Court Judge Bruce Selya charged that Boston Latin's admissions policy "offends the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection." The ruling is binding on the Massachusetts school system and other school districts in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico.
The court decision addressed a lawsuit filed by the father of a student who is white who claimed his daughter was "denied admission in favor of less-qualified minority students." According to school statistics, Boston Latin has a student body that is 51 percent white, 21 percent Asian, 19 percent Black, and 9 percent Latino.
The Boston court decision followed similar judicial action in Arlington, Virginia, where a federal court barred affirmative action admissions policy at two public schools last summer. Two years ago the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals eliminated affirmative action in the admissions policy of the University of Texas law school. Affirmative action has also been barred from admissions to universities in Louisiana, California, and Mississippi.
At the November 3 elections, a ballot measure passed that banned state-sponsored affirmative action programs in Washington State. This legislation will have a big impact on higher education for students from oppressed nationalities. Blacks account for 2.8 percent of the undergraduates at the University of Washington, the state's only public university. With a yearly enrollment of 37,500 students, the university has graduated in three decades just over 5,000 students who were admitted through its affirmative action program - just under 170 per year on average.
Ward Connerly, chairperson of the so-called American Civil Rights Institute, led the campaign for the ballot initiative to eliminate affirmative action programs in Washington, which would be officially known as the Washington State Civil Rights Act. Connerly, who is Black, was also the front man for a similar effort in California and is looking to campaign against affirmative action programs in Florida, Nebraska, and Michigan.
Meanwhile, as the assault on affirmative action broadens, the ruling class is chipping away at desegregation. Two lawsuits aimed at dismantling school desegregation policies in Montgomery County, Maryland; and Charlotte, North Carolina are pending. In recent years court decisions have ended desegregation programs in Nashville, Tennessee; Wilmington, Delaware; Denver, Colorado; Cleveland, Ohio; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.