Bad analogies

There's lots of coverage lately of the SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) hearing arguments from Louisville and Seattle schools defending their practice of using race to assign pupils to various schools ... for "proper diversity balance." Some, like the Chicago Sun Times' Mark Sherman, have attempted to link these cases to the historic Brown v. Board of Education which outlawed lawful school segregation. He writes:

A half century after the Supreme Court outlawed state-sponsored school segregation, five of nine justices indicated Monday that using students' race to promote diversity may run afoul of the Constitution.

But Brown had nothing to do with "diversity" and everything to do with eliminating color as a barrier to which school a student could attend. Amazingly (but, sadly, not surprisingly) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows she doesn't get it:

''What's constitutionally required one day is constitutionally prohibited the next day? That's very odd,'' Ginsburg said, sentiments shared by her three liberal colleagues.

John Rosenberg, as usual, has plenty of enlightening analysis over at Discriminations.

UPDATE: La Shawn Barber chimes in, too.

Posted by Hube at December 5, 2006 05:48 PM | TrackBack