Something is rotten in the United States

Filed in archive Latin Issues on July 3, 2007

As I've said, I agree with Chief Justice John Roberts when he says "the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race''. I've also said I agree with the Court's decision regarding racial program's guidelines.

Today I saw a post from Latina Lista, where she reproduces an article written by Van Cavett, where he talks about Louisville's traumatic school desegregation in 1975. He says Chief Justice John Roberts's statement "is dismissive of centuries of discrimination. It puts down the good-faith efforts by Louisville and thousands of other communities to overcome that past."

Marisa says the Supreme Court's decision has "sent this nation's strides in diversity among public schools back a quarter of a century."

If I didn't got it wrong, they think (or are afraid) that without racial diversity laws, the schools will go back to the segregation that existed in 1956: single-race schools. I suppose they are not the only ones who feel that way.

I didn't realize that that was possible. We're in 2007, por el Amor de Dios! I know racism is still a very sad reality, one that many, many people has to face every day. But school segregation? From where I stand, that would be going way to far. If there's a real possibility of that to become a reality once again, nobody should be worrying about the Court's decision - nor about racial diversity programs.

If a nation needs a law in order to prevent school segregation, such a nation should be trying to figure out why things are like that; such a nation should take a hard look at its very core values and culture, and discover why something so horrible and horrifying seems to be so plausible.