Can public schools accept or reject students based on their
race? Last week, the Supreme Court took up that question in a
pair of school integration cases from Seattle and Louisville. In
each case, students were denied admission to their chosen public
schools because they were not the right color to increase racial
balance. Supporters of race-based student assignment, from the
NAACP to MTV, believe it promotes socially and educationally
valuable interaction among white and minority students. In
reality, these policies have been about as effective at
producing meaningful integration and educational excellence as
arranged marriages are at manufacturing true love. Even in their
most basic goal of achieving racial balance in school-level
enrollment, forced integration policies have fallen short.
Harvard’s Civil Rights Project has observed that public schools
are little more racially integrated today than they were before
such policies were introduced, with “more than 70% of the
nation’s black students now attend[