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 front-page story
in the Washington Post Tuesday reports that Mississippi will
settle a desegregation lawsuit
brought 26 years ago against its higher-education system by agreeing
to pay $500 million, most of which will go to the state's three
historically black universities.
Let's stop right there. How does it further the cause of desegregation
to give a lot of money to a group of racially identifiable schools?
In 1954, the Supreme Court famously decreed in Brown v. Board
of Education that separate schools are "inherently unequal,"
and ruled that the appropriate remedy was desegregation, not providing
more money to black schools. What's going on here?
The truth of the matter is that Mississippi's higher-education system,
like the higher-education systems of every other state in the union,
has been desegregated for a long time. No one is assigned to a college
in Mississippi because of his or her skin color. No one is refused
admission to a university because of race. Some schools are heavily
white and others are heavily black, but no one is asserting that
state discrimination dictates this state of affairs. Not every Mississippi
school looks like every other Mississippi school in terms of racial
make-up, but this reflects thousands of individual student decisions,
made truly as matters of personal choice, for academic, geographic,
family, and other personal reasons — including, no doubt in
some cases, race. But if discrimination is sometimes involved, in
no case is it discrimination by the government of Mississippi.
The state-run historically black colleges in Mississippi are themselves
vestiges of the old segregated system. It can be argued that their
continued existence discourages greater integration in Mississippi,
albeit as a matter of individual choice. Many whites will decline
to attend them because of the schools' historical identification,
and many blacks will choose to go there for exactly the same reason.
Mississippi Valley State (a historically black college) is only
35 miles from Delta State University (historically white). It makes
little sense not to consolidate these schools.
But many black Mississippians — as well as, naturally, the
officials at the black schools themselves — don't want to see
the schools closed. They also did not like the idea of encouraging
integration by requiring the black schools to have the same admission
standards as the white schools, because they feared that many black
students would not be able to pass them. And so now we come to the
"solution" reached in this litigation, and joined not only by the
state and the individual black plaintiffs, but also by the Bush
administration's Department of Justice: Require the state to give
the black schools most of a half-billion dollar settlement, and
end the lawsuit.
President Bush took a big step down this road earlier this month.
His Justice Department filed a brief that repudiated the idea of
increased funding for black schools as part of the remedy in this
litigation when the case was before the Supreme Court. But, after
a White House meeting with various black leaders, President Bush
forced then–Solictor General Kenneth Starr to repudiate the repudiation
in another brief filed with the Court ("Suggestions to the contrary
in our opening brief…no longer reflect the position of the
United States").
The Post reports that faculty senate presidents from two
of the black schools held a news conference last week to oppose
the agreement, saying it did too little — too little! —
to aid those institutions. But the proposed settlement was finally
approved by most of the state's elected black officials anyhow.
Mississippi state attorney general Mike Moore lauded the settlement,
declaring that "this is more money and more programs for the historically
black universities than the court would ever give."
No doubt. But why does it make sense to settle a case for more than
you could lose in court? And how is it right to agree to terms that
are beyond what the law requires?
Here's a delicious irony. The New York Times describes another
part of the settlement this way: "As an incentive to promote diversity,
the state would allow the [black] colleges to control the interest
from the endowment [created by the settlement] if they achieved
10 percent non-black enrollment for three consecutive years." In
other words, the black schools are being bribed to discriminate
against black students. And the original purpose of the lawsuit
was…well, to end discrimination against black students. Never
mind.
Judge Neal Biggers Jr. will have to approve the settlement before
it can go into effect. He had ruled in 1987 that Mississippi's schools
were already desegregated, but he was reversed by the Supreme Court.
I don't envy the judge now. The major problem with most of the settlement
isn't that it violates the law, or even that the half billion dollars
won't be put to good use. The big problem is that the settlement
of this desegregation lawsuit — which everyone seems to want
— has essentially nothing to do with desegregation.
But that's because the desegregation lawsuit itself no longer has
anything to do with desegregation either, and hasn't for a long
time.
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