EducationNews.org

The Race Issue

David S. Broder

Are we in the 'post racial age' or is the Supreme Court jumping the gun?

The implicit message, delivered by the Supreme Court majority in two of the most important decisions of the term that ended this week, is that racial discrimination is no longer as big a problem as we once thought.

Neither the voting rights case out of Texas nor the affirmative action hiring case out of New Haven, Conn., said that explicitly. But the link between the two is the assumption or assertion that this society has largely healed itself and does not need the race-conscious remedies that the previous generation of politicians thought necessary.

If that reading of the court's majority is correct, then two things are clear. Judge Sonia Sotomayor will certainly challenge the prevailing view if she is confirmed by the Senate to join that bench. And over a longer period, President Obama is likely to find himself in conflict with the court on the question of race.

In the voting rights case decided on June 22, Chief Justice John Roberts signaled that he thinks time has run out on the remedy that Congress concocted in 1965 to overcome the historical pattern of denying blacks access to the ballot box in much of the South. A central provision of the Voting Rights Act, passed originally for five years and repeatedly extended, requires covered jurisdictions to get approval from Washington for any change, no matter how trivial, to its voting procedures.

As Roberts wrote in his opinion, "the historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act are undeniable. . . . [But] things have changed in the South. Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels."  more...