Power Line
Scott Johnson
Mar. 27, 2018
Linda Brown was the young girl who gave her name to the four cases consolidated for consideration in Brown V. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court case that effectively invalidated the regime of public school segregation. She died on Sunday at the age of 75 or 76. Neil Genzlinger’s New York Times obituary (illustrated with good photographs) is here.
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The principle of equal treatment without regard to race was adopted as the law of the land in the great civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, or so we foolishly thought at the time. It may even have been the law for a minute or two. Then the federal government began building the whole edifice of affirmative action and racial preferences that we live with today and that has been addressed by the Supreme Court in a number of important cases. Certainly insofar as higher education is concerned, the affirmative action regime and the treatment of students based on the color of their skin are entrenched more deeply than ever under the shibboleth of “diversity.â€
One of the lessons of Kull’s great book is that the Court wants to retain for the judiciary the discretion and authority to approve varieties of racial discrimination. Linda Brown and her case to the contrary notwithstanding, the ideal of the colorblind Constitution remains permanently on the horizon.
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/03/linda-brown-and-her-case.php
