glass half full

This past December, the American Bar Association's ABA Journal published an article on the Seattle and Louisville school integration cases. To put it very briefly, the issue in these cases is whether local school districts may consider race as a factor in deciding which individual school a student will attend in that district.

The February issue of the ABA Journal came in the mail today, and I particularly enjoyed a letter to the editor from Alexander Schulman of Lake Forest, California, regarding the December article:

One of the fundamental duties of schools is to prepare children for what they will encounter in later life.

Toward that end, the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school boards are right in introducing their students to the realities of racial preferences.

Young white males, like Crystal Meredith's son, must accept the subordination of their civil rights to achieve diversity. This will prepare them for future sacrifices they will make in college admissions and employment.

To be clear, the policy of the Seattle School District (I'm not sure about Louisville) affected both black and white students -- some white students were prevented from going to a particular school because there were already enough whites at the school, and some black students were prevented from going to a particular school because there were already enough blacks at the school.

On Schulman's tongue-in-cheek point, I must admit that it sucks to know that I more than likely would have gotten into a better law school if my skin was a different color.

I think the bigger problem, however, is that school boards and universities continue to perpetuate the idea that it is appropriate to govern their admissions and other policies based on skin color. If we really are a society that wants to see each for our abilities and not our race, schools and universities need to set the example.