Year One of the Roberts Court 5 comments

6 Jul 2007 @ 23:16, by Paul Quintanilla (The portrait to your right is of Richard Wright, as a “crossword puzzle.” It was painted by my father, Luis Quintanilla. For more portraits of writers as “how they see themselves,” go to “www.lqart.org/portsfold/writports.html”) Well now it’s here. It’s happened. A rightwing Supreme Court. Prophets warned against it during the last presidential election. But as a national concern it ranked very low among the voters’ priorities. More than fifty years of progressive change has come to an end. Dwight Eisenhower selected a solid Republican, Earl Warren, to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court more than half a century ago. And in 1954 he stunned the world by overturning Jim Crow, brilliantly, movingly: uniting the Court in a unanimous decision. To make sure the moral point got across. That has come to an end. Why was bussing begun in the first place? It was a bold corrective move against the deep racist roots Jim Crow and segregation had established in this country. It attempted to rectify an uneven, unbalanced ingrained social bias against African Americans. It recognized that separate was not equal. That the best way of insuring little black children had the same advantages little white children had was by putting them all together in the same class. In the same schools. What’s more, in a heterogeneous society it is good for all the children to learn about each other, and to accept, at an early age, that all kinds of differences exist. And that we should respect each other no matter what our backgrounds. In a democratic society this is a good starting point. And it helps avoid future struggles and troubles. But now the Supreme Court has told us there is no such thing as institutional racism. That our society is color blind and that any race based social planning is wrong. That there is no need to rectify the problems of the past for they do not exist. And that any consciousness of color is in itself racism. It is ironic, isn’t it, that this historic struggle for equality has been characterized as racist, isn’t it? Because color consciousness puts whites at a disadvantage. Because, according to this attitude, there is no racism, no cultural bias against minorities. We are all just one big color blind society. The court has swung to the right. Does this mean prayer will someday become a sanctioned and promoted activity in public schools? That the Ten Commandments will appear on the walls of court rooms? That Roe v. Wade will be chipped away and eventually made meaningless? That the “rights” of power and money will take precedence over basic human rights? I think so. The trend of the past half century has come to an end. It does matter who we elect to high office. The consequences, as George Bush has amply proved, are enormous.

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