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74 Fordham L. Rev. 791 (2005-2006)
School Choice to Achieve Desegregation

handle is hein.journals/flr74 and id is 807 raw text is: ARTICLE SCHOOL CHOICE TO ACHIEVE DESEGREGATION Goodwin Liu* and William L. Taylor** INTRODUCTION Today, in the wake of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,1 it seems appropriate to revisit the meaning and impact of that historic decision. In our view, Brown was not grounded in legal concerns about educational quality but rather in the inability of the legalized caste system imposed by segregation laws to withstand honest scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment.2 Yet the United States Supreme Court found it instructive to articulate the importance of public education in a democratic society and the harm done by inequality. So the Court spoke of education as required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment.3 At the beginning of a new century, with the legalized caste system largely a relic of the past, there is ample evidence that society has made significant strides toward achieving the lofty educational goals set forth in Brown. On average, black Americans have many more years of educational attainment than they did in the 1950s.4 They are found in greater numbers * Assistant Professor of Law, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. ** Chair, Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, and Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. 1. 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 2. See Charles L. Black, Jr., The Lawfulness of the Segregation Decisions, 69 Yale L.J. 421 (1960). The Brown opinion cited Strauder v. West Virginia, which said that the words of the Fourteenth Amendment gave to the colored race the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored,--exemption from legal discriminations ... which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race. 100 U.S. 303, 307-08 (1880). 3. Brown, 347 U.S. at 493. 4. In 1965, only 15.2% of African-Americans between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine had attended college; by 1995, that number had risen to 44.9%. Among African-Americans in that age bracket, 15.3% had completed four or more years of college

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