Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, June 11, 2009
In a victory for advocates of school integration, the state Supreme Court rejected a challenge Wednesday to Berkeley’s policy of considering the racial composition of students’ neighborhoods in deciding where they will enroll.
Without a dissenting vote, the court denied review of an appeal by backers of Proposition 209, the 1996 initiative that outlawed racial preferences in public education, employment and contracting. An appellate ruling upholding the Berkeley system is now binding on courts statewide and allows any district to adopt a similar plan.
In the March 17 ruling, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said the Berkeley Unified School District was not violating Prop. 209 because it based enrollment decisions on the diversity of a student’s neighborhood, not the individual student’s race. It was the first ruling by a California appeals court on a district’s voluntary integration program since voters approved the constitutional amendment.
“I think Berkeley has found the right approach to complying with both its obligations and its desire to have an integrated school system, and its obligations under Prop. 209,” said Jon Streeter, lawyer for the 9,000-student district, on Wednesday. “Up to now, many people had thought that doing both is not possible.”
{snip}
Sharon Browne, a Pacific Legal Foundation attorney representing a nonprofit organization that sued the Berkeley schools, said the court’s action was disappointing but wasn’t necessarily the last word. Under California legal rules, she noted, a different appeals court could still rule that a Berkeley-style plan in another district violated Prop. 209, creating a conflict that the state’s high court would have to resolve.
“Another lawsuit can be brought and should be, to make sure students are treated as individuals and not as part of a racial group,” Browne said. She said districts should be cautious in following the Berkeley model because “it will invite more litigation, and litigation is very expensive.”
{snip}
Prop. 209 is stricter than the federal standard and forbids any differential treatment based on race.
The Berkeley district has taken measures since 1968 to promote racial balance between schools in the largely minority flatlands and the mostly white hillside and UC Berkeley neighborhoods.
Under the plan the district adopted in 2004, each area of four to eight square blocks is given a diversity rating based on racial composition and parents’ income and education levels. The district uses that rating in enrollment decisions at the city’s 11 elementary schools and in special academic programs at Berkeley High School.
{snip}
“Using neighborhood demographics when assigning students is not discriminatory,” the appeals court said in its March ruling. “All students in a given residential area are treated equally.”
The case is American Civil Rights Foundation vs. Berkeley Unified School District, S172258.
Original article
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Bob Egelko
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(Posted on June 11, 2009)
Comments
About 15 years ago, I saw a PBS documentary about one of Berkeley’s “integrated” high schools. The school may be integrated, but the races quickly self-segregate.
Berkeley has, over the years become somewhat less black and more white.Hopefully, this trend will continue, just as it did in San Francisco.Then maybe some of the schools there will become halfway decent.
Cases such as this one are going to become more frequent as the demographic revolution in this country increasingly pushes whites into the minority, and whites (futilely) try in good faith to overcome their stigmatization and disenfranchisement via the democratic process (or what’s left of it) and civil debate. For example, I predict that it won’t be long before courts simply prohibit measures like Prop. 209 from the ballot box entirely, as opponents have repeatedly tried to get them to do. As another example, there have been recent attempts to link the killings of immigrants, allegedly by whites, to immigration restriction arguments, all but stating explicitly that the arguments for one side of the immigration debate constitute nothing but illicit incitement to murder rather than legitimate political opinions.
I suppose the good thing about this trend, though, is that it will inexorably increase the appeal of white nationalism to whites. If whites are gradually going to be given the status of kulaks and outlaws in Western nations, there will be little continuing positive incentive for white people to eschew “outlaw” views like those of white nationalism. Instead (and this is also something we see more and more of), suppression of white nationalism will have to rely on “hate speech” laws and the like backed by state repression, violence and intimidation, which historical examples teach us will have the unintended long-term effect of further increasing WN’s appeal to whites. We are seeing this trend happen in the elections just this past week in Europe, and despite the howling hysteria of the West’s treasonous anti-white elites and the beginnings of implementation of violent suppression of pro-white groups like the BNP by state-approved thugs, I believe the momentum for politcal organizations promoting the interests of white European people as members of their white European race will soon be unstoppable throughout the West, and will either be accommodated democratically, or somehow have to be appeased otherwise.
The bottom line is that the liberals just can’t get past their focus on race and desire to discriminate by race. The ones keeping racism alive are the liberals. It’s interesting that they are unable to see that forced integration is every bit as wrong as forced segregation.
This is great. Let the liberal’s children suffer the way other White children have suffered going to school with blacks. I can’t wait to see the parent gatherings as ghetto mamas confront Cal Berkely instructors.
Prop 209 was always a totally dead letter law. No enforcement was built in. Of course, federal anti White laws always supersede
Yesterday, I encountered a lovely White couple at the grocery store. Their eight, home-schooled children were all well behaved and appeared quite bright.
I suddenly realized that it had been a long time since I had seen a large, happy family of White Americans. That father and mother were doing more to help American society than all of the combined essays on this and related White culture sites.
When you see a family of home-schoolers like the one that I encountered, show them how much you appreciate them raising good citizens. Consider dropping off some gifts during the various holidays and if you can afford it, help them financially to the extent that you can. Many White Americans have elected to limit the size of their own families for various reasons. Some are so pessimistic about the future, they have had no children at all.
When you encounter a large family like the one I recently met, really show them how much you appreciate them, and their lasting impact on our nation’s future.
A huge proportion of the white families in Berkeley send their children to private schools.
Violence in the schools, particularly Berkeley High, is widely discussed, although rarely openly.
Berkeley only has one high school. It is given lavish resources.
Here is an account from a local newspaper of a day in the life of the campus.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2001-04-09/article/4279?headline=Safety-a-top-priority-at-Berkeley-High-School
Already there’s been a brawl in the girls’ locker room that took most of the school’s seven safety officers to break up. The girls involved have been ushered into separate vice-principal’s offices. They’re being interview one-by-one by Barry Wiggan, the school’s security supervisor, and officers from the Berkeley Police Department.
Already the safety officers have pulled one student from class after he allegedly threatened his classmates. The student had to be brought into the school’s administrative offices, a cluster of temporary trailers, by force.
“This is like Good Morning Vietnam,” Safety Officer Mary Reynolds said, referring to the movie starring Robin Williams to no one in particular as the police radios crackle in the background.
But it’s just another Friday at Berkeley High.
After a Berkeley High student told a special committee of school administrators and Berkeley city councilmembers last month about groups of Berkeley High students who allegedly terrorized the school through violence and intimidation, administrators have made improving safety at the school a top priority.
…
Some changes have already occurred. After five Berkeley High students were assaulted on campus Friday, March 23, by teenagers believed to be from another town, Lynch invited a group of concerned parents to begin patrolling the campus themselves during the difficult hours after lunch.
“We kind of put our foot on the accelerator,” Lynch said. “We said, ‘Let’s stop talking about it. Let’s do it.’”
But until there are more sweeping changes instituted, the situation at Berkeley High is much the same. And school safety officers are anticipating more fights and discipline problems as the days get hotter.
“The tempers are quick on hot days,” said Reynolds. “The guys are more aggressive because the girls have got more showing.”
Berkeley High’s safety officers are charged with patrolling the campus throughout the day, removing disruptive kids from class, breaking up fights, and getting kids to go to class, among other things. Most school discipline matters are handled through suspension, either on campus or off. If a student’s offense rises to the level of a crime it is promptly turned over to Berkeley Police.
The number of crimes reported on the Berkeley High campus has grown in leaps and bounds over the last three years. In 1998, Berkeley police records show 36 crimes reported on the campus — including nine thefts, seven cases of burglary from cars and four batteries. In 1999, records show 69 crimes — including 13 thefts, 12 batteries, two assaults on school employees and two assaults with a deadly weapon. In 2000, records show 92 crimes — including 14 thefts, 13 batteries and six cases of arson.
…
Students are “disruptive,” Keys said, in part because the school is not meeting their needs. The time has come to acknowledge that different kids have different needs and create school programs that reflect that, Keys said, pointing to the Rebound program, a intensive program to help freshman failing English and Math catch up to their classmates, as an example. Berkeley High already has three “small learning communities” and is moving towards creating a fourth. School officials are also considering an official move to the “small learning community model,” which would create more schools-within-a-school for different groups of students.
“It’s interesting that they are unable to see that forced integration is every bit as wrong as forced segregation.”
No. It’s 10 times worse. But that’s not how the story does however.
How do the authorities judge who is what race? That question has never been asked, and it would be enlightening to hear a diversicrat explain how they determine race.
The law and constitution are simply inconveniences to our elite (republicans included) they are increasingly irrelevant as well.
J. Tyler makes a great point! When I hear someone look at a large white family and make a rude remark about “god, why do they have all those kids” I will say, “I would much rather prefer seeing that than a bunch of illegal aliens coming here, having big familes who don’t speak English, and who end up bankrupting our hospitals and other institutions.”
This is absurd. There is no constitutional mandate to ensure “diversity of a student’s neighborhood”. This is just obvious trickery to get around Prop 209 and the California Supreme Court ought to be ashamed of itself. Blacks ought to be ashamed - instead of trying harder to cut it they run crying to the courts to get an OK to jump ahead in line.
MOST white people want to live in an all white country (as we have done for over 10,000 years).
A lot of fights… And a lot of ‘meetings’ discussing it all. Could it be? The children of these liberal parents have more self-respect than do the obsequious kids of most whites. Perhaps these kids don’t know just yet: with blacks you always lose every time. Then you’re punished a second time by the adults.
