UNCLE TOM JUSTICE - TIME
Indeed, Thomas last week attacked the logic of the Brown decision in his concurring opinion on Missouri v. Jenkins. In that decision the court overturned a federal judge's order that the state continue to fund lavish "magnet" schools in Kansas City because test scores at predominantly black schools still lag behind national averages. According to Thomas, the judge had misinterpreted previous court rulings -- including Brown -- "to support the theory that black students suffer an unspecified psychological harm from segregation that retards their mental and educational development. This approach not only relies upon questionable social-science research rather than constitutional principle, but it also rests on an assumption of black inferiority." This, notes Ted Shaw, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the Jenkins case, "is probably the first time a Supreme Court Justice has questioned the reasoning in Brown." That it came from a black, says Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., "makes me want to throw up."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,134324,00.html#ixzz2XbfnBb5N
Indeed, Thomas last week attacked the logic of the Brown decision in his concurring opinion on Missouri v. Jenkins. In that decision the court overturned a federal judge's order that the state continue to fund lavish "magnet" schools in Kansas City because test scores at predominantly black schools still lag behind national averages. According to Thomas, the judge had misinterpreted previous court rulings -- including Brown -- "to support the theory that black students suffer an unspecified psychological harm from segregation that retards their mental and educational development. This approach not only relies upon questionable social-science research rather than constitutional principle, but it also rests on an assumption of black inferiority." This, notes Ted Shaw, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the Jenkins case, "is probably the first time a Supreme Court Justice has questioned the reasoning in Brown." That it came from a black, says Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., "makes me want to throw up."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,134324,00.html#ixzz2XbfnBb5N
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