From an opinion piece originally posted on TheGrio:

Raleigh, North Carolina is perceived by many as one of the more progressive cities in the nation. However, recent events have challenged that perception. In a recent 5-4 vote, the Wake County School Board ended its busing policy, which had been in place since the 1970s, in favor of a neighborhood-based education plan that would resegregate education and leave African American and Latino children in substandard schools.

According to Rev. William Barber II, NAACP State Conference President and lead protester against the resegregation of education, the policy change is more about a pedagogical challenge to the value of socioeconomic diversity than it is about busing. Busing was a means to an end, a strategy to ensure that children, who were likely to live in segregated residential areas, would have an opportunity to learn in diverse environments.

“Diversity is one of our seven components of school excellence,” Rev. Barber said. “If we don’t challenge this, we’ll see the creation of high poverty, racially identifiable schools.”

I thought we settled this already. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, it was clear that separate was inherently unequal and unconstitutional, and that any effort to segregate education is a violation of civil rights. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, the nation’s highest court reiterated that, “student body diversity is a compelling state interest.” However, the Wake County School Board, by returning to “neighborhood schools” has essentially elected to ignore these decisions…

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