Appeals court finds School District racist

Race will be the death of us, even as we inch toward the (impossible) goal of a race-blind society.

Race awareness may be at an all-time high, and race relations may seem edgy, but intermarriage is at an all-time high, and America has created seven Black millionaires, even while Black family income lags far behind that of whites, and Asians. 

The Philadelphia School District has grappled with race, and unsuccessfully, according to a recent appeals court decision.

It’s been going in for a while, and exactly four years ago I accused the District of racist policies  based on the facts. Now an appeals court has agreed with me.

When I wrote, and I urge you to click on the link, the District was being extremely vague, would not submit to an interview, and had eliminated entrance exams, favoring a lottery system.

It was clear then, and now, the District found a disproportionate percentage of white and Asian students in the academically elite schools, such as Julia R. Masterman, and wanted to increase Black participation, and would do that at the expense of white and yellow. But the hypocrites would not dare speak that name out loud. 

It was an Asian Removal Program.

I have a personal interest in this subject. I am a proud alum of New York’s elite Stuyvesant High School, which was very white, and majority Jewish, when I was there in the ‘50s.

It is now 70% Asian, transitioning from Weinstein to Wang.

And I love every one of those excellent kids, each of whom had to take a test to get in. I don’t give a goddamn about their race — or their gender. (Coed now, it was male only when I attended, and I have no doubt females increased the intellectual heft of the school.)

Because its admission policy is based solely on merit, it has remained one of the best high schools in the nation. 

Blacks are underrepresented. That is a fact, and there are many reasons for that.

Whites are underrepresented in the NBA and the hip-hop community. That is also a fact, but no one is suggesting rapper Kendrick Lamar must duet with Vanilla Ice in the service of diversity.

Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, citing “diversity” (and not mentioning his biracial son who failed to get in) proposed getting rid of the entrance exams at Stuyvesant and other elite schools. The plan needed the OK from the New York state legislature which decided in favor of color-blind merit.

As an alumni supporter, I get lots of material confirming the intellectual superiority of the students, about one-third of whom are children of immigrants, and usually not well off.  At the time of the destructive de Blasio proposal, I asked the alumni association where it stood.

It stood for merit, and for entrance testing, and it retained my support.

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In Philadelphia, in 2021, the District changed the entrance requirements to attract students who met the academic requirement and who lived in certain underrepresented zip codes. I guarantee you those zips (which the District would not disclose) were not Center City or the Far Northeast. 

Officials at the time said they “made a commitment to being an anti-racist organization,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

A decent goal, but how it went about it was not, the appeals court found.

(The District announced no plans for resolving the racism that resulted in almost 70% of its teachers being, you know, white. Of course, that is my sarcastic joke.)

“School District officials made public and private statements . . . that could support a finding that the Policy was intended to alter (and did alter) the racial makeup of the schools,” wrote Judge Thomas Michael Hardiman, for the unanimous three-judge panel.

“So a reasonable fact-finder could conclude that the School District acted with a discriminatory purpose.”

D’uh. That was the intent, but the District would not fess up. 

District lawyers argued that the admissions overhaul was “race-neutral,” but it’s hard to argue with the facts. The stats show that admission offers to Black and Hispanic students increased significantly at most of the high-profile schools, while offers to white and Asians decreased.

The judges took note of an announced District policy seeking to increase the percentage of qualified Black and Hispanic students who are admitted to the criteria-based schools.

The problem is there are more kids who want to get in, than there are seats. The District put its thumb on the scale to favor minority students, who arguably are less qualified, which is why they were given the extra help.

The District’s statements and actions, the judges ruled, “could support a finding that the School District adopted the Admissions Policy to achieve racial proportionality.”

The judges reinstated a lawsuit brought by three parents in 2022, representing their children — one Black, one white, one biracial. The parents claimed the lottery in place was a gerrymandered system.

They want their kids to be judged by the content of their character, and intellect, and now they will get another chance.