Rosenberg’s argument that the “diversity” proponents in Wake County are misrepresenting the Court’s holding in Brown v. Board of Education is worth a bit more discussion. Rosenberg wrote:

“Finally, it is true that the Brown record is filled with arguments that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to and does not prohibit reasonable classification based on race, and that courts, even the Supreme Court, have no business telling states or local school boards how to assign their students. ?Your Honors do not sit,? as one attorney put it, ?and cannot sit as a glorified Board of Education….? [p. 216]

For more examples, see the transcript of the oral arguments linked above at pp. 51, 56, 134, 137, 141, 215, and 268.

Those arguments, however, were all made by attorneys defending the racial assignment policies that the plaintiffs attacked. They lost. The Washington Post and Secretary Duncan to the contrary notwithstanding, the principle and the core value that Brown ?enshrined? is that students (and by extension, others) may not be burdened by the state because of their race ? not the contending principle that cities must do whatever is necessary, including imposing burdens on students based on their race, to promote integration.”

The notion that “diversity” has been turned into a requirement for all education from kindergarten through college is widespread, but that is because it’s chanted so often, not because the Supreme Court has ruled so. Brown actually stands for an opposing idea: governments are not allowed to move children around and assign them to this school or that merely on account of their race. It is, to say the least, an inconvenient decision for people who insist on shuffling students around to achieve what the authorities feel is the right degree of “diversity.”