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Yahoo
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down
In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s. The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law. Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying. These orders 'provide students with really important protections against discrimination', said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. 'They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they're assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they're violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.' The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a 'joint stipulated dismissal'. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general's office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal. 'I'm not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,' said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. 'The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it's supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there's no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.' Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree. 'No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,' Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department's civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. 'This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we're now getting America refocused on our bright future.' But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 'The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.' In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist. Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating. Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white. Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so. According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. 'Separate but equal doesn't work,' said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. 'The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they're going to be shut out, whether that's from AP classes, whether that's from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.' Related: There was a deal to fix this Alabama community's raw sewage crisis. Trump tore it up over DEI 'Public education isn't just about education for the sake of education,' he added. 'It's about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It's on our democracy writ large.' Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision 'signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation's schools'. 'Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,' he said. 'The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they're not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.' Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a 'slippery slope' in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration. 'The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,' he said. 'I worry that we're going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.' Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
24-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down
In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s. The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law. Some experts, including former justice department employees, say the change in direction for the department could be worrying. These orders 'provide students with really important protections against discrimination', said Shaheena Simons, who was the chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the justice department for nearly a decade. 'They require school districts to continue to actively work to eliminate all the remaining vestiges of the state-mandated segregation system. That means that students have protections in terms of what schools they're assigned to, in terms of the facilities and equipment in the schools that they attend. They have protection from discrimination in terms of barriers to accessing advanced programs, gifted programs. And it means that a court is there to protect them and to enforce their rights when they're violated and to ensure that school districts are continuing to actively desegregate.' The justice department ended the Plaquemines parish desegregation order in an unusual process, one that some fear will be replicated elsewhere. The case was dismissed through a 'joint stipulated dismissal'. Previously, courts have followed a specific process for ending similar cases, one in which school districts prove that they are complying with the court orders. That did not happen this time. Instead, the Louisiana state attorney general's office worked with the justice department in reaching the dismissal. 'I'm not aware of anyone, any case, that has [ended] that way before,' said Deuel Ross, the deputy director of litigation of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF); the LDF was not specifically involved with the Plaquemines parish case. 'The government as a plaintiff who represents the American people, the people of that parish, has an obligation to make sure that the district has done everything that it's supposed to have done to comply with the federal court order in the case before it gets released, and the court itself has its own independent obligation to confirm that there's no vestiges of discrimination left in the school district that are traceable to either present or past discrimination.' Despite the district not proving that it is compliant with the order, the justice department has celebrated the end of the consent decree. 'No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,' Harmeet K Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the justice department's civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the decision. 'This is a prime example of neglect by past administrations, and we're now getting America refocused on our bright future.' But focusing on the age of the case implies that it was obsolete, according to Simons, who is now the senior adviser of programs and strategist at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. 'The administration is trying to paint these cases as ancient history and no longer relevant.' In 1966, the Johnson administration sued school districts across the country, particularly in the south, that refused to comply with desegregation demands. At the time, Plaquemines parish was led by Leander Perez, a staunch segregationist and white supremacist. Perez had played a large role in trying to keep nearby New Orleans from desegregating, and once that effort failed, he invited 1,000 white students from the Ninth Ward to enroll in Plaquemines parish schools. By 1960, nearly 600 had accepted the offer. Perez was excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel for ignoring his warning to stop trying to prevent schools run by the archdiocese of New Orleans from integrating. Perez attempted to close the public schools in Plaquemines parish, and instead open all-white private academies, or, segregation academies, which became a feature of the post-integration south. An estimated 300 segregation academies, which, as private schools, are not governed by the same rules and regulations as public schools, are still in operation and majority white. Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so. According to the Century Foundation, as of 2020, 185 districts and charters consider race and/or socioeconomic status in their student assignment or admissions policies, while 722 districts and charters are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The justice department currently has about 135 desegregation cases on its docket, the majority of which are in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion 'Separate but equal doesn't work,' said Johnathan Smith, former deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the justice department. 'The reality is that students of color do better when they are in integrated classrooms … We know that the amount of resources that are devoted to schools are greater when there are a higher number of white students. So to have students attend majority-minority school districts means that they're going to be shut out, whether that's from AP classes, whether that's from extracurricular activities. All the activities that make it possible for students to fully achieve occur when you have more integrated classrooms.' 'Public education isn't just about education for the sake of education,' he added. 'It's about preparing people to be citizens of our democracy and to be fully engaged in our democratic institutions. When you have students that are being shut out from quality public education, the impact is not just on those communities. It's on our democracy writ large.' Smith, the current chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law, said that the decision 'signals utter contempt for communities of color by the administration, and a lack of awareness of the history of segregation that has plagued our nation's schools'. 'Even though we are 71 years after the Brown v Board [of Education] decision, schools of this country remain more segregated today than they were back in 1954,' he said. 'The fact that the administration is kind of wholeheartedly ending these types of consent decrees is troubling, particularly when they're not doing the research and investigation to determine whether or not these decrees really should be ended at this point.' Smith said that the decision in the Plaquemines parish case may be a 'slippery slope' in which other school districts begin reaching out to the Trump administration. 'The impact they can have across the country and particularly across the south is pretty huge,' he said. 'I worry that we're going to see more and more of these decrees falling and more and more of these districts remaining segregated without any real opportunity to address that.'
CNN
26-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Bill Moyers, former press secretary turned acclaimed journalist, dead at 91
Bill Moyers, a former press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson who turned into a longtime broadcast journalist and champion of public media, has died at age 91, his family confirmed to CNN. This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN
26-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Bill Moyers, former press secretary turned acclaimed journalist, dead at 91
Bill Moyers, a former press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson who turned into a longtime broadcast journalist and champion of public media, has died at age 91, his family confirmed to CNN. This is a developing story and will be updated.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Creating art under Trump will become harder but it will remain vital
One of the most pernicious effects of a bully's intimidation is making victims afraid of being true to themselves, because it's the essential and authentic parts of them that incite the bully's contempt. During his first week in office Donald Trump issued a blitzkrieg of executive orders. Among them, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.' According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, among the things these orders direct the administration's agencies and staff to do are: Terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, positions, and programs in the federal government; terminate equity-related grants and contracts; and repeal prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, including a decades-old executive order from the Johnson Administration ... ' In the art scene these moratoriums had almost immediate consequence. Cheryl Edwards, a visual artist and curator based in Washington DC, had been working on an exhibition titled Before the Americas which was to be mounted at the Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), an organization established in 1948 that includes all 35 independent nations of the western hemisphere. In 2021 Edwards was approached by the current museum director, Adriana Ospina, and the previous director, Pablo Zúñiga, to, in her words, curate an exhibition to include African American artists in the DC area. They agreed on a framework engaging the question 'Because we are people in a society that existed before slavery, how does that manifest itself in the work of artists in this area and the work of artists in their collection?' She was given a budget of $20,000 (with a $5,000 curator's fee), the money being allocated by the previous US ambassador to the OAS under Joe Biden, Francisco O Mora. Edwards's show was scheduled to open on 21 March, but she was informed by Ospina on 6 February that her show was 'terminated'. Edwards attests this happened 'because it is DEI'. Similarly, Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and curator, who is also a professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, invested several years into an exhibition at the same museum. His show, titled Nature's Wild with Andil Gosine, was essentially a collaborative project with 50 artists, writers and technicians exploring the themes he had examined in his book of the same title. It was to include artwork by a dozen artists from across the Americas, many of them LGBTQ+ people of color. He received a phone call from Ospina on 5 February informing him that the show had been canceled, despite none of the funding for it coming from OAS (that came from Canada Council). For him that that was 'heartbreaking news'. He says: 'This is the most time, money and heart I've put into anything. This was going to be the pinnacle of my last 15 years of work in the arts.' With his background in international relations (working at the World Bank after graduate school) Gosine understood that the museum's response had to do with fear of losing their budget by showcasing queer artists in the wake of yet another executive order, this one promising a process of 'Reviewing United States Support to all International Organizations'. He explains: 'This is a content question, a gamble on how to deal with a shifting political tide: to conform enough, sacrifice some people, sacrifice your values to survive, and then maybe not get the budget.' According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2023 OAS had a budget of $145.2m, with the US contributing 57% of that. Having the United States rescind their support would clearly lacerate the organization's operations. Nevertheless, Gosine thinks that their anticipatory acquiescence may be for nought. He asks how an organization that is fundamentally concerned with human rights and social justice can reinvent itself enough to mollify this vengeful and disdainful regime. The cancelation of art exhibitions negatively impacts the lives of curators, but these executive orders have an even more corrosive effect on the lives of artists – particularly those whose immigration status is in flux. Erika Hirugami, a formerly undocumented Mexican-Japanese immigrant, doctoral candidate at UCLA, and Los Angeles-based curator who has been working in the arts for 10 years, told me that the pressures placed on immigrants impel them to erase themselves, anticipating law enforcement officials incarcerating and deporting them. She attests that she knows more than 80 artists who 'are terrified because having an exhibition at a museum that says that this artist is undocumented signals a reality that generates a kind of violence'. To better understand this, it helps to think of the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who extensively studied European art museum visitors in the 1960s, concerned with why most art museum visitor profiles seemed to be correlated with a certain socio-economic class. What he found was that given the proliferation of middle-class aesthetics throughout the museum, the majority of working-class people self-selected to not attend, feeling that the museum was not the place for them. He called this de facto rejection of the poor and working class 'symbolic violence', meaning a non-physical violence expressed through the imposition of social norms by a group with greater social power. Worse still, these norms are internalized by all social groups who come to believe that social hierarchy and inequality are natural and inevitable. Hirugami explains that for artists who are undocumented, this administration has sought to normalize living in fear. Practically this means that some artists now forgo being paid for their work for fear of having their means of remuneration traced. Thus, their labor goes unrecognized and unpaid. To protect themselves some artists, according to Hirugami, go 'zero social', making themselves digitally invisible by taking down their websites and social media pages. Arleene Correa Valencia, a formerly undocumented artist living in Napa, California, understands this dread. 'There's no handbook to how to lose that fear,' she says. Valencia was an enrollee in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, and a college student during the previous Trump administration, when she was under almost constant threat of losing her scholarship and means of staying in the country legally. Even now, having achieved permanent resident status, she still worries. 'I still feel like I'm very much a target, especially having come to my residency as a Dreamer. There is this feeling that I did it the wrong way.' Less than two months after taking charge of the federal government, Trump and his agents have devised ways to not only erase certain artists and certain types of art; but also to compel these artists to erase themselves, in the name of self-protection. This is exactly the opposite of their most essential work: to engage the public to experience their work and to move them toward transformation. What is a possible solution? Valencia turns toward her art. She says: My practice has changed in that now I'm more grounded in knowing that my people have this beautiful language of painting. And with that I also, tattooed my head to recognize, my Indigenous background and my connection to Mexico. This is the time where we have to make our markings known, not just on our bodies, but in our work, marks that are true to ourselves.' Indeed, it's crucial to refuse the option of doing violence to oneself by denying those very aspects of the self targeted in the culture war being waged by this administration. To maintain who you are can be its own kind of victory.
