For those of us of a certain age, who woke up and grew up with the ringing words and vision of justice of Brown v. Board of Education, Thursday’s decision by the US Supreme Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1 is a galling defeat for school integration, racial justice. The decision is long and dispiriting. Read it only if you are driven to. Brown, it now appears to our learned Justices, stands for school segregation. Update: Those of us not ready to celebrate, or settle, for the "end of integration" (unlike David Brooks) may want to look at SCOTUS Blog's report of the first post "Parents Involved" challenge to a school assignment plan in Lynn, Ma.

Everything the Supremes have been singing of late seems designed to remind us that there was a difference between Gore and Bush in 2000. In the last few months the court has leaped into the practice of medicine – by approving the Congressional ban on “partial birth” abortions, strengthened the hand of corporate management over shareholders and upheld minimum pricing schemes which were outlawed over 100 years ago. The rightward lurch of the courts will harm us all for generations. There’s been so much legal comment on this and on-the-one-hand-but NPR-type analysis I won’t add to it. See the NY Times article here and many (some very smart) analyses at SCOTUSblog and this from Talk Left. Did you want to read an essay by someone thrilled to be dancing on Brown's grave? Try Juan Williams, NPR correspondent and Fox commentator utterly misguided effort. Although I hate the result, I like Scott Horton's assessment in Harpers better than Elizabeth Hartline Green essay on the DMI
Blog which seeks to minimize the damage. (At first cut, I'm told, as many as 1,000 school districts will be affected). People seriously interested in racial integration in what seems to be a post-Brown era (or at least an era in which Brown is upside down) may want to take another look at the work of Century Foundation education thinker Rick Kahlenberg who has, for a number of years suggested income integration as a lawful goal for schools (Yes, yes, as it turns out income integration is very often a proxy measure for racial integration). A long but useful article by Kahlenberg has just been posted (pdf) here . Mr. Kalhenberg put up a shorter, more reader friendly version on Slate here . I do not sign on to his project, but if you want to be in the conversation, I think you need to think about what Kahlenberg has to say.

The hard question, from my point of view, is how to bring the progressive agenda forward in an era when, federal courts, justice will continue to be held hostage by hostile partisans of the ultra-right. I only come up with old thoughts make alliances and organize. What about you?