A Ruling for Segregation in Birmingham....Yesderday.

An Alabama judge ruled yesterday that a predominantly white suburb of Birmingham could separate itself from the larger Jefferson Country school district, which is seventy-four percent black. Though this has been a trend among Birmingham’s affluent suburbs in the past few years as the city’s school system has continued to struggle, no judge until now has delivered an opinion explicitly considering the racial connotations of the towns’ requests to leave the district. This judge, however, considered them thoroughly and found that the request was, indeed, motivated by racism and inequality, citing the “thinly-veiled racism” present in the Facebook page of a group supporting the split, as well as fliers that were distributed to suburban parents carrying “an unambiguous message of inferiority.” She noted, too, that the separation would have an adverse effect on the black students o the district, creating feelings of inferiority and depriving them of taxpayer funding from the more affluent suburb. She states that the split would set Birmingham back in its effort to desegregate its public schools, and that some of the circumstances surrounding the request were “deplorable”—but she ruled to allow the separation. On the basis that there were “practical difficulties” in keeping the district intact. The fact that “practical difficulties” should be weighted more heavily the lives and welfare of little black boys and girls, not to mention justice itself—or really, that it remains a sufficient excuse to active and intentionally re-impose segregation—shows how little America has changed in its investment in white supremacy. That the country puts itself through logical contortions to find something, anything, to call racism by any other name and ignore the fundamental inconsistencies within it is a fact that first made itself known with the Three Fifths Clause, and emerged again yesterday in Birmingham.