A federal court declared Charlotte’s neighborhood-school system racially discriminatory.

Evidence

On April 23, 1969, McMillan issued his explosive ruling in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg: “The system of assigning pupils by ‘neighborhoods,’ with ‘freedom of choice’ for both pupils and faculty, superimposed on an urban population pattern where Negro residents have become concentrated almost entirely in one quadrant of a city of 270,000, is racially discriminatory.” The order required the comprehensive integration of faculty and students in every school in the metropolitan system, in rough approximation of the overall 70-30 white-black ratio, an expansive remedy without precedent in any large urban district in the nation. McMillan concluded with the observation that “there is no reason except emotion” to oppose two-way busing, and he instructed the citizens of Charlotte-Mecklenburg that “the quality of public education should not depend on the economic or racial accident of the neighborhood in which a child’s parents have chosen to live—or find they must live—nor on the color of his skin.” — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 29

Categorization

• QUESTION: McMillan’s phrase ‘chosen to live—or find they must live’ already concedes the counterargument about coercion vs. choice that segregation’s defenders would weaponize. When did that retreat begin?
• XREF: connects to: Courts can declare racial disparities a normal feature rather than evidence of racism — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1104

Broader Connections

• Courts can declare racial disparities a normal feature rather than evidence of racism #complicates (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1104