Little Rock Still Fighting Segregation Disputes
Little Rock, Ark., may be best known for its school desegregation battles of the 1950s, but it seems the war is not over. The longtime fight over school integration entered the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, with the state and three school districts arguing whether the school districts should still receive state aid for their desegregation efforts.
The aid has cost Arkansas taxpayers more than $1 billion. The state claims that the aid should be stopped because the money is not being used properly and that an ample amount of taxpayer dollars has already been pumped into the system. The districts claim they need the money to continue key programs.
The schools began receiving $70 million a year after a 1989 ruling in which the state agreed to support busing students between the districts and magnet schools in order to achieve racial parity in the school system. That ruling came 32 years after nine black teenagers were the first non-white students to walk the halls of Central High School under the protection of federal troops.
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“Is it your position that it just goes on for the next 50 years?” U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy asked Chris Heller, the attorney for Little Rock schools, according to The Washington Post.
According to the Post, Heller said he didn’t see desegregation payments as a “perpetual remedy,” but argued that U.S. District Judge Brian Miller overstepped his authority when he ruled in May to end most of the payments. Miller ruled that the payments were actually “an impediment to true desegregation” by rewarding schools that failed to meet their commitments to racial diversity in a timely manner.
“The State of Arkansas is using a carrot-and-stick approach with these districts but the districts are wise mules that have learned how to eat the carrot and sit down on the job,” Miller wrote in his court order. “The time has finally come for all carrots to be put away.”
Miller, describing himself as a “middle-aged black judge,” continued in saying that “few if any of the participants in this case have any clue how to effectively educate underprivileged black children.”
Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe has also advocated ending the practice.
Lawyers for the three school districts – Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County – have said the loss of state funding could lead to a financial crisis at the schools. Some Little Rock schools still remain very segregated.
However, the state says the school districts had enough time and money to desegregate the system. The state had been discussing ending the payments for years, it said, and the school districts should not have been surprised when the payments stopped.
The schools in the districts serve about 50,000 students. Thousands of students, regardless of race, are still being bused to different neighborhood schools every day under one of the largest remaining court-ordered desegregation systems in the nation.
