In today's Seattle Times Lynne Varner writes, "Diversity, as a tool of public education, is dead as a doornail." Varner continues:

The death of the racial tiebreaker will not be the end of the world. It was a diversity tool less than artfully applied. Students could self-identify their race, opening a loophole large enough for hordes of crafty parents to pass through over the years. A smart, perceptive School Board ought to be able to find other ways to compel diversity in neighborhood schools that are growing less diverse.

However, if the court turns Brown on its head by prohibiting any consideration of race in public education, narrowly tailored or not, we're in trouble. It would be an almost perverse interpretation of the 14th Amendment's equal-rights clause. Instead of recognizing the necessary use of racial groups, particularly when ensuring equal opportunity in education, the court could well adopt a colorblind mentality.

God forbid we should ever adopt a colorblind mentality in this country. Apparently we're still a long way from Martin Luther King's dream about the "content of character."

And would prohibiting racial quotas in public education really be turning Brown "on its head," or rather the logical conclusion of equal access? As George Will wrote earlier this week, "the Supreme Court has held that public secondary education 'must be available to all on equal terms.''"

In his column on the Seattle School District's law suit, Will continued:

Until June, the school district's Web site declared that "cultural racism'' includes "emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,'' "having a future time orientation'' (planning ahead) and "defining one form of English as standard.'' The site also asserted that only whites can be racists, and disparaged assimilation as the "giving up'' of one's culture. After this propaganda provoked outrage, the district, saying it needed to "provide more context to readers'' about "institutional racism,'' put up a page saying that the district's intention is to avoid "unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.''

There's that word again. It's bad enough that some people want to compel predetermined levels of "diversity" in schools via racial quotas, but the problem is compounded by those people eschewing assimilation and suggesting that "colorblindness" is somehow undesirable. In fact, "colorblind" students are exactly what we want, and it's not going to be made any easier by folks who want to balkanize schools into mini-ethnic groups.