Racial Classifications and Reconstruction Legislation

Walking on egg shells: colorblind ideology and race talk in teacher education

“…Education policy research on colorblind perspective finds "race neutral" education laws have been effective in sustaining White dominance and legitimating racial minority subordination through student tracking, ability grouping, and assessment policies (Carr, 1997;Kailin, 1999;Knoester & Au, 2017;Williams & Land, 2006). Higher education affirmative action policies are often framed as unnecessary, counterproductive, and racist (Anderson, 2007;Brown et al, 2003;Moreno, 1995;Spencer, 2008). Moreover, public K-12 schools are becoming increasingly resegregated (Doyle, 2005;Goetz & Breneman, 1988;Goldsmith, 2010;Synnott, 1998).…”

Race-Conscious Educational Policies Versus a “Color-Blind Constitution”: A Historical Perspective

“…Congress to eliminate racial distinctions in American law argue, as does Paul Moreno (1995), "There was no benign classification in favor of blacks, only residual racial classifications that worked against them" (p. 303). This conclusion is clearly refuted by the debates and amendment of the Naturalization Act.…”

“…The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, as the framers of the original Constitution, gave race a place in the new constitutional order, and like the founding fathers the Reconstruction congressmen also encoded race as a proxy without a name. Race was clearly encoded into the new constitutional standard of American citizenship under the phrase that excluded American Indians from birthright citizenship, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Thus, the conclusion that the Reconstruction Congress intended to establish a single class of American citizenship without racial classifications cannot be sustained in view of the deliberate and collective exclusion of American Indians from birthright citizenship (see Moreno, 1995, for a contrasting view). Instead of establishing a color-blind or race-neutral standard of citizenship, the Reconstruction Congress enacted a race-conscious amendment that favored native-born persons of African and Chinese descent and worked against American Indians.…”

“…Even as attorneys for the petitioners in the Louisville and Seattle cases concede that school districts have an unquestioned interest in achieving racially diverse schools, they maintain that such objectives, outside of a remedial context, can be pursued only through race-neutral policies and programs. The argument that the U.S. Constitution is color blind has found support among several Supreme Court justices and also among some historians who contend, as does constitutional historian Paul Moreno, that the Reconstruction Congress “believed there should be one class of American citizenship, without racial classification, whether malignant or benign” (Moreno, 1995, pp. 295–298).…”

“…The arguments that the Reconstruction Congress sanctioned some race-conscious programs and funded efforts to achieve racially mixed schooling, however suggestive, remain inconclusive as to whether Reconstruction legislation was designed to permit racial classifications by agencies of the government. The larger academy of historians have emphasized, as Paul Moreno points out, that the Reconstruction Congress was under the control of the moderate-conservative wing of the Republican Party and their views of race and civil rights framed the form and content of Reconstruction legislation (Moreno, 1995, p. 295). Consequently, despite efforts by abolitionists and radical Republicans to prohibit distinctions of race and color in American law, the moderate-conservative and dominant wing of the Reconstruction Congress consistently defeated color-blind alternatives to the postbellum constitutional order (Gotanda, 1991; Kull, 1992; Lindgren, 1993).…”