Colorblind Segregation: Equal Protection as a Bar to Neighborhood Integration
Colorblind Segregation: Equal Protection as a Bar to Neighborhood Integration
复制标题
色盲隔离：平等保护是邻里融合的障碍
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Anderson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Anderson
在20世纪六七十年代的十年里，一个名为西达拉斯(West Dallas)的大型公共住房项目没有花费一分钱的维护或现代化改造，该项目有3500个单元。由于拒绝遵守联邦公平住房法，达拉斯住房管理局失去了所有联邦收入--该市的公共住房实行种族隔离，西达拉斯的几乎所有居住者都是黑人。到那个时期结束时，西达拉斯居民被谋杀的可能性是该市其他地方的五倍。1989年，一名联邦地区法官介入了这场人类悲剧和政治争议，命令地方官员采取积极措施，纠正他们的住房隔离模式。在这些措施中，法院下令在白人、低贫困社区建设小型住房。1999年，在沃克诉德克萨斯州梅斯奎特市(“沃克五号”)一案中，第五巡回法院支持了第十四修正案对达拉斯一处拟议的40个单元公共住房开发用地附近白人房主的反向歧视主张，该案质疑地区法院具有种族意识的补救命令的合宪性。沃克五世并不是唯一一个将反向歧视索赔带入住宅取消种族隔离领域的人-在第二巡回法院的扬克斯诉讼战中，也出现了对具有种族意识的法院命令的挑战。尽管最高法院的大多数成员在Grutter诉Bollinger案中拒绝遵循第五巡回法院的平等保护判例，尽管1976年法院做出裁决，支持芝加哥住房隔离的种族意识补救措施，但沃克五世在平等保护判例中投下了长长的阴影。这一裁决为色盲原则绘制了一个新的方向：限制法院纠正涉及种族的违宪行为的补救权力。这种教条主义的发展与当前的住房政策相互作用，防止公共住房当局以有意义的方式使用种族中立的手段来克服其过去在执行种族隔离方面的作用。总而言之，这种理论和政策的融合可以被称为色盲种族隔离判例：在这个框架中，法院下令对违宪的种族隔离和住房歧视采取补救措施的做法必须是种族中立的，从而保留现有的因种族而两极分化的社区优势模式。这篇评论以沃克五世为个案，探讨不分肤色的种族隔离制度的意义和潜在后果。在这种对色盲种族隔离判例的调查背后，隐藏着第二次重建的核心问题：当一名国家行为者被判对实施违宪种族隔离的明确计划负有责任时，法院必须在多大程度上拆除城市规模的种族隔离的根深蒂固的大厦？他们能走多远？
For ten years in the 1960s and 70s, not one dollar was spent on maintenance or modernization of a sprawling public housing project of 3,500 units known as West Dallas. The Dallas Housing Authority had lost all federal revenue for refusing to comply with federal fair housing laws - public housing in the city was segregated by race, and nearly every occupant in West Dallas was black. By the end of that period, West Dallas residents were five times more likely to be murdered than elsewhere in the city.Intervening in this human tragedy and political controversy in 1989, a federal district judge ordered local officials to take affirmative steps to remedy their pattern of housing segregation. Among those steps, the court ordered construction of small-scale housing in white, low-poverty neighborhoods. In 1999, in Walker v. City of Mesquite, Texas (“Walker V”), a case challenging the constitutionality of the district court’s race-conscious remedial order, the Fifth Circuit upheld the Fourteenth Amendment reverse discrimination claim of white homeowners near a Dallas site proposed for a forty-unit public housing development. Walker V was not alone in bringing reverse discrimination claims into the realm of residential desegregation - a challenge to race-conscious court orders had also arisen in the Yonkers litigation battle in the Second Circuit. Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of the Supreme Court refused to follow the Fifth Circuit’s equal protection jurisprudence in Grutter v. Bollinger, and in spite of a 1976 Court decision upholding race-conscious remedies to housing segregation in Chicago, Walker V cast a long shadow in equal protection jurisprudence. The decision charted a new direction in colorblindness doctrine: restraint of courts’ remedial power to redress constitutional violations involving race. That doctrinal development interacts with current housing policies to prevent meaningful ways for public housing authorities to use race-neutral means to overcome their past role in enforcing racial segregation. Together, this confluence of doctrine and policy might be called colorblind segregation jurisprudence: a framework in which court ordered remedies for unconstitutional segregation and housing discrimination must be race-neutral, thereby preserving existing patterns of neighborhood advantage polarized by race. This Comment uses Walker V as a case study to explore the meaning and potential consequences of a colorblind segregation regime. Underlying this inquiry into colorblind segregation jurisprudence lurks a question at the heart of the Second Reconstruction: When a state actor is found liable for implementing an explicit program of unconstitutional racial segregation, how far must a court go towards dismantling the entrenched edifice of urban scale racial divisions? How far can they go?