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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

US Supreme Court Debates Voluntary Integration in K-12

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Thursday, May 24, 2007   

It was 53 years ago this month that the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools, divided by race, were not equal. A half-century later the court is set to decide again on a matter of integration -- whether school districts can do so voluntarily ... even when the feds say they don't have to. Ted Shaw with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund says public schools are once again divided by race, which is why some school districts want the right to integrate. He says the Supreme Court decision could have implications beyond the immediate cases.

“K through 12 is what they deal with, but you know our adversaries are going to try to use them in any context they can; higher education, employment, etc, this is, this is a big fight.”

Shaw notes that for those who believe in diversity, the stakes are high.

“Most people seem to be sleeping on it. They don't understand quite what's at stake, like scholarship programs for African American students and people of color. They're also in the crosshairs of people on the far right.”

The Supreme Court could decide the voluntary integration cases this month. Shaw will speak at a "Future of Diversity" forum tonight at the Shomburg Center in Harlem, hosted by former Mayor David Dinkins.

Also at tonight's forum will be a discussion of testing for admission to colleges and universities. Harvard University Law Professor Lani Guinier says so-called merit tests often ask the wrong questions.

“They tend to prefer people who are already privileged, so that what we are calling merit is actually a pseudonym for wealth. We should be using what I call democratic merit. We need people are going to start asking questions, and think critically and reframe the conversation, not just people who know how to take a test, when they are coached.”



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