Integration. Separation. Segregation. Does any of it matter?

[mizzy]

I have some observations and questions regarding both the issue of Islamist enclaves and school (place-based) seperation.

The Commerce clause of the U.S. constitutions holds that only Congress will have the power to treat with foreign nations and Indian Tribes. The Supremacy Clause of the same documents holds that Treaties are the law of the land. (Of course, this is why Tribes have sometimes won in court with regards to Treaty issues). What is called "Indian Law" is a body of law hundreds of years old in terms of American jurisprudence, and it is a very large, sometimes meandering, sometimes purely fictive, complicated set of laws and doctrines. If someone explained to various Muslim leaders that they would have to learn and comply with this particular body of law if allowed to create enclaves under religious tenets that would not supercede the rights of the individual, I wonder if they would agree to it? One of the startling facts about Indian law is that the U.S. courts do not get involved in Indian on Indian crime committed on many reservations. That might be reason enough to want to create one's own community, but it has largely only worked where the landbase is large enough to support a legal infrastructure than can insure some transparency. But, having a set of definable boundaries outside U.S. jurisdiction, also means that a community like this itself has to think through how they want to then construct a social identity (religious in the Muslim instance) in the midst of a nation largely indifferent, if not opposed to their particular set of beliefs etc. Indian Reservations are not religious enclaves, or even ethnic enclaves, as such. But they have definable boudaries, different laws, varying religious and cultural values, traditions, and institutions. Ask people from a given reservation community what the state of Indian & non-Indian social and economic relationships are really like and I would bet a lot of different groups would re-think the proposition. (Issues of religious practice where it concerns Indigenous people does not really fit with this comparison.) Now then, maybe Muslim communities would be willing to trade then with Congress and broker deals with Lumbees (American Indians) in Baltimore and North Carolina... only the Lumbees, while they know they are Lumbees, the federal gov't has only recently been willing to acknowledge their claims to land and resources etc.... My point here is two fold: The U.S. is going to be amendable to proposals by religious organizations to form enclaves in the U.S. because in some small way it echoes the formation of religious communities from the colonial period. I am not saying it would be an accurate comparison, but it might (if lawmakers could be convinced, and lawmakers at the moment are convinced often by money) beget a response from lawmakers like 'This is why America is great country!' or something like that. Second, I think that inserting a separate but equal doctrine places this debate within a discussion of civil rights (via Brown v Board) will on the surface will only cut the surface and force talk centered on already existing religious and cultural tensions in the U.S. without actually addressing why it is that Muslims feel the need to create separate communities in the first place. Issues in Black and white and Indian and Latino communities centered around placelessness and dislocation and forced migrancy will be ignited once again. (Making Home and healing divisiness takes time and resources, right.) Ironically, In the 1950s many reservations did prohibit alcohol from being sold on respective reservations, and today, living in a world of unfettered access to liguor stores, drinking takes place either as an open secret or on the borderlands, which comes along with increased car accidents and real social tension and conflict. But, again, this cuts across issues of trade and commerce... and the U.S. hates to think of itself as anything less than perfect, so I'll stop here, lest I start a debate that will result in my having to actually run for Congress

On the subject of schools in Nebraska, I don't necessarily think that what is being proposed in Omaha is a good or a bad thing. It seems to me to fit into the realm of contingency. It seems as though students are learning first hand lessons of what economic disparity and place-based economic and social segregation has had on education, and that this is necessary at all is really the issue. My usual take on this is that in order to create more economic parity, we are going to have to rate certain kinds of technologies and then ask state leaders in Education to make absolutely certain that funds are directed toward to schools so that these technologies are available to all students. How they do that would be telling, but usually I find that a person has to ask for something first and then say yes and no, and maybe until they get what they want. That is also to say that I think we cannot ask schools to be the center of where all community issues must be solved. I think it is sometimes a mistake to place all our hopes for a future for on the youngest generation during moments of struggle and then say we are putting off that future off until tomorrow instead of saying 'the time is now' and then doing a little something today to insure a better quality of life today that effaces in some small way what is happening at the child's school.