The cynical part of the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on the use of race in school assignments is Chief Justice John Roberts' reference to Brown vs. Board of Education. In that 1954 decision, the court overturned the pernicious "separate but equal" ruling handed down in 1896, when Jim Crow segregation was boring its ugly roots deep into the nation's culture. In his majority opinion, Roberts said assignment plans used in Louisville and Seattle discriminated on the basis of race, which Brown outlawed.

Unfortunately, Roberts ignored the glaring fact that Brown opened public school doors to African-American kids who at the time went to inferior schools with outdated textbooks and castoff equipment. Thursday's ruling opens the way for a return to inferior schools for minorities.

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (the Louisville case), the court with its ruling effectively has barred school districts from designing school populations specifically to include African-Americans and children of other races. Seattle and Louisville told the courts that their race-conscious plans (race wasn't the only or even the main component of the plans) were necessary to prevent schools from turning into white and minority enclaves. White parents whose children were denied enrollment in their preferred schools brought the lawsuits.

Previous federal court decisions started the trend echoed by the high court, and definite, and disturbing, patterns have emerged. A study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found that whites made up 58 percent of public school enrollment in 2003, yet the average white student attended a school nearly 80 percent white. African-Americans and Latinos made up less than 20 percent of the nation's student population. The average black student attended a school that was 53 percent black, and Latinos attended schools that were about 55 percent Latino.

The ruling throws high obstacles into the path of school equality and classroom diversity. Yet those obstacles are not insurmountable. Wake County, for example, is a national leader in promoting healthy school diversity, using socioeconomic factors, not race, in assigning students. Roberts, in fact, cited Wake's success in his ruling.

Pressure will continue on school administrators to permit racially unbalanced schools. Racism is surely involved in the minds of some, and convenience (parents want neighborhood schools) is in the minds of others.

But integration is the right path, in the spirit of equal opportunity. It also is smart: kids who are educated together learn better to live together. Minority children also are less likely to suffer from an achievement gap when there is racial balance.

Communities that understand the damage from the court's decision will turn to other measures to get the job done. Zoning can ensure a mix of moderate and upscale housing. School boards may be able to build new schools in areas that attract a good economic mix of families.

What Americans must not do is let the ruling reverse the progress that this nation has made toward educational equity.