This essay takes up two separate but related issues: how the courts have resolved disputes over race and schooling and how they should resolve such disputes. This essay is in reply to a related essay, in which another author identified the consequences of what he perceived as a minimalist judicial role and called for greater exercise of responsibility by the courts. Replying to those assertions, this essay describes the race and schooling issue as at once judicial and political and identifies a role for courts in strengthening a genuinely political process, one which reckons with the wishes of black as well as white constituents. (Author)