Education and Race post-Brown decisions

Introduction

Race, as Guinier and Torres (2002) remind us, is our miner's canary—a constant measure of the state of race relations in our country, a measure of our humanity. As we wrote this piece, we found ourselves in the midst of another historical moment when our inhumanity, undergirded by a legacy of racist and classist practices, was nakedly exposed for the world to see. The public and private discourse around the tragedies of hurricane Katrina revealed shock and awe as many learned that the poorest in our country, predominantly African American, had been left to languish, suffer, and die by the richest, most powerful nation in the world. The media pundits have engaged in analysis about how such neglect or delayed responses could occur when racial inequities have improved so dramatically in the decades after the hard-fought battles of the civil rights movement. . . . or so the story goes. And today we have another existence proof of the persistence of inequality in our country. At this historical moment, millions of immigrants whose labor forms the backbone of the U.S. economy fight for their dignity and human rights.

Brown: Reconsiderations From the Present

The 1954 Brown decision reversed the legacy of the “separate and equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). While Plessy applied to all public services in the United States, Brown pertained only to public schools, and therefore did not have the capacity or the legal jurisdiction to fully dismantle the application of “separate” or “segregated” public services. Of significance, neither Plessy nor Brown applied to de facto segregation, and the narrow scope of Brown only outlawed de jure segregation, leaving intact the vast apparatus of de facto segregation.

While the scope of Brown was limited, the case did compel the Court to address a deeply fundamental question: “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities?” ( Brown v. Board of Education , 1954). Chief Justice Earl Warren addressed this issue directly in the Court's majority opinion, stating, “We believe that it does” ( Brown v. Board of Education , 1954).

It comes as no surprise, then, that attempts to overturn decades of segregation and accompanying commonplace racist practices through mandated integration were met with serious resistance. Brown 's limited success in a few Southern school districts, for example, is best understood in relation to the historical practices and dominant class interests of Southern communities. Derek Bell's (2004) notion of “interest convergence” is particularly useful here to better understand changes in civil rights in historical context. According to Bell, “Black rights are recognized and protected when and only so long as policy makers perceive that such advances will further interests that are their primary concern” (p. 49). The construct of interest convergence serves as a useful analytical tool that helps us unpack the complex sociopolitical, economic, and cultural ...