Benefits and Limitations of Brown

While attending summer camp, I met a fellow camper, Paul, who joked that he was the only white kid at his high school in Hartford, CT. Years later, in college, I was chatting with a young woman in one of my English seminars. We were comparing tales of having been inadequately prepared for our college careers by our public high schools, and she mentioned that she'd attended school in Hartford. She brought up the lack of diversity at her school, and I told her that I knew someone who claimed to be the only white guy at his Hartford high school. "He must have been kidding," I said. "He wasn't kidding," she said, then added, "So, how do you know Paul?"

Under Federal Law, the situation in Hartford was not illegal (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1996). Brown vs. Board of Education mandates redress only for de jure segregation, that is, segregation that is based in legal and official actions (Johnson, 2008, p. 193). The Supreme Court's 1954 decision does not address de facto segregation, or segregation that is caused by housing patterns and other non-legal factors (Johnson, 2008, p. 192), and thus the students in Hartford—much like many of our students—found themselves in schools whose populations were representative of the communities in which they were located and therefore not required to desegregate under Brown vs. Board of Education.

A New York Times editorial commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education lamented the fact that, in 2004, 70% of black students nationally attended schools in which racial minorities were the majority (New York Times, 2004). Whether racial isolation was more a function of housing patterns or of lax enforcement of laws and policies intended to eradicate segregation was not clear. The editorial seemed to suggest that it was the latter and lay some of the blame on waning interest in integration and a conservative Supreme Court (New York Times, 2004).) In my own school—whose population last year was about 60% Latino and almost 40% African American—the school's racial make-up is dictated by housing patterns, and those housing patterns have been dictated, at least in part, by poverty. Admittedly, families are afforded more choice than in the past—a student's family may choose a school based on the student's area of interest (our school, for instance, has a math and technology focus, which attracts certain candidates)—but selections at the elementary and middle-school levels must be made from a list of "zoned" schools. Zones are determined by geography, and thus students are forced to choose among demographically similar—and, in the case of my students, equally racially isolated—schools.

As much as I value diversity and believe that it ought to be cultivated whenever possible, I do not believe that "racial isolation" in and of itself precludes the possibility of receiving a good or even excellent education. I am concerned, however, that the poverty (of which racial isolation is but one symptom) does affect students—and their educations—profoundly and needs to be more directly addressed. In 1996, the families of students in the Hartford Public Schools sued the state of Connecticut, successfully, "to remedy alleged educational inequalities resulting from racial and ethnic isolation" (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1996, p. 95). The Supreme Court of Connecticut, stating that "[t]he public elementary and high school students in Hartford suffer daily form the devastating effects that racial and ethnic isolation, as well as poverty, have had on their education" and that "Federal constitutional law provides no remedy for their plight" (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1996, p. 97), ruled that, under Connecticut constitutional law, the state had an obligation to end both de jure and de facto segregation, that profound inequities in educational opportunities among citizens of the same state had to be remediated regardless of cause (Cases, 196, p. 123).

In identifying the limitations of Brown vs. Board of Education, it is easy to lose sight of the profound impact it has had in American life, not just in the educational sector but in society at as a whole. "Brown kick-started the civil rights movement, and began a slow but steady process of dismantling legal segregation" (New York Times, 2004). The Montgomery bus boycott, counter sit-ins, and the civil rights legislation that ended the doctrine of "separate but equal" in the public sphere all followed from Brown. Even as we acknowledge some of Brown's limitations as a tool for eradicating injustice in our schools, we should not forget that it allowed for a sea-change in our nation's thinking about what equality means and what might be necessary to achieve it.

Legislation, however, is not enough. For instance, the Connecticut State Supreme Court ordered an immediate remedy for segregation in the Hartford public schools, but the state, more than ten years after the 1996 ruling, had still failed to put into place a viable plan for achieving desegregation. In November 2007, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund returned to the Connecticut Supreme Court, and a settlement requiring the state to develop a "Comprehensive Management Plan" was reached this spring (NAACP, 2008). As of today, the Hartford, CT, schools remain as segregated as when my friend Paul, more than twenty years ago, attended high school.

REFERENCES

Johnson, J. Musial, D. Hall, G., Golnick, D., and Dupuis, V. (2008). Foundations of American education: perspectives on education in a changing world. Boston: Pearson.

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. (2008, April 9). LDF announces settlement Agreement in Hartford school desegregation case. Retrieved July 28, 2008, http://www.naacpldf.org/content.aspx?article=1265.

New York Times Editorial Board. (2004, May 16). Brown vs. board of education. The New York Times. Retrieved July 28, 2008, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E0D9163FF935A25756C0A9629C8B63.

Supreme Court of Connecticut. (1996, July 16). Milo Sheff et al vs. William A. O'Neill et al. Connecticut Law Journal, 95-141.