Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

The historic case of Brown v. Board of Education is radical in the sense that its legal basis is slim; the conditions surrounding the Fourteenth Amendment made it such that it was limited in scope, and therefore, the amendment had to be—interpreted differently—to accommodate a growing intolerance for discrimination. Chief Justice Warren did not have the means to construct a strictly legal argument, but created an argument nonetheless because he, too, saw the violent consequences of injustice (Schultz, 2001, p. 235). If only Justice Antonin Scalia and other strict “originalists” would come to recognize the necessity of altering the constitution in response to social progress, for it is clear that the original intention of the 14th Amendment certainly did not have the freedom of African-Americans in mind.

During the time of the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment, African-Americans were treated as second-class citizens and education for both black and white children looked nothing like it does today—white children were not mandated to attend school and, in many states, black children were barred from education. If Warren judged the case in light of the history and the likely limited intention of the Fourteenth Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education would not stand today. The fact that “Brown v. Board of Education was justified in part on psychological and sociological grounds” highlights the inherent inequality of the law, and provides a needed reminder that America was founded and shaped for the sole advancement of the white race (Schultz, 2001, p. 235).

Brown v. Board of Education was only the beginning of an arduous attempt to develop a desegregated America. Although The Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed the federal government to remove funding for schools and sue school districts that did not comply with Brown, by 1992, when the Topeka district was reassessed, “the court concluded that the district had done little to fulfill the duty to desegregate that was first imposed on it in 1954” (Johnson et al., 2008, p.196). If the landmark case represented a negligent school district, what can be expected of other, less scrutinized school districts? Decades later, after much legislation and protest, many black children still do not receive an equal education.

The legacy of “Separate but equal” continues to segregate children by race and class, and it does more work to maintain the status quo than the Bush administration has done to “help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools” (Bush in Bazelon, 2008). According to the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush Administration’s poor attempt to close the achievement gap, students may transfer to schools of their choice, schools that may be less segregated, but only if space is available. Most schools are overwhelmed with a growing student body, and therefore NCLB does little to affect change of this capacity (Bazelon, 2008).

Another equally pervasive obstacle to desegregation is the current trend of tracking students by ability. Often it is minority students who are placed in low tracks. These students may be perceived as less able than their white counterparts as a result of test scores, grades, or behavior. Sometimes it is a single test score that dictates a student’s track. If minority students have been denied equal education—a rigorous and comprehensive curriculum, qualified and caring teachers, a familiarity with state exams—then it makes sense that these students would score poorly on high stakes tests. Without time to catch up and without an inclusive model in which students of all backgrounds learn together, minority students will continue to face the legacy of separate and unequal education in America.

Futrell and Gomez (2008) argue that students are well aware of the differences in instruction and access to college preparatory curriculum for students who are placed in a low track. Students of color from a high school in Virginia, who were placed in this track, reported that they were not allowed to take Advanced Placement exams. Many students confirmed the fact that tracking also resulted in the separation of students along racial lines. Students’ awareness of this indirect form of discrimination may contribute to low-self esteem and a sense of inferiority—the very fear Warren had voiced in his Brown v. Board of Education opinion (Warren in Schultz, 2008). It is clear that there is much work to be done in order to legitimately quell this fear, and much more much work to be done to provide all children a diverse and challenging learning environment.

Affirmative action, a hotly debated policy, seeks to provide greater opportunity for minority students. Some claim that affirmative action results in “reverse discrimination” against majority students, creating a climate that values race over merit. Minorities, too, rally against it, asserting that they do not need assistance or a quota to ensure their academic success. In 1996, California citizens voted for Proposition 209 in 1996, which prohibits the use of racial and gender “preferences” to determine workforce or college eligibility (Johnson et. al., 2008, p. 198) It is interesting to note that while the issue of affirmative action is yet to be settled in all states, the Supreme Court has weighed in on the use of race to assign students to K-12 schools—it is now considered unconstitutional to consider the race of individual students as the sole factor (Bazelon, 2008). It seems that race should be one of many factors used to determine higher education admissions and K-12 assignments.

For primary and secondary students, socioeconomic standing has been proven to be a critical variable, even more so than race, in the desegregation of schools and the creation of equitable learning environments. It was Justice Anthony Kennedy’s language that allowed for school-district lawyers to consider race, not of individual students but of zoning areas, among other factors such as socioeconomic standing and parental education. If current research is indeed correct, the use of a “class-plus-race formula” may one day fulfill the promise of Brown v. Board of Education (Bazelon, 2008).

But it seems unlikely that minority students who come from underprivileged areas and attend ‘desegregated’ schools, in which they are tracked on the lowest level, will see an increase in their test scores, or more importantly, will feel as equals in an academic environment. According to my colleagues at Fordham University, many high school students prefer to take vocational classes and enjoy the success they experience within this environment. In our attempt to ‘assign’ our students to a school or a classroom that is inherently equal, have we stopped listening to their needs and their experiences? Perhaps we have interpreted equality as always a measure of sameness. All students deserve to learn within a community that values difference, because a community that blinds itself to difference is blind to the most subtle and unintentional forms of discrimination.

References

Bazelon, E. (2008). The next kind of integration. The New York Times. Retrieved July 29,
2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20integration-t.html?

r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin

Futrell, M. & Gomez, J. (2008). How tracking creates a poverty of learning. Educational
leadership, 65 (8), 74-80.

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.

Schultz, Fred. (Ed.) (2001). Notable selections in education (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Dushkin.