Keeping our eyes on the prize: Beyond Brown v. Board of Education (original) (raw)
2005, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
This volume edited by social psychologist Gina Philogène honors and evaluates the work and legacy of Kenneth B. Clark. In addition, a number of the contributors present their own work on race and its impact on culture and society. The work of Kenneth and his wife and longtime collaborator Mamie Clark is probably best known for the contribution they made over fifty years ago to the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which officially ended public school segregation. According to the editor, in addition to honoring the work of Kenneth Clark, the purpose of the book bis to bring together a number of prominent psychologists who.. . will help us articulate a dialogue on the sensitive and polemic issue of raceQ (p. 11). In the volume introduction (Chapter 1), Philogene addresses the issue of race in American as well as outlining the organization for the book. The volume is organized into 4 main sections and a conclusion, with the main sections each introduced by a different scholar: bThe Impact of Kenneth B. Clark: Then and Now,Q (introduced by Gina Philogène), bRacial Identity,Q (with an introduction by Linwood Lewis), bRacism and Its Cultural Manifestations,Q (introduced by Ferdinand Jones), and bOur Common Destiny,Q (with an introduction by Barbara Schecter).
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The troublesome legacy of Brown v. Board of Education
This article reflects on the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision while discussing the significant lessons learned from this and subsequent court decisions. Argument: In this article, we posit that a fundamentally different conversation surrounding the legacy of Brown is needed if we are to critically understand the past, present, and future of race relations as a backdrop to issues of segregated schooling in this country. Implications: The troublesome legacy of Brown provides a unique opportunity to interrogate why we, as a country, continue to have faith in this particular court decision as a remedy for racial inequality. We invite readers to symbolically “let go” of Brown in order to imagine new possibilities for racial justice, educational opportunity, and social reform.
Harming Our Common Future: America's Segregated Schools 65 Years after "Brown
2019
Acknowledgements We are very grateful for the support and assistance of Laurie Russman and Carolyn Peelle in the preparation of this report, which was very complex. This endeavor involved collaboration of scholars from four universities,* was carried out with no grant, and required scores of communications via email and phone, from different parts of the country, at all hours of the day and night. We appreciate the efforts of each of the authors, and of those who work with them on their campuses and support them at home. Each of the authors made substantial contributions and should be equally credited for the final report. It has been a great pleasure to work with a rising group of scholars who are so deeply concerned about overcoming the divisions in our society, and working towards making the dream of the Brown decision and our great civil rights laws a reality in a difficult time. Our country has passively accepted the return and deepening of segregation in unequal schools. It is time for educators of the U.S. to take leadership in assuring that we do not confine our students of color, nor critically limit the education of white students in schools that are obviously inadequate for the preparation of a society in which we all must live and work and govern together.
Journal of Education and Learning, 2021
The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision was a significant change in social justice and human rights. There is ongoing debate about public education not as a private commodity but as a public good that must be made available on equal terms. Recently, schools are entering an era of second-generation segregation. Poor outcomes, language acquisition programs preventing access to college-readiness courses, and teacher quality are causes for concern. Research on second-generation segregation found that African-American children experience lower rates of academic achievement than their White peers. This was a case study analysis to investigate the impact of teacher preparation and culturally relevant practices related to educational opportunities. The results hold implications on misconceptions of educational improvements for Black children and identify the need to increase cultural responsiveness and an intentional focus on students’ assets and needs.
Legacies of Brown versus Board: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The Urban Review, 2008
Public education is a fully racialized endeavor, even though we hoped that a Supreme Court decision, now known as the Brown decision, over 50 years ago would put an end to racialized schooling. About 50 years ago, many knew the evils of segregation based on race and knew that it could not be either morally or legally justified. However, privilege had been constructed historically on the basis of racial oppression, and this was not going to be easily remedied by even a Supreme Court decision. The Brown decision was made and largely ignored, especially in the South where segregation had been the law of the land. It took many subsequent court battles, a civil rights movement, and years of concerted efforts to end legal racial segregation in the schools. All of this was required because there was active, and all too often violent, opposition by whites who understood that their position in society was based in a system of racial superiority. In this, they were largely correct. Bell (1995) argues that the Brown decision is often misinterpreted. It was not about a white majority finally realizing the immorality of segregation. It was not due to the success of a civil rights movement in confronting racist powers. It was not due to the slow accrual of legal decisions that eventually got the equal protection doctrine right. Bell argues that these stories are actually efforts to shore up white privilege. These stories end up showing whites as morally superior, African Americans as belligerent and self-serving, and the legal system as ultimately fair. These stories end up reinforcing the perception that desegregation happened and equality has been achieved. Thus the differences we see now between races must result from the character of the racial groups themselves. Here we see a new form of white supremacy being constructed out of the ashes of the old. The new supremacy uses the concept of equality to deny that races are treated differently in our society and in our schools. Moreover, the assertion that equality has been achieved allows an argument to be made against ongoing remedies (let alone reparations) for racial
50 Years After Brown v. Board of Education: The Promise and Challenge of Multicultural Education
Journal of Social Issues, 2004
We discuss the legacy of Brown for today's students and today's schools, and find that legacy is more psychological than legal. The decision does more to highlight issues of equity in education and how that influences students' identity, motivation, and aspirations than it does help us find legal means of addressing these concerns. The manuscripts presented in this issue articulate how today's students experience these issues. The manuscripts focus on several important aspects of interethnic contact in education: the processes by which interethnic contact leads to attitude and behavior change towards outgroup members, the effect of racial and ethnic integration on educational and developmental outcomes for students of color, and the promise that multicultural multiracial educational environments hold for all students.
The 1954 United States Supreme Court decision in Oliver L. Brown et.al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) et.al. 1 is perhaps one of the most discussed judgments because of its significant judicial turning points in the development of civil rights movements not only in America but also in other parts of the globe. Brown in fact dismantled the legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other public facilities in the disguise of "separate but equal' doctrine. As well as it laid the foundation for shaping future national and international policies regarding human rights. Brown confronted a vivid sense of social realities, a sense that was entirely missing from the legal culture at that time. Though Brown has always enjoyed a very high and sophisticated profile in the literatures and jurisprudence of constitutional law discussion, this article tends to find out the other side of the story; where courts' decision making was much influenced by other factors and not by merely interpretation of the normative constitutional theories. The significance of Brown decision lies in the fact that it teaches certain important positive constitutional theory. It also shows how government and political institutions influence and interact with each other, and how features of politics and institutional structure influence the creation and development of constitutional doctrine, i.e. how constitutional doctrine works and develops over time.
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