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Jobs Threaten Brown v. Board of Education
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
May 17, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Honoring the 60th anniversary of the 1954 landmark
Supreme Court ruling “Brown v. Board of Education, the nation’s first black
Atty. Gen. Eric Holder warned of more work to narrow the gap between blacks and
whites. Leading the High Court’s
May 17, 1954 ruling was Justice Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first black
Supreme Court justice. Brown v.
Board of Education reversed the May 18, 1896 ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson,
establishing “separate-but-equal” in public facilities, including education. Brown v. Board of Education opened
up a can of worms when Topeka, Kansas resident Oliver Brown tried to enroll his
daughter in a white elementary school.
Ending “separate-but-equal” forced U.S. public schools to integrate,
including bussing students, sometimes at long distances, from predominantly
black neighborhoods to white schools in distant locations.
When former California governor and Chief Justice Earl Warren sided with
the majority to reverse Plessy v. Ferguson, no one knew how practically to
administer the end of “separate-but-equal.”
“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” wrote Chief
Justice Warren, backing the High Courts social engineering experiment, giving
minorities, primarily black kids, an opportunity to get educated in historically
white schools. Sixty years after
Brown, the public schools are less integrated than they were during the height
of the Vietnam War in 1968. UCLA’s
Civil Right Project estimates that only 23% of black students currently attend
white majority schools, down from the 44% in 1968. Unlike 1968, blacks find themselves
far more “integrated” with Latino students making up over 50% of total
immigration to the U.S, typically living the same urban neighborhoods.
Brown v. Board of education watched an activist court led by a lifelong
Republican attempt to force-integrate public schools around the country, despite
resistance, especially in the South.
Looking at only the “exposure” variable of receiving education in
traditionally white areas can’t account for glaring disparities between
education and eventual improvements in socioeconomic status. While experts agree that education
is an important factor in providing opportunity to minorities, it certainly
can’t account for today’s growing income disparity between rich and poor. Warren and Marshall would be turning
in their graves realizing that Brown’s vast experiment with integrated education
didn’t change the socioeconomic status that leaves minorities, primarily blacks
and Latinos, disadvantaged. No one knew then, how Brown would be used in a
distant future.
Brown v. Board of Education mandated the government do more to provide
comparable access for minorities in traditionally white neighborhoods. Today’s version of bussing in large urban school districts have more to do with economics
than complying with Brown. Busing programs attempt to deliver urban minority students to more affluent areas to make
up the gap of white neighborhood kids going more to private and parochial
schools than local public schools.
Even when bussing brings minorities to primarily white schools, there’s a
natural segregation where students of similar races, ethnicities and backgrounds
tend to affiliate together. Social
psychologists have long known that “likeness” breeds affinity, leading children
of similar races, ethnicities and backgrounds to affiliate. Government bureaucrats can’t change
the realities of affinity and affiliation.
Today’s application of Brown v. Board of Education has been extended to
same-sex marriage, where the Massachusetts High Court in 1994 ruled that
domestic partnerships created “separate-but-equal” relationships for gays and
lesbians. While Brown ended
“separate-but-equal” for public education, it’s new application involves
promoting same-sex marriage as a civil right.
Offering minorities access to the same public schools as whites offer a
kind of advantage only as long as white schools tend to take teaching more
seriously than public school in minority neighborhoods. There’s little evidence today that
giving minorities access to education in white neighborhoods increases
graduation or college acceptance rates.
GradNation’s 2006-09 report showed graduation rates for Hispanics at 76%,
blacks 68% and the total combined high school population at 80%.
Since Brown v. Board of education in 1954, there’s no evidence that
minorities have integrated in traditionally white neighborhoods, primarily
because of today’s income-gap, where the disparity between rich-and-poor only
widens. When Warren, Marshall and
the rest of the 1954 Court ruled on Brown, they thought they’d have a bigger
impact on integrating future society.
With the society more segregated than ever, sociologists and economics
look to other variables other than forced integration of public schools. No one on the 1954 High Court could
have imagined that the future impact of Brown v. Board of Education was to
provide the Constitutional argument for supporting same-sex marriage. Integrating society has more to do
with economics than forced school integration.
As long as the middle class keeps shrinking, integrating society has a
cloudy future.
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