Guinier on Brown vs. Board

by | Jul 1, 2007 | Black Leadership, Education, things that make you go hmm, Urban Politics | 2 comments

Lani Guinier wrote an article in the Journal of American History on Brown vs. Board. Up until this point the best critique I’d read about the NAACP strategy had been Harold Cruse’s Plural But Equal. But what Guinier’s article brings to light is the way that race and class resentment became intertwined in Brown’s wake. As we move forward it is important we try to figure out a set of strategies that deals with class inequities in a way that gets working class and middle class whites over their racial hurdles. Guinier on Brown vs. Board

2 Comments

  1. tootsie
    tootsie on July 2, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    Relationship between Blacks and non elitist white is critical. As long as poor white see integration as a failure,Blacks have to rethink integration as a way out.

  2. Submariner
    Submariner on July 5, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    It’s very easy to view the most recent Supreme Court decision on school desegregation efforts as revanchism by the right. But I wouldn’t quite go that far. Perhaps the problem is that we have been too timid in our quest for social justice.

    Surely, we can imagine a program greater than the few in existence that would be national in scope and serve everyone’s interests. Race based palliatives, no matter the rationalization, will never be seen as legitimate. In her recent book, Inventing Human Rights, Lynn Hunt describes that human rights have three essential features. They are equal, natural or inherent, and universal. In this post soul political era should we be focused more on the universal?

    Liberal and progressive advocates for racial desegregation remind me of the proponents of the Bretton Woods system of international finance. Writing about the old order in his book, Gold, Dollars, and Power, Francis J. Gavin shows how very smart people will put up with a dysfunctional system just because they are afraid of the unknown. Are we in a similar situation?

    Race based remedies are such small expedients and attended by irritable side effects. Do we still need them? Can we strive for something larger like Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposal for a constitutional ammendment guaranteeing the right to quality education? Can we go beyond high stakes testing as the measure of merit? I, for one, hope that we can emerge from this decision with our determination intact and look for more creative solutions.