Black children might have been better off without Brown vs. Board

Stanford Report ^ | April 21, 2004 | Lisa Trei

[ancientart]

While honoring the efforts and sacrifices of the people whose struggles culminated in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ended school segregation in this country, New York University Professor Derrick Bell provocatively suggested last week that generations of black children might have been better off if the case had failed.

[harrym]

This on top of the comments from Bill Cosby at the NAACP the other day point to the same things. Of course racial inequalities were wrong and had to be addressed. The problem was how to address them. It was implemented badly and sustained to the detriment of all the children. Bussing caused major upheavals for black and white children. Many black children suffered serious emotional upheavals by being thrown into the middle of and expected to take on the trappings of a different culture than their own. Today's society is still divided racially, only this time by the blacks themselves. "Gangstas" is the name and booty and denigrating white culture is the game. Most affirmative action programs have failed miserably (with the exception of a few individuals who had the internal ambition to have made it anyway). The general state of education in the country is abominable and a state college degree of 2004 is probably not even on a par with the requirements for high school graduation in 1955.

[DameAutour]

The article states,

"While they remained poor and disempowered, their status was no longer a result of denied equality. Rather, Bell said, it marked a personal failure to take advantage of one's defined equal status."

"court orders to ensure that black youngsters received the education they needed to progress would have achieved much more."

I have to disagree with this professor. Basically, he is against Brown v. Board because now black people have no excuse when they fail to achieve.

[supercat]

A century before Brown, in some places, teaching a black to read would have been a major crime. Today, fifty years after Brown, teaching a black to read still seems to be a major crime, for the same reason.