Re: KIPP. Brown

[Peter Campbell <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>]

Jerry,

I agree with your take on Brown (de jure vs. de facto segregation). Indeed, the Court acknowledged that its decision applied in cases where there are "state laws permitting or requiring such segregation."

But the Warren court made it clear that segregation of children in public schools on the basis of race "denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment -- even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors of white and Negro schools may be equal." The Court also clearly stated, "Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."

The examples you cite -- kids in an all-Hispanic high school in LA who thought that segregation was fine, KIPP kids attending segregated schools prior to enrolling at KIPP -- are symptomatic of the problems we face regarding race and class and the larger issues of social and economic injustice. But they are certainly not justifications for these problems and these injustices. Rather, they strike me as signs of just how we resigned we have become and how much we have lost the vision that the Warren court provided for us.

What is that vision? I certainly do not see integration as our ultimate goal. After all, a school that appears "integrated" on the surface invariably conceals the vast disparities that exist between its students, largely drawn along racial lines. There's the automatic assumption that throwing kids from different economic and racial backgrounds together somehow leads to racial and class harmony. There is rarely any mechanism in the school to talk about race or class or difference of any kind. There is no means by which race and racial integration could be discussed or promoted, even questioned. It is simply taken as a given that kids of different races and classes, in close physical proximity to one another, are coexisting openly and peacefully. Unfortunately, whatever racist or classist ideas the kids had formed at an earlier age are too often reinforced in an institution that -- ironically -- is committed to undoing these kind of beliefs.

So what do you DO about that? I think you do what people have always done when faced with something they find intolerable: work to change it by upholding a vision of something worth fighting for.

For me, one vision worth fighting for is one where public schools foreground the democratic commons, i.e., bring children and parents of different races, classes, and beliefs together to facilitate dialogue and inquiry among them. In the simplest terms, it's better that we know about each other, that we interact with each other, if only to increase the likelihood that we can undermine (or at least weaken) the crippling stereotypes that cause us to hold each other in suspicion or contempt. If we make no such attempt, we increase the likelihood that these stereotypes and misunderstandings will continue, will worsen with time, and will eventually destroy us.

Peter C.




On Jan 5, 2007, at 8:03 AM, GERALD BRACEY wrote:

> Peter,
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> At the risk of being labeled a reactionary or worse, I'd like to point out that Brown v. Board was not supposed to "end segregated schools in America."  It negated only de jure segregation, not de facto.  The texts you quote from the decision say as much.  The 14th Amendment comes into play only when there is a law allowing or requiring segregation.
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> But that is not my major problem with your cri de coeur.  My major problem is that I can't get anywhere beyond it.  OK, so what next?  In The Shame of the Nation Kozol describes schools that haven't seen a white kid in years.  What would you  do about that?  If anything.  On NPR not too long ago, kids in an all-Hispanic high school in LA thought that was fine.  They didn't think it would be good if black or white kids came.  Clarence Thomas has argued that all-black schools can be models of achievement (while reaffirming Brown in terms of legal segregation). 
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> Did the kids in KIPP schools attend more racially integrated schools in the earlier grades?  If not, why do you make the segregation in KIPP an important issue in and of itself?   
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> Jerry
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