Don't Feed My Kid That BS!

“What if we don’t want this bullshit jammed down our kids throats?”

“Race wasn’t and isn’t an issue till they made it an issue.”

“Who is they?”

“Democrats.”

This exchange is a subset of the dialogue on my CO community’s Facebook page in response to a posting about a speakers series titled,  Talking to Children About Race, sponsored by the local chapter of the NAACP and endorsed by the local school district.

As in many communities, the murder of George Floyd and the resulting growth of the Black Lives Matter movement has aroused activism and backlash.  Welcome back to the 1950s.

Several years before his death I had the honor of hosting An Evening With Derrick Bell at the school I led in New York City.  Bell is one of the intellectual parents of Critical Race Theory, a principled activist, a renowned law professor and acclaimed author.

Bell was controversial, as truth tellers always are.  The focus of the evening was his counter-cultural view that Brown v.Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision ruling against state segregation of public schools, was wrongly decided - or at least not helpful.

Segregation, until 1954, was legal under the “separate but equal” principle established by the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.   Bell believed that the emphasis should not have been on the problem of “separate,” but on the promise of “equal.”

Bell noted that the broad and continuing affection for Brown v. Board was misplaced, particularly by people of color.   He observed decades earlier that education for black children had not gotten better by virtue of forced integration, but was arguably worse.  

In 2021, schools are no longer segregated as a consequence of law, but as a result of the inevitable and resurgent power of racism.  Since 1990, any progress from desegregation has eroded.  Residential segregation has followed rapidly increased wealth disparity.  Subsequent court decisions disallowed busing between districts as a means to integrate.  

As Bell wrote, "Viewing Racism as an amalgam of guilt, responsibility and power- all of which are generally known but never acknowledged - may explain why educational programs [about race] are destined to fail."

Other rulings released school districts from desegregation mandates as long as they had given it a good try - the “good faith” doctrine.   The final judicial nail came in a pair of decisions effectively prohibiting assignment of students by race.  Now, millions of black children are trapped in deteriorating, under-funded, segregated schools, primarily in poor urban neighborhoods.  There is no need to have a law keeping black kids out of your schools if white  dominance has successfully arranged social dynamics that do the job so well.

Everywhere in America, integration was followed by white flight.  Property values plummeted as white families moved out, leading to poor school funding that has persisted for decades.

Some legal scholars see the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education as a matter of conflicting claims over the right to free “association” conferred by the Constitution. Black citizens and allies fought for the right to “associate” with whites, at least for purposes of equal educational opportunity.  White citizens claim the inverse, the protection the Constitution provides them to not “associate” with those they choose to avoid.   Whites won, as we always have.

As Bell accurately observed, "Racism lies at the center, not the periphery; in the permanent, not in the fleeting.”  "Progress in American race relations is largely a mirage, obscuring the fact that whites continue, consciously or unconsciously to do all in their power to ensure their dominion and maintain control.”

The promise of Brown v. Board of Education was meaningless. It was a mirage that assuaged white guilt and created a facade of equal opportunity behind which racism has flourished.  In 1954 the Supreme Court decided that “separate but equal” was unjust.  Today, in 2021, “separate and unequal” is the de facto reality of education in America. 

Derrick Bell was right when he observed, "The traditions of racial subordination are deeper than the legal sanctions.”

Changing the law does nothing until and unless we change hearts.  Things like the series, Talking to Children About Race, are our best hope. 

It’s too bad this “bullshit” wasn’t “jammed down” a few throats a generation ago.