Calling race "the unsolved problem of American democracy," New York University Law School professor and activist, lawyer, teacher and author Derrick Bell told an audience Friday that the Brown v. Board of Education decision has been ineffective at combating racial inequality.
Bell spoke to a crowd of about 70 in Smith-Buonanno 106. The lecture was the final installment of a year of events focused on the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. Bell analyzed events leading up to the historic decision, the case's ramifications and the current state of race relations in the United States.
Bell said he believes issues of racism and discrimination are very much alive in the United States, contrary to many Americans' beliefs that opportunities are now equal among whites, blacks and Hispanics. The Brown decision has not had the positive effects on education that many people thought it would and today holds little more than symbolic value, Bell said.
Most white children attend primarily white schools, while most African American and Hispanic children attend primarily African American and Hispanic schools, Bell said. School funding and resources are also distributed unevenly, Bell said, with the primarily white schools enjoying the lion's share.
"The Brown decision as legal precedent is of virtually no use in correcting this sitution," Bell said.
By rejecting the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, in which the Supreme Court upheld the legality of "separate but equal" schools for African American and white children, the Marshall court of 1954 decided Brown would "cut through the dark years of segregation with laser-like intensity," Bell said. Marshall himself thought segregation would be completely eradicated five years after the decision, Bell said.
But Brown met with massive resistance. In addition, the mere existence of the Brown ruling legitimated the situation of race relations in 1954 and the perpetuation of unequal educational opportunities for African Americans, Bell said. Despite tremendous difficulties in implementing Brown and the continued discrimination African Americans faced, many whites were happy with having a legal, if not practical solution, he said.
Many whites took the attitude, "Blacks got what they wanted - what more could they ask for?" Bell said.
In the South, schools didn't fully comply with Brown for decades, Bell said, which was long enough to rob many Southern African American children of the education they were purportedly guaranteed by Brown.
Bell quoted W.E.B. Du Bois's "prophetic" predictions about education, saying, "What Negro children need is neither segregated schools nor integrated schools - what they need is education."
Bell also examined the Brown decision in the context of historic civil rights decisions. Many legislative and judicial actions touted as landmark advances for African Americans' rights were actually implemented in large part for the benefit of whites, Bell said.
The Emancipation Proclamation was adopted largely to help win the Civil War, Bell said. The Brown decision helped win the Cold War by somewhat legitimating the United States' claims to support freedom and equality, he said. Likewise, affirmative action helped whites by diluting the "old boys' club" of American society.
While Bell acknowledged some positive effects of affirmative action, he said it is a flawed and paternalistic practice. In response to the charge that affirmative action does not help people of low socio-economic status, Bell replied "So what? No one program is supposed to cover every damn thing." He went on to say he supported the creation of programs that did more to support African Americans from lower socio-economic levels.
Bell said although he believes racism is a permanent institution in the United States, Americans should continue fighting for equality, adding that if people in the past had not taken on causes thought to be hopeless, "the world would be a lot worse today."
"I think taking on challenges that have little chance of success is the purpose of life," Bell said.
The quest for equality in education has not been completely fruitless, Bell said, citing the success of some charter and alternative schools such as the Frederick Douglas Program in Harlem and the Bell After-school Program in Boston.
But inequality in opportunities remains a large problem in the United States, and race is a big issue in Tuesday's presidential election, Bell said. Although both John Kerry's and George W. Bush's campaigns have downplayed race, it will play a critical role in the election, he said.
Bell said that many Americans, including some African Americans, were willing to overlook Bush's shortcomings because of his "folksy-whiteness." In addition, many Christian African Americans find their social beliefs to be closer to those of Bush. Bell said he disagreed with the decision of some African Americans to vote for Bush because of his social policies even if they disapprove of his economic and foreign policies.
Bell said that although he supported Ralph Nader in 2000, he is voting for Kerry this year.
"If I were on the moon somewhere, not having to pay the piper, I would say, if Americans want to vote Bush back in, let them vote him back in," he said.
Bell said he felt Bush's Middle East policy is isolating the African American community from other people of color worldwide. But Bell said he is concerned that Kerry's policy in the Middle East might not be different enough from Bush's.
"The big problem is our complete failure to be the arbitrators, mediators in that situations, rather than letting Israel do whatever they want," Bell said.
He said that in most elections in his life he had voted for the "lesser of two evils." But Bell said the future would be different if Americans elected leaders who understood the restrictions and disadvantages of racist thinking.
"Teaching the truth about what racism does to whites as well as blacks is the great challenge to social reform," he said.
