Silent covenants : Brown v. Board of Education and the unfulfilled hopes for racial reform

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Silent covenants : Brown v. Board of Education and the unfulfilled hopes for racial reform

Derrick Bell

Oxford University Press, 2004

  • : pbk

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注記

Includes index

内容説明・目次

巻冊次

ISBN 9780195172720

内容説明

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that separate educational facilities are "inherently unequal" and, as such, violate the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees all citizens "equal protection of the laws". Hailed as a landmark decision, Brown vs. Board Education promised the nation's citizens equality and racial justice at last. Yet despite Brown's promise for what law and society might be and the awe and respect it evokes with the passing years, it has achieved little and is little used as legal precedent. The noble image, dulled by resistance to any but token steps toward compliance, has transformed Brown into a magnificance mirage, the legal equivalent of that city on a hill to which all aspire without any serious thought that aspiration will ever become attainment. In a sure-to-be controversial work, Derrick Bell argues that though Brown has come to be regarded as the Perfect Precedent, its true lesson is that advocates of racial justice should rely less on judicial decisions and more on tactics, actions, even attitudes that challenge the continuing assumptions of white dominance. Turning history on its head, Bell suggests that if we had had more realism in our racial dealings, we might have kept Plessy, kept separate but equal in placem and attacked instead, at its root, the racial discrimination that continues to haunt the nation. It is only by petitioning for racial justice in forms that whites will realize serve their interests, Bell argues, that true equality will ever be achieved.

目次

  • CONTENTS
  • INTRODUCTION
  • 1. Plessy's Long Shadow
  • 2. Brown's Half Light
  • 3. Brown Reconceived: An Alternate Scenario
  • 4. The Racial Sacrifice Covenants
  • 5. The Interest-Convergence Covenance
  • 6. Brown as an Anti-Communist Decision
  • 7. The Role of Fortuity in Racial Policy-Making
  • 8. Racism's Economic Foundation
  • 9. School Litigation in the Nineteenth Century
  • 10. The School Desegregation Era
  • 11. The End of the Brown Era
  • 12. Brown as Landmark: An Assessment
  • 13. Affirmative Action and Racial Fortuities in Action
  • 14. Searching for Effective Schools in the Post-Brown Era
  • 15. Moving Beyond Racial Fortuity
  • 16. Conclusion
巻冊次

: pbk ISBN 9780195182477

内容説明

When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision finding public school segregation unconstitutional could become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent. Derrick Bell here shatters this shining image of one of the Court's most celebrated rulings. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. Brown's recognition of racial injustice, without more, left racial barriers intact. Given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined-for the first time-to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. By striking it down, the Court intended both to improve the Nation's international image during the Cold War and offer blacks recognition that segregation was wrong. Instead, the Brown decision actually enraged and energized its opponents. It stirred confusion and conflict into the always vexing question of race in a society that, despite denials and a frustratingly flexible amnesia, owes much of its growth, development, and success, to the ability of those who dominate the society to use race to both control and exploit most people, black and white. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants-unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights-that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions. In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.

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