Talking Points #7

“One More River to Cross”- Recognizing the Real Injury in Brown: A Prerequisite to Shaping New Remedies---By Charles Lawrence

This article is about…

Brown vs. the Board of Education
Segregation
Inferior
Superior
Education
Society
Community
Equality
Inequality
Government


Author’s Arguments:

Charles Lawrence argues that the decision of the court case Brown vs. the Board of Education established schools to desegregate; however it did not set a time frame as to when and how schools were to desegregate.


“Each step forward was just that, a step. There would always be ‘one more river to cross.’” 281

“Segregation violated the equal protection clause because of its empirically demonstrated discriminatory effect on the educational opportunity afforded blacks.” 283

“The Court’s refusal to recognize and articulate the real nature of segregation in Brown and its progeny has fostered an attitude and approach to the elimination of segregation that necessarily be unsuccessful.” 286


I completely agree with what Charles Lawrence is saying because the Brown case came to a close with the decision to desegregate schools in the United States; however it was an urgent decision because it wasn’t until years later that they really enforced the verdict. I learned about this case and the cases that followed this in one of my classes last year and the things that occurred from the time of the first decision to the time of Brown II was unacceptable. If they were going to pass a clause that stated that there was no longer going to be segregation then they should have enforced it more.

Finally when segregation no longer occurred in the school systems it didn’t stop what was going on in the real world because discrimination and racism was still taking place in many working environments and equal opportunity was not taking place. I don’t know what I would do if any of this would have happened to me. I think I would have been so angry because finally when the government did do something they didn’t enforce it because they didn’t want to come with a proper system to change what was going on. For the most part I think that I understood this article, however there were certain parts that could have been summarized and didn’t need to go into the detail that it did. And since I know about this particular court case I found it repetitive, but I did agree with the article. I guess I had mixed emotions.