American History:  Muckrakers
Brown
vs. Board of
Education
Mexican
War
Global
History:
Women
in History & Now:
|
Teaching
Brown v. Board of Education |
| "All we need to have the most hurtful contempt is sameness and difference unfortunately placed. ... 'You are not me,' the unconscious says, 'and so I have the right to think less of you and to place you as I want to.'" |
This is the background of the first case--Plessy vs. Ferguson. In 1896, Homer Plessy, who was 1/8th black, boarded and took a seat in a railroad car reserved for whites in Louisiana. When he was told to move, he refused. He was convicted of violating a state law which required separate facilities for blacks and whites. Plessy appealed his case to the Supreme Court. In a decision which was to stand as a landmark for the next fifty-eight years the Supreme Court established the "separate but equal" doctrine upholding the Louisiana state law.My class discussed the opposites of sameness and difference. The very basis of "separate but equal" the class felt, is what Mr. Siegel says, "sameness and difference unfortunately placed." The separate facilities provided for black people, the class pointed out, were always much worse. They began to see that this bad relation of sameness and difference had a cause: contempt. I read sections of the Court's decision--for instance: "In the nature of things [the amendment] could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color." We asked if it was really "in the nature of things" for different things to be only separate. "If it is," I pointed out, "then all kinds of other things would have to be separate--boys and girls, different nationalities..." "Nothing could ever get together," Maria Vasquez exclaimed. The decision blames black people for any inferiority feelings they have: "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it." In the years that followed, the decision was used to justify segregation laws throughout America. Though the law was challenged, the Plessy decision was upheld.
2. The Opposites Respected
| Then, in the early 1950s, eight-year-old Linda Brown was denied entry to the white elementary school five blocks from her home and forced to attend an all black school twenty-one blocks away. This was the law in Topeka. The Brown's--joined by thirteen other parents representing twenty children from Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, and Washington, DC-- appealed the case to the Supreme Court, once again based on the 14th Amendment. They claimed that "separate but equal" could never be equal. |
Linda Brown |
In May of 1954, the Supreme Court in a powerful decision written by Chief Justice Warren said:
| "Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive children of the minority group of equal educational opportunity? We believe it does. ... To separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status ¼ that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." |
|
My students were visibly moved by these sentences. The class felt that the Court was honoring the fact that people are different, have different skin color, but also are deeply the same: that they are all children came first. I asked, "As sameness and difference are better related, are other opposites also better related?" The class said this decision made more sense and also had more feeling: it put together logic and emotion. "One child is being taken care of, but also a lot of children will be affected," Linda Washington said, describing oneness and manyness. |
These two decisions, I told the class, stand for two things, which I have learned from Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, are in every person: contempt and respect. I asked, "As you are at home, in a class, on the street which way of seeing predominates in you?" They were not sure. As they gave examples of how they saw people different from them, the students began to see they had an attitude to difference. I asked, "Have you ever felt what Mr. Siegel describes: 'You are not me ... and so I have the right to think less of you'?" My students were thoughtful and said yes. "It makes me mean," said Kevin Charles. I asked, "Which way of seeing would you rather have?" The way that made for the Brown decision the whole class agreed.They were learning through some of the most painful facts of US history what they hoped for in themselves. Through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method they were seeing something intensely personal as having impersonal meaning. At the same time it was more personal because they were seeing the cause was in them. Both the world and themselves made more sense, had a deep kinship and organization. This is the purpose of education.
This
article was originally given as part of a seminar at the Aesthetic Realism
Foundation in New York City.
It
appeared as an article in the South Carolina Black News.
In
2004 it was published in the book Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism
(Orange Angle Press, 2004)
 |
Global History American History Women's Questions Home |
| (c) by Lois Mason, 2005. For permission to reprint please contact me by email: LoisAMason@aol.com | |