Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
Bell, the first tenured black professor at Harvard and a veteran civil rights lawyer, reflects critically on the function and limitation of the landmarkBrowndecision. He asserts that he, like many of his colleagues, confused the means of integration with the objectives of high-quality education and racial equality. To analyze racial reforms, he has developed a theory of converging interests into one of racial fortuity. For example, it was U.S. cold war interests that necessitated the elimination of legal segregation rather than purported concern with quality education for black children. In other words, when the interests of blacks converge with the interests of whites, blacks are more likely to have their needs addressed; otherwise they are not. Thus white resistance to busing and other integration strategies has reduced theBrowndecision and its promise to mostly symbolic value. However, Bell admonishes blacks to not forgo their real interests even when they do not converge with the majority, and certainly prime among those interests is the educational development of black children.Vernon FordCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.