 | Hillary Clinton |
Despite the Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the nation's public schools remain inadequately integrated, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton said at a recent conference at the Law School.
The New York Democrat, a 1973 alumna of the Law School, gave closing remarks at a conference sponsored by Yale's and Howard University's law schools, marking the 50th anniversary of the Brown ruling, which declared that racial segregation of children in public schools deprives the minority group of equal educational opportunities. The conference brought together scholars, practitioners and educators, as well as those intimately involved with the landmark decision, in order to commemorate the case, discuss its legacy and limitations, and explore its implications for the future of democracy.
"Without a doubt, the impact of Brown has been so profound that it is hard to imagine how things could have been otherwise, when we ride a train or eat at a restaurant or go to the beach," Clinton said. "Thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the codification of Brown, our workplaces are some of the most racially integrated spaces we have in our society."
Nevertheless, "It's telling that we're here at a conference on Brown, not a celebration," she said. "In the past 50 years we've gone from an education system that was divided by rule to one that is divided by routine, reality and resources."
She cited studies showing that public schools are more segregated today than they were a decade ago, and that the percentage of black students in majority white schools in the South is lower now than it was in 1970.
"The notion that Brown meant integration has been slowly undermined," she said, pointing to by "pitched battles" fought in the North and South over busing schoolchildren across districts as a way to desegregate schools. "People made their local political careers, maybe not standing in a schoolhouse door, but standing at the entrance to bridges, leading demonstrations in their communities against this remedy known as busing."
Clinton also said that the vision of all public schools as equal has been replaced by the notion that all schools should provide their students with at least an "adequate" education.
"The repudiation of 'separate but equal' in Brown was not supposed to lead to separate but unequal," she maintained. In visiting schools during Bill Clinton's tenure as governor of Arkansas and president, and during her term in the Senate, she said, she would give the schools "the Chelsea test," which posed the question: "Is this a school where I would send my own daughter?" Too many of the schools, she said, especially schools serving minority populations, lacked the resources that would have allowed her to answer the question affirmatively.
"In 2004, as in 1954, I think Brown is still the most important continuing challenge that we face as a nation," she said.
In discussing last year's Supreme Court decision upholding the concept of affirmative action in higher education, Clinton noted that the court saw value in racially diverse student populations. "If racial integration is a compelling interest for higher education, then how can it be anything less than a vital first-order imperative for elementary and secondary schools?" she asked the audience. She said the affirmative action ruling addressed admission policies of higher education institutions that are made necessary by the lack of fuller integration in the nation's public school system.
Clinton noted, however, that she remained hopeful that there will be further progress in the integration of schools called for by the Brown decision, and that schools serving disadvantaged students will receive resources giving them the capacity to produce educational achievement equal to schools in wealthier areas.
"We mustn't forget that integration has worked in many communities across America," she said.
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