Brown v. Board II
Prof. Bill Long 10/27/05
Stating and Evaluating the Clarks' Conclusions
The purpose of this essay is to state the Clarks' conclusions, review how the Court used their studies and then evaluate all of this material from a more detached perspective 51 years later. They conclude:
"The Coloring test offers a greater choice of responses to be made than either the line-drawing or doll technique. Thus the tendency of these Negro children to reject the brown color is expressed not only in coloring their preferences white but also in making irrelevant or escapist responses....These data suggest that by age of seven the Negro child cannot escape realistic self-identification [i.e., their studies further showed that only a small percentage of Black children colored themselves white, though a larger percentage preferred the white color], but many of them indicate a clear-cut preference for white and some evidence of emotional conflict (bizarre responses)....It is clear that the Negro child, by the age of five is aware of the fact that to be colored in contemporary American society is a mark of inferior status...The negation of the color, brown, exists in the same complexity of attitudes in which there also exists knowledge of the fact that the child himself must be identified with that which he rejects. This apparently introduces a fundamental conflict at the very foundations of the ego structure" (350).
Back to the Court
The Court never actually says what it is about the doll studies that convinced them that the doctrine of "separate but equal." enshrined in Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence since Plessy at the end of the 19th century, ought no longer to be the law of the land. I think, however, it is a sentence like the following, from the previous paragraph, that probably sent chills up the Justices' spines: "It is clear that the Negro child, by the age of five is aware of the fact that to be colored in contemporary American society is a mark of inferior status." That is, "objective" scientifc studies had demonstrated that African-American children are already starting out life with a negative self concept that will no doubt, have destructive consequences later in life. How does the Court deal with this information? After citing the Clark study, among others, the Court says:
"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."
Segregation of students was the culprit. Separate facilities were "inherently unequal." They must be dismantled. But the Court rested its decision, ultimately, on the "equal protection" rather than the "due process clause," thus avoiding a possible "anti-Lochner" type of response.
Reflecting on Clark and the Court
Before closing these two essays, I thought it might be helpful to ask myself what indeed the Clark study shows and how the Court's remedy, to end "separate but equal" fits into these conclusions. No doubt the Clarks have shown that young Black children, even by the age of five, have developed negative self concepts. No doubt it was imperative for any society claiming to have "liberty and justice for all" to try to eradicate the forces that contributed to this conclusion. That school segregation was one "culprit" was a reasonable guess in the 1950s, because it is was so patently evident that spending on Black and White education was disproportionate (how much better are things now?). And, the Court is no doubt correct that the educational system is one way to tap into the benefits of American society.
But there is one troubling thing about some of Clark's results that remains for me. Let's focus on Table IX (p.346) of the study. This table compares the racial preference of Northern and Southern medium and dark children (6 and 7 year olds). Among the 6 year-olds is the following: Only 15% of the Northern 6 year-olds had a preference for brown at that age, while 77% had a preference for white, while Southern 6 year-olds had a 67% preference for brown and only a 30% prefernce for white. By the age of 7 these numbers had become more equalized, but even at this point the number of Northerners preferring brown was considerably less than the Southerners so preferring brown.
Here is my problem. The South in 1950 had higher concentrations of Blacks than the North. In fact, many Northern cities had just received massive influxes of Blacks during and immediately after WWII as work in the factories of the North and the exploding auto industry provided opporunities not available in the South, but Black communities in many Northern cities were just developing. One would have thought, then, with the supposedly more "relaxed" attitude toward race in the North and the increased economic opportunities for many Blacks in the North that this would result in a better self-concept among the children. But, apparently this isn't so. Black children from the South, where the "evils" of segregation were attacked most vociferously in the 1960s, seemed to have a better self-concept than Black children from the North. Wouldn't this seem to be the opposite of what you would expect if "separate but equal" was the culprit? It seems that other factors are probably at work--such as the security in associating with a larger community of Blacks, the history of one's family in a particular location, and even the presence of extended family in the area--in giving a person a positive self-concept than the presence or absence of segregation in the schools.
Conclusion
Yet the Court was only confronted with the fact of segregation, which really meant "separate but unequal," in the schools. It was far beyond the ken of the Court to try to remedy social problems such as family structure or migration to find jobs. They had before them one particular feature of the "separate but equal" system of life that they could remedy if they so desired. There really was very little in the law itself that would have required the overturning of a "separate but equal" doctrine, and so they reached for social scientific studies which demonstrated the felt experience of inferiority among Black children. What could you have done as a Court? You could, as some of the lower courts had done, simply remand the case with instructions to build completely equal educational facilities for the races. Or, you could choose the path of integration of schools. The Court chose the latter.
Holmes would have smiled had he been alive, for he argued in "The Path of the Law" in 1897 that the development of the law has not been a "logical" one. Leaps are made here and there based on the "felt needs of the time." A legal realist reading of the Court's decision might conclude that the Court "felt" that the "needs" of the time were to bring America into the modern world. The armed forces were being integrated. Black nations in Africa were clamoring for their independence. The post-WWII world was seemingly yearning for a greater acceptance of racial diversity througout the world. Integration of the public schools was a reasonable way for the Court to go.
I give the last words of these essays, however, to Kenneth Clark, the scholar whose studies caught the Court's attention. He was still a young man (40) when the Brown decision was handed down. He later had a distinguished career in New York and always publicly supported the idea of integration in the subsequent years. But he began to wonder about some things. "I believed in the 1950s that a significant percentage of Americans were looking for a way out of the morass of segregation. It was wishful thinking. It took me 10 to 15 years to realize that I seriously underestimated the depth and complexity of Northern racism" (some of the data for which were evident in his study, but simply not interpreted by him in 1950). Near the end of his long life he said, "I look back and I shudder and say, 'Oh God, you really were as naive as some people say you were. My life has been a series of glorious defeats."
Is this how you would read it?
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Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long
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