June 1, 2014
Reality Check
The Downside of Brown v. Board of Education
By A. Peter Bailey
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When the much-heralded decision in Brown v. Board of Education was issued in May 1954 by the U.S. Supreme Court, I was a 16-year-old junior at Nurnberg American High School in Nurnberg, Germany. My father was in the U.S. Army and my family had moved there in March 1953 from Tuskegee, Ala. During my sophomore, junior and senior years, I was the only Black student in my classes, which was a very different situation from what has existed in segregated Tuskegee. I had never attended school with White students before we were stationed in Germany.
Being in Germany, I missed much of the euphoria that exploded among Black folks around the Supreme Court decision which declared all-Black public schools to be “inherently inferior” to their White counterparts. Like everyone, I regarded that as a given, despite the fact that when arriving in Germany in 1953 after only having attended all-Black schools, not only was I not behind my White classmates academically, I was in fact ahead of most of them.
It was about 10 years later, in June 1962, that I first heard Brother Malcolm X speak for the first time. He spoke with clarity, conviction and knowledge about several things, most notably on the attacks on the minds of Black people by advocates of White supremacy. It was my first time hearing this so forcefully expressed and explained.
That was the beginning of my realization that labelling all-Black schools as “inherently inferior,” not because of states treating them with malign neglect or because of pervasive White supremacy, but just because they were all-Black, was basically an attack on our minds. It may be denied but the harsh reality is that most Whites and, unfortunately, most Black folks interpreted and continue to interpret the Supreme Court decision that way. It’s just a short step from that position to believing that all-Black anything—businesses, professionals, institutions, etc.- are inherently inferior.
I have a personal experience on the tenaciousness of that belief. When I was quoted in an article supporting historically Black colleges and universities, a White man wrote a letter to the editor accusing me of being as much a segregationist as George Wallace. My response to him was, “Don’t flatter yourself. Many Black people had no desire to go to the University of Virginia. We just didn’t want Whites to be able to tell us we couldn’t go there. After that was settled, we would choose to go to Hampton University or Virginia Union University or to Virginia State University. For us, it was all about having the right to choose.”
The belief that anything all-Black is inherently inferior has been devastating to the growth of serious Black economic power in this country. Too many of us deeply believe that White ice is colder than Black ice. As a result, we give billions of dollars annually to White-owned or -controlled entities. This downside of Brown v. Board of Education must be totally rejected if we are to maximize our cultural and economic position in this country and the world.