The Promise of Brown: Desegregation, Affirmative Action and the Struggle for Racial Equality

In measuring the shortcomings of "Brown's" victory and legacy, the author tells us to remember that Robert Carter--best known as one of the principal attorneys who won the famous "Brown v. Board of Education" case--never underestimated the enormous difficulty of achieving racial fairness through the desegregation of public schools, or the pervasiveness of racial discrimination. Reflecting on the ambiguous legality of the "Brown" decision in 1994. Carter wrote that "for most black children, "Brown's" constitutional guarantee of equal educational opportunity has been an abstraction, having no effect whatever on the educational offerings black children are given or the deteriorating schools they attend." The author believes that Carter's point that behind the formal structures of racial exclusion lies an even more powerful dynamic of economic and class oppression, which still places underfunded, urban school districts at an enormous disadvantage in comparison to suburban white schools.