Talking Points #7- Lawrence

Talking Points #7- Lawrence

Argument: I believe Lawrence argues that the Brown v. Board of Education case wasn’t a complete success if looking at it as a case which was intended to desegregate the nation’s schools.

Quotes:
#1 “The Court's failure to recognize and articulate the true nature of racial segregation was more the product of an intentional, knowledgeable decision than the result of any inability to comprehend. This intentional misunderstanding had its roots in Brown, and has judicial, political, and social attitudes which are crucial to Blacks today. It is the thesis of this paper that the Brown decision fostered a way of thinking about segregation that has allowed both the judiciary and society at large to deny the reality of race in America, that the recognition of that reality is critical to the framing of any meaningful remedy-judicial or political-and that Brown may ultimately be labeled a success only insofar as we are able to make it stand for what it should have stood for in 1954.”

So this quote shows ignorance by choice!

#2 “In short, segregation American-style, like South African apartheid, has only one purpose: to create and maintain a permanent lower class or sub caste defined as race. Blacks are kept separate from whites not because it promotes efficiency in record keeping, or because their proximity produces toxic fumes that are harmful to the environment. They are kept separate because the separation labels or classifies blacks as inferior beings. Segregation violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment not because there is no rational relationship between the classification and the purpose-it is a supremely rational system-but because its purpose is illegitimate.”

One purpose which is to create and maintain a permanent lower class or sub caste defined as race? Why race and or lower class why not upper class? Who labels blacks as inferior beings and why? This quote shows how segregation is still in existence even though there are laws, rules, regulations whatever one wants to call them against it there seems as if nothing is being done to really stop it.

#3"The Court said: "to separate [Negro children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community in ways unlikely ever to be undone."
Once again I ask why and who labels blacks as inferior? Do they see themselves as inferior? The way I look at it is that one should be happy and more than happy proud of their race because that is one of the components that makes them who they are. But then again I remember the culture of power which states that whites are high up there so this is probably why. But why would they separate these children there just children does the being black rub off? If a white child is in the same classroom as a black child does that mean that that particular white child is now part inferior?