White Privilege, Racism, and the Public School System
Critical Race Theory
Raymond Ward III
Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Part I: Historical Context …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Impact of the Cold War………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
Part II: Brown v. Board of Education ………………………………………………………………………………. 11
The Goals Never Achieved: the Legal Failure of Brown ………………………………………………… 12
Subsequent Legal Cases ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 13
Part III: De Facto Segregation and the Validation of White Privilege ………………………………….. 15
Social Issues Impacting the Classroom…………………………………………………………………………. 16
Misapplication of race as a social construct ………………………………………………………………….. 20
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 25
Introduction
This paper seeks to examine the phenomenon of de facto segregation in the public school
system and explain why contemporary public school education is more segregated than before
the Supreme Court’s decision in the Brown v. Board of Education cases. The central argument is
that de facto segregation in the public school education is a function of the structural limitations
of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the unconscious expression of white privilege in
the development of both subsequent legal decisions and a pedagogy that victimizes minority
students and fosters the creation of a cyclical, self-limiting reality, and the gross misapplication
of the notion that race is a social construct.
The first part of this paper will provide both a brief historical analysis of the education of
Black and Hispanic children in America as well as a concise synopsis of the Brown decisions, in
order to acquaint the reader with the issues that the Supreme Court had to manage in rendering
the decision. It is pertinent that the reader properly understand the effects of de jure segregation
in effectively creating two Americas, one white and one colored. It is also important to
understand the timeline of the Brown decision and the obstacles that the justices had to overcome
in presenting a unanimous decision. This part of the paper will also discuss the temporary
merging of identities and interests that took place in Cold War-era America between Black
America and Mainstream America. It is imperative to understand this temporary alignment,
because it was pivotal to the passage of the Brown v. Board of Education and various pieces of
both Civil Rights related legislature and judicial decisions.
The second part of this paper will focus on the structural limitations of the Supreme
Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education decisions from the standpoint of the legal
decision itself as well as the social elements that influenced its carefully deliberate and self-
limiting construction. From the legal standpoint, this paper will examine the practical
consequences of Brown II’s ruling of “all deliberate speed” with regards to the speed with which
school districts and states moved to force integration in the classroom. From a social standpoint,
the paper will explain why the Brown decision was not given a proper chance to succeed.
Specifically, it will analyze the structure of the decision and explain how it was constructed in
such a manner as to recognize the blatant racial injustices that existed at the time, but managed to
leave those racial barriers intact. It will also expound upon the impact of a colorblind pedagogy.
Pretending that Black America is not hampered by the discrimination of past generations keeps
Black students at a disadvantage. When combined by a societal structure that has completely
resisted integration in the classroom it has become next-to-impossible to foster quality education
in the contemporary urban classroom environment.
The third part of this paper will examine the current state of education in America.
Specifically it will show that de jure segregation has been replaced with de facto segregation, and
that the conditions in many parts of the school system are returning to the same levels as before
the Brown ruling. By demonstrating the existence of white privilege in the school system, it
becomes plain to see that the lack of advocacy in urban school systems, populated primarily by
Black and Hispanic students, has fostered a system of victimization, where minority students are
not taught to their potential because they are misunderstood and thereby marginalized by
teachers and administrators who are only held accountable to the lowest possible educational
standards. At the same time, the belief that race is only a social construct has hampered efforts
aimed at funding schools populated largely by minority students, and only serves to increase the
disparity in achievements between white and black students, emphasizing the need for a return to
more integrated environments where everyone can benefit equally from access to the same
resources.
The conclusion to this paper will provide a final examination on the impact of white
privilege on the legislative and judicial progress made towards integration in the community and
the classroom, and will examine whether the trend towards a re-segregation of the American
classroom is an inevitable reality or merely a difficult obstacle to overcome.
Part I: Historical Context
In order to understand the impact of segregation in any educational facility, it is
important to first understand the obstacles that blacks had to face in order to obtain any sort of
education in America. According to Irons, “from the very first importation of blacks into the
British colonies, initially as indentured servants but soon as slaves, education of this servile class
was both feared and forbidden
i
.” This point is made to emphasize the disparity that existed
between the races from the time that blacks were first brought to America. Fearful that educated
slaves would be harder to control, it was considered beneficial to keep them uneducated and
ignorant of the world in which they lived. The penalties for educating blacks ranged from fines
to the loss of life depending on the location.
By 1868, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
were officially ratified, legally ending slavery, conferring “state and national citizenship on the
former slaves and promis[ing] a federal guarantee of the equal protection of the laws
ii
.” Armed
with this new sense of protection and citizenship, blacks sought to engage in the education
opportunities that had been formally denied to them for so long. However, they soon found out
that the presence of citizenship did not allow for automatic access to equal educational
opportunities. In the wake of Reconstruction, laws were passed that allowed for the education of
black children, but lack of funding and public support prevented them from being applied with
any real force. While many states provided for integrated public school education, “many white
voters refused to pay taxes to support black education. Even in states that funded black schools,
the lack of qualified black teachers made it difficult to maintain academic standards
iii
.” What is
important to note here is the impact of segregated communities on the educational system.
Because whites and blacks lived in separate communities, they were not likely to live in the same
school districts, and whites who opposed sharing their tax dollars with black schools also
opposed the integration of public schools in their areas. To this end, black schools were
supported partially with state dollars and partially with taxes paid by black families who found it
difficult to support themselves, and felt overly burdened by the prospect of paying for the
education of their children.
Initial efforts at integration revealed a complete misunderstanding of the needs of black
children on the part of white teachers, who could not conceive that education can be culturally
biased. Writing them off as an ignorant and inferior class of student, the average white teacher
could not conceptualize that the vast majority of black children, who resided in the south, could
not immediately grasp concepts in textbooks written for northern white students. Information
taken for granted among white students who often came from households that were at least semi–
literate was new to black students whose households were more likely to be completely illiterate
and based more on the oral tradition than a written one. As such, black students continued to fall
behind white students in terms of educational achievement, and those that did not fail out were
quietly pushed out of the system and transferred one of the many underfunded schools that
catered to black interests.
Eventually, the majority of efforts at educational integration were dropped, and blacks
and whites were educated in separate environments, which only exacerbated the disparity
between the two groups. The codification of this disparity was known collectively as the Jim
Crow laws, state and local laws enacted between 1876 and 1965, mandating de jure segregation
in all public facilities. According to Irons, the “heart of the Jim Crow system, and the institution
most central to its functioning, was the segregated public school system
iv
.” The purpose of this
de jure segregation was to maintain white privilege and provide a justification for the
perpetuation of white supremacy in America. By maintaining a separate curriculum for black
children, it was easier for racist whites to provide “only the rudiments of literacy and training for
manual labor and domestic service
v
,” which completely opposed the notion of separate but equal
maintained by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.
