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2004 DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Distinguished Lecture
The first part of the title of this talk' is taken from Ajay Heble's (2000) book Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice. I have chosen this musical image to convey the problem of good intentions gone awry. No musician plans to play the wrong note. The plaintiffs, litigators, Supreme Court Justices, and civil rights advocates all expressed good intentions regarding Brown, and although playing one wrong note does not destroy or invalidate an entire performance, it does create a kind of dissonance that is more or less evident depending on one's vantage point. I am suggesting that the results of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 represent a kind of landing on the wrong note. Brown 's intentions were good and honorable. Its fight was just, but from a 2004 perspective, one might argue that we have landed on a wrong note. I am also using this jazz metaphor as a way to conceive a new vision of America that is more complex and multifaceted than the prevailing cultural narrative.
This article addresses what I have identified as the price we paid for Brown. I want to deal with my concerns by providing a justification for discussing Brown, exploring the historical context in which Brown was conceived, detailing what I see as the specific limitations of the ruling, and considering where we might go from here.
Why Brown? Why Now?
The obvious reason for this particular discussion is to fulfill the specifics of the DeWitt-Wallace-Reader's Digest Lecture to address issues of concern for education. A more relevant reason is that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the decision, and half a centuiy gives us ample time to look back on it soberly and critically. Another reason for considering Brown is the degree to which school desegregation has become an international issue. Schools in South Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and China are dealing with the dismantling of separate and unequal school systems to better integrate subordinate populations into the mainstream (Greenburg, 2003). I have also chosen Brown as a topic for discussion because of its central role in the U.S. school curriculum. Diana Hess (2003) refers to...