"Segregation" then: Long ago and far away, Alabama's governor, George Corley Wallace, "stood in the schoolhouse door."
The date was June 11, 1963. The school in question was the University of Alabama, which was about to admit its first two African-American students.
Governor Wallace took his stand. The leading authority on the event describes it thusly:
The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door took place at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. George Wallace, the Democratic Governor of Alabama, in a symbolic attempt to keep his inaugural promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" and stop the desegregation of schools, stood at the door of the auditorium to try to block the entry of two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood.According to this leading authority, Wallace was staging a symbolic attempt to keep a campaign promise. He was trying to stop the desegregation of his state's schools.
Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door—but under the direction of President Kennedy, agents of the Alabama National Guard told him to stand aside. Eventually, the governor did, and the university's "whites only" practice finally came to an end.
This was "desegregation" of an especially clear-cut kind. Traditionally, states like Alabama had operated "dual school systems," from their public elementary schools right on through their colleges and universities.
Black kids went to school with black kids, full and complete total stop. White kids went to school with whites kids. No exceptions needed to apply.
That was the basic structure of "segregation" then. This was, of course, "de jure" segregation, segregation by law.
In the 1955 Brown decision, the Supreme Court had ruled this practice unconstitutional. In a unanimous vote, the Court had ruled that state-mandated segregation produced schools which were inherently unequal, for the following reason:
"To separate [black 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 that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone."The reasoning there was deeply humane, though also perhaps a bit shaky. But so the Court had ruled, more than seven years before Wallace's 1963 stand.
Later that year, in the fall of 1963, despite its governor's heroic stand, the state of Alabama finally got around to integrating some public elementary schools. Last September, the Alabama News Center recalled what had occurred:
ALABAMA NEWS CENTER (9/9/18): On this day 55 years ago, four African-American children walked into four public schools operated by the Huntsville Board of Education. It became the first public school system in Alabama to integrate. Weeks earlier, a federal judge ordered the board to enroll 6-year-old Sonnie Hereford IV–son of the local civil rights activist Dr. Sonnie Hereford III–at Fifth Avenue School...[On Monday, Sept. 9, 1963,] Sonnie Hereford IV became the first black child enrolled in a formerly all-white public school in Alabama. Later that day, David Piggee was enrolled at Terry Heights Elementary, John Anthony Brewton at East Clinton Elementary, and Veronica Pearson at Rison Junior High.Four kids, attending four different schools, including a 6-year-old! Given the brutal history to which we all remain tied, this was "desegregation," 1963-style. This was "desegregation" then!
We've still neglected to discuss Governor Wallace's speech. We refer to the speech, cited above, in which he made that unfortunate statement about his desire to perpetuate segregation.
The speech had been delivered at the start of that fateful year. Years later, Wallace said he regretted his statement that day. But as described by the leading authority, this is what he said:
George Wallace's 1963 Inaugural Address was delivered January 14, 1963, following his election as Governor of Alabama. Wallace at this time in his career was an ardent segregationist, and as Governor he challenged the attempts of the federal government to enforce laws prohibiting racial segregation in Alabama's public schools and other institutions. The speech is most famous for the phrase "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", which became a rallying cry for those opposed to integration and the Civil Rights Movement."Segregation forever!" It's one of the most unfortunate speeches in the nation's history. But that's the way these events were unfolding in one southern state back then.
That was "desegregation" then. Now we're engaged in a great tribal war—and in some quarters, school "segregation" is back on the nation's front lines. For example, on page A1 of today's New York Times, the famous newspaper is at it again, advancing its heroic attempt to "desegregate" New York City's public schools.
The report is 1800 words long; it's festooned with quite a few photos and graphics. Within the past few weeks, the city's mayor, Bill de Blasio, has been turned into a national punchline. But in this one area, he's still seen, at least by the Times, as one of the nation's savants:
SHAPIRO (6/4/19): [I]n a school system that remains severely racially segregated, many black and Hispanic students have been left in struggling middle schools that sometimes do not even notify them that the elite [public high] schools [in New York City] exist.On the front page of the New York Times, Gotham's public schools remain "severely racially segregated." Luckily, de Blasio has sparked a fight over how to "integrate" these schools.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to scrap the decades-old admissions test has sparked an intense backlash and a renewed fight over how to integrate the city’s deeply divided school system.
That would be "desegregation" today! But we're getting ahead of our story.
Today, we're involved in a great tribal war. It sometimes seems to us that, as part of that ongoing war, our own liberal tribe may have a type of investment in maintaining the "feel" of Wallace's grisly speech.
We love to talk about "segregated schools," pretending, as we do, that we're bravely engaged in a great civil war—a great war which finds our floundering tribe on the side of the nation's past heroes.
For ourselves, we don't see the situation that way. In our view, we aren't engaged in any such war, and our self-impressed, largely uncaring tribe isn't hugely heroic.
In our view, our tribe is inclined to posture about racially imbalanced schools, much as Wallace once postured about those which were legally segregated.
As we posture, the actual needs of low-income and minority kids are rarely discussed in an intelligent way—are rarely discussed at all.
On our corporate cable channel, big stars entertain us with Mafia jokes. These fatuous, overpaid corporate vessels don't discuss the interests and needs of the nation's black kids at all.
In our view, the actual needs of low-income and minority kids are rarely discussed in an intelligent manner. We'd certainly say that that's the case in this morning's Times report, which fails to address the most basic questions about the situations it portrays.
Over the next few weeks, we'll examine the way the New York Times and the "associate professor left" approach the question of modern-day "segregated schools"—the question of "segregation" now.
In what way do we have "segregated schools" at this point in time at all? To what extent does the ongoing use of that term make any real sense? Is the use of that historically fraught term actually helpful? Or does it distract us from the actual questions which need to be discussed?
We'll examine such questions in our reports, even as we explore the question of why a state like the state of New York has so many racially imbalanced public schools.
"Segregation forever," Governor Wallace once said. Elements of our failing liberal tribe are inclined to issue a somewhat similar cry.
Wallace was talking about the practice of segregation; we seem to be in love with the word. We seem to want to maintain the word "segregation" forever. We seem to like the way it feels when certain cries leave our lips.
We've described the "segregated schools" of George Wallace's day. According to the professoriate left, what is a "segregated school" today?
To answer that question, we'll have to take a trip to UCLA. The Civil Rights Project at that university has largely defined "segregation" today, at least as the term is used within our own tribe. And uh-oh! That influential institute has defined public school "segregation" is an almost comical way.
If we accept the Civil Rights Project definition, we are, in effect, demanding "segregation" forever! Indeed, this story would almost be funny—if it weren't for all the kids whose needs we ignore as we make our heroic, modern-day stand in our modern schoolhouse door.
Tomorrow: What is "segregation" today? On page 32, we're finally told
"Now we're engaged in a great tribal war"
ReplyDeleteYou're not engaged in any war, Bob.
Quite simply, your liberal zombie cult's kingpins are stirring shit up, agitating their pet zombies, their 'base'.
The purpose - obtaining more political power, to provide valuable service to their globalist sponsors. It's that simple.
"The reasoning there was deeply humane, though also perhaps a bit shaky."
ReplyDeleteSomerby, not having read the transcripts of the hearings, may be unaware that this judge's statement is not based solely on reasoning, which he calls shaky, but also on findings of psychological studies. Those studies showed that black children had lower self-esteem than white children and that at very early ages they had incorporated the knowledge that black was not as desirable as white.
Because Somerby is largely ignorant about psychology, he doesn't know about the studies comparing black and white children which demonstrated that sense of inferiority. He doesn't know about the influx of top German psychologists fleeing Hitler in the 1930s and 40s who were hired by those segregated black universities and trained black Ph.Ds in psychology. Those black psychologists were deeply interested in questions such as the impact of segregation on black children, and they had already conducted the studies that were subsequently used as evidence in Brown v Board of Education.
If a decision claiming feelings of inferiority were to be argued on reasoning alone, it would fail, given the intransigence of white educators, lawyers and judges. Scientific evidence, data, was much harder to contest and it was provided by those important studies conducted by well-trained black psychologists. And they were not "shaky" at all, but compelling.
Much of this work was done by the Clarks, who testified about their own work with black children. This is described here:
https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-celebrates-60th-anniversary-brown-v-board-education/significance-doll-test/
My point is that Somerby's offhand comment about "shaky reasoning" is offensive and ignores the hard work done to back up the claims that separate-but-equal was harmful to children.
Thanks for the link 10:23, these were things I had known but forgotten. The PBS interview embedded in the article was also a good read.
DeleteLeroy
@10:23 - Yes, the decision was based on a study, but there's every reason to believe that the study was wrong. Psychological studies are notoriously uncertain. In this case, there was a Dunbar HS, segregated school in D.C. that was providing outstanding education. There were many reasons why segregated schools were inferior. It's questionable whether any study could accurately have teased out the specific amount of impact of any specific factor.
DeleteThe good thing about the decision was that it ended the abomination of racially segregated schools. The bad thing about the reasoning was that it pointed to the wrong remedy.
Don't be an ass, David. You didn't even read what the studies are about. They don't compare high schools.
DeleteYou cannot discredit any psychology study by calling the field "notoriously uncertain." You need to raise specific criticisms of each study. Not only are most studies replicated and reliable but psychologists have won Nobel prizes (in economics and medicine because the field of psychology didn't exist when the Nobels were established).
If you had read the decision itself, you would know that the existence of excellent segregated black schools doesn't mitigate the damage to self-esteem that is caused by being prohibited from participating in an integrated system of education.
Psychologists are trained to "tease out" the specific amount of impact of any specific factor. It is what analysis of variance does -- it assigns variability to specific factors measured and manipulated in a study. Structural equation modeling and other types of mathematical modeling do the same for correlational studies. If you were better trained in statistics, you would know about these techniques and you would not be making ignorant statements.
Because it is difficult to measure variability, most of the statistics that do so were originated in the field of psychology and spread to other fields, such as biostatistics and economics. ANOVA and t-tests were originated by statisticians working in agriculture, but are mainstays of research in neuroscience, as well as psychology. You cannot dismiss any study you disagree with on the grounds that it will not replicate, unless you examine the literature and determine that the study has not been replicated. Most of psychology has been replicated hundreds of times. It is only some dubious recent results that are being questioned, and those are being addressed within the field, by other psychologists, because that is how science works.
The insufferable 10:23 AM writes:
DeleteSomerby, not having read the transcripts of the hearings, may be unaware that this judge's statement is not based solely on reasoning, which he calls shaky, but also on findings of psychological studies. Those studies showed that black children had lower self-esteem than white children and that at very early ages they had incorporated the knowledge that black was not as desirable as white.
Unless you're in your seventies, it's guaranteed that Somerby was well versed in all aspects of the Court's ruling before you were. If you are in your seventies, it's still likely you didn't become acquainted with the material the Court used for its opinion before Somerby and a lot of us did.
Come to think of it LINK
DeleteI learned about this as homework in a class in law school at UCLA, in the late 1960s. I am 71. Somerby doesn't know who the Clarks are. I am absolutely sure he hasn't read the decision itself. He perhaps learned about the decision an a college education course, but I doubt it since he was part of Teach for America and they didn't believe in training their teachers. He has only read Holt and Kozol, to my knowledge. Those are the only authors he ever mentions, about teaching. He clearly doesn't follow current events in the field of education. He just reads the NY Times and reacts, knee-jerk fashion. If he knew more, it would show up in his articles, and it just isn't there. I'll bet Somerby cannot tell anyone who the top names in black educational psychology today are.
Delete@12:52 the reason we differ is that I am too well-trained in statistic. My published articles in actuarial journals have won awards. My wife has over 100 publications as a bio-statistician.
DeleteYou would be amazed if you knew how many well-respected medical studies have turned out to be non-repeatable. Top people in the field debate whether certain standard statistical methods should not be permitted to be published.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c988/92a5d8f7539e3603bbc30ac324545d623638.pdf
For the layperson, the proof is in the result. In 65 years since de jure integration was banned, blacks have not caught up with whites. Meanwhile, Jews, Mormons, and Asians -- groups that also suffered lack of esteem from discrimination -- have far surpassed other whites. Although it was essential to end de jure racial discrimination, that move in itself has not been the key to black success.
Here's a clue. Black immigrants do better than native blacks. This is especially surprising, since native blacks were raised with English as their first language and totally within American culture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/03/why-do-black-immigrants-do-better-than-native-blacks/6891/
7:40 PM writes:
DeleteI learned about this as homework in a class in law school at UCLA, in the late 1960s. I am 71. Somerby doesn't know who the Clarks are. I am absolutely sure he hasn't read the decision itself.
I'd bet, like cash money, you're wrong about whether Somerby has read the Brown decision itself.
7:40 PM continues,
He perhaps learned about the decision an a college education course, but I doubt it since he was part of Teach for America and they didn't believe in training their teachers.
Huh? Do you know what Teach for America is? Somerby taught from 1969 through 1981:
TFA [Teach for America] was founded by Wendy Kopp based on her 1989 Princeton University undergraduate thesis....the first corps was established in 1990. LINK
You've made this mistake before so I guess it's intentional on your part 7:40 PM. There's zero chance you remember the Clarks' name from a law school class you allegedly took in the late '60s.
A law student from that era might have remembered the Court had relied, in part, on a psychology study to make its ruling. A lot of the rest of us, ever since each of us first learned about the details of the case several decades ago, would have remembered that twist, also, but hardly any of us would have recalled the names Mamie and Kenneth Clark, specifically, without having come across them again for some reason in the last five or ten years.
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"Four kids, attending four different schools, including a 6-year-old! Given the brutal history to which we all remain tied, this was "desegregation," 1963-style. This was "desegregation" then!"
ReplyDeleteSomerby is being deliberately obtuse again. This was the symbolic start of desegregation. It was obviously not what was intended by the court ruling, nor was it the endpoint envisioned by those supporting desegregation.
The courts called for the dismantling of the separate school systems. That meant far more than four kids attending white schools.
Somerby surely knows that, so his tone here is ridiculous. Again, this sort of thing is what makes today's article offensive. It may be that Somerby intends to ridicule today's calls for desegregation, but he doesn't make that very clear and it appears that he is mocking yesterday's important and necessary calls for integrated schooling. That trivializes a lot of struggle and sacrifice that is part of our civil rights legacy.
Liberals care about civil rights. Conservatives do not and want to roll back the clock on that and other social changes. Somerby is asserting conservatives views again today. On his good old liberal blog. If anyone has any doubts about whether Somerby is liberal, this crap should put them to rest.
The courts called for the dismantling of the separate school systems. That meant far more than four kids attending white schools.
DeleteSomerby surely knows that, so his tone here is ridiculous.
Ah, tone again. Do you not understand that this tone is ringing inside your own head?
It may be that Somerby intends to ridicule today's calls for desegregation, but he doesn't make that very clear….
Did you read to the end of the blog entry? TDH says
“The Civil Rights Project at that university [UCLA] has largely defined "segregation" today, at least as the term is used within our own tribe. And uh-oh! That influential institute has defined public school "segregation" is an almost comical way." (Emphasis mine.)
How much clearer do you want him to be?
…and it appears that he is mocking yesterday's important and necessary calls for integrated schooling.
It appears? How about just saying “It’s my opinion”? I don’t think you understand how momentous it was in 1963 for four black children to simply walk into white Alabama public schools.
Somerby has never told his readers that the so-called UCLA study is actually a paper put out by a Civil Rights Institute at UCLA that didn't do the research itself but has compiled a lot of work existing in the field. It is a literature review of civil rights efforts that summarizes findings across lots of researchers.
DeleteSomerby doesn't like elite schools, which is why he refers to an "influential" institute as "comical." But the research itself comes from many schools and studies. You see that immediately when you visit the source Somerby has cited. So Somerby is talking about the work of a large community of scholars.
An author can use a term however he or she wants, as long as the intended meaning is defined for readers. Somerby's insistence that segregation doesn't mean what it used to mean, is the silliest part of this essay. Modern segregation is no longer de jure -- so what? De facto segregation is still a problem, perhaps for different reasons than in the past, but nevertheless a concern for those who care about civil rights.
Somerby is working very hard to cast shade on the efforts of liberals who care about civil rights (in our modern day, not in 1963). Somerby doesn't have the courage to argue against those activities, so he picks this nit instead, hoping that his negative tone (fuck you, deadrat) will adhere to civil rights in general and show support for an alt-Right agenda.
Somerby doesn't have the courage to argue against those activities, so he picks this nit instead, hoping that his negative tone (fuck you, deadrat) will adhere to civil rights in general and show support for an alt-Right agenda.
DeleteAll right, I deserve that for both my dogmatic position on the matter and my often unpleasant writing style.
Let me make one more run at this, and then I’ll try a different tack. TDH doesn’t argue against (modern day) civil rights, but this doesn’t mean he’s for civil rights. It must mean that he doesn’t have the courage to argue for his convictions. So he’s damned either way. He not only has a negative tone, he has hopes that his tone will “adhere” to civil rights “in general.” (I’m not sure what it means for tone to adhere to an abstraction like civil rights. But I’ll guess it means to denigrate the concept in the eyes of his readership.) But it’s not just equal protection under the law, a civl right that’s germane to school integration, it’s also civil rights in general, including those topics TDH hasn’t covered. He’s also showing support for an “alt-Right” agenda. Possibly to make up for the fact that he says he didn’t vote for Trump and he thinks Trump is mentally ill.
Convinced that your inferences make no logical sense?
I didn’t think so. Try this: tone doesn’t matter. TDH will draw conclusions from the evidence he presents. His evidence is either solid or not, and if the former, his conclusions are either valid or not. This will be true regardless of his tone. Can we not simply judge his evidence and the logic of his conclusions?
Is there de jure racial segregation in the US? I’d say not.
Is the word segregation fraught? I’d say so.
Does that mean the word might be misleading? I’d say maybe.
Is de facto segregation still a problem? I’d say so.
Are de jure and de facto segregation different problems? I’d say so.
Might they thereby require different solutions? I’d say maybe.
Does finding better answers require knowing the tone of what TDH posts? I’d say no.
(I think you missed my point about comical. You didn’t think TDH was clear about his attempt to ridicule calls for desegregation. When he’s talking about the CRI’s definition of integration, I think it’s transparent.)
Go to wikipedia and look up classical conditioning. It will describe how pairing two things together can make the emotional associations evoked by one adhere to the other. It is why politicians kiss babies. They hope the warm feelings associated with babies will transfer to the politician so that later seeing that politician will evoke warm feelings. This is a real phenomena.
DeleteSomerby treats the Civil Rights Institute with contempt, so later other people will similarly treat it with contempt too and that will hurt efforts to achieve civil rights.
Trump calls Mexicans rapists and drug dealers and calls them a threat. He hopes that others will similarly treat Mexicans with fear and disdain, so that he can scapegoat them and use them as an enemy to vanquish during his presidency. Talk about hating "Others"!
Somerby mocks and chastises liberals. It doesn't matter what he says about them so much as the ongoing negative words he chooses (which evokes a tone). That negative treatment will cause readers to treat liberals with contempt themselves, lessening the likelihood of voting for liberal candidates.
You aren't helping anything here with your nitpicking of the literal (and superficial) meanings of Somerby's diatribes. It is the word choices and tone that matters, not what Somerby is literally saying (whether you get that right or not). Somerby spews as much hate as an alt-Right website, aimed at liberals, college professors, Civil Rights Institutes, black kids with their infernal gaps, Maddow and other female pundits, women who dare to write books, and so on. He may think he is cleverly disguising his hate speech within a stop-hating-the-other, kumbaya message, but it is the subtext that matters here, not the surface (which appears to be all you can see, deadrat). Try harder to understand what is happening at this website.
7:33
Delete“You aren't helping anything here with your nitpicking of the literal (and superficial) meanings of Somerby's diatribes. It is the word choices and tone that matters, not what Somerby is literally saying (whether you get that right or not).”
Nitpicking?
Jesu Cristo, if you aren’t nitpicking, then I don’t even know what the word means. As far as tone, yours is consistently in the negative. What a drag. I found your link to the Clarks’ work interesting, but you are beyond classic as a troll, since you accuse others of exactly what you do.
Leroy
Anonymous @7:33P,
DeleteYou have badly misunderstood classical conditioning. Classical conditioning requires a strong stimulus (on the order of instinctual) that prompts an unlearned (reflexive) response. The eponymous Pavlov discovered that he could pair a neutral stimulus with the unconditioned strong stimulus, and subsequently the former alone would produce the same response as the latter. Famously, the subjects were dogs, the strong stimulus was food, the response was salivation, and the neutral stimulus was a bell. Pavlov rang the bell when he gave his dogs food. It didn’t take long for the sound of the bell (neutral stimulus) to produce salivation in the absence of food.
There’s simply nothing in the Somerby/CRI scenario that matches. In particular, there’s no neutral stimulus to replace the unconditioned stimulus.
TDH has claimed that the CRI has made a mistake in its definition of segregation, a mistake so bad that he calls it comical. Has the Institute made such a mistake? I think I’ll judge for myself, and I don’t think conditioning is involved. TDH claims that logicians are at fault for not helping with our public discourse. He’s either kidding or deluded. In either case, I don’t think worse of logicians for TDH’s claims.
TDH does chastise liberals for their failures (as he sees them). I agree with him sometimes and disagree other times. It hasn’t changed my voting habits. Do you think the rest of the few readers of this blog are somehow weaker minded than I?
It is the word choices and tone that matters, not what Somerby is literally saying
That just sad to hear. What’s important are TDH’s claims, his evidence for those claims, and the logic of his conclusions.
Somerby spews as much hate as an alt-Right website
You mean the websites that declare people of color as subhuman, triple parenthesize supposedly Jewish names, and repeat after Trump that the legitimate exercise of Congressional oversight is treason?
Are you kidding me with this?
it is the subtext that matters here, not the surface (which appears to be all you can see, deadrat)
I can see all sorts of “subtext.” But that’s what I read into the text, and I know enough to discount some of that. The surface isn’t all there is. More important than literal words are literal deeds. But all we’ve got here are words.
Try harder to understand what is happening at this website.
What do you think is happening at a website almost nobody reads? It’s a playground for trolls, a village idiot, spam ads, and people like you desperately reading between the lines.
Has the CRI failed to define segregation in an appropriate manner? This isn’t some tiny matter, and I’d like to know the answer. Because if they have, then their proposals are likely to be unsuccessful, no matter how closely they're allied with the angels. If they haven’t, then a blogger nobody reads is wrong. So what?
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deletedeadrat
Delete“I think I’ll judge for myself, and I don’t think conditioning is involved.”
Indeed. But Clark himself went to Harlem schools as a young lad, according to Wikipedia. His mother was able to move him to better schools, an ability most low-income parents don’t have. Nevertheless, he excelled, despite Bob’s assessment of “shaky ground” in the 1955 Brown decision, which I think comes to this:
“…in a way unlikely to ever be undone.”
I do think “conditioning” in the human societal sense is real. “Driving while black” or even walking for that matter, are real phenomena. We can examine why this occurs, and of course the reasons why segregation occurs.
I myself become very alert when in the presence of cops, and I’m a white dude. The reason for that is obvious: They can fuck with me for whatever reason they deem necessary, and they all carry guns. That makes me very nervous. But there seems to be less singling out, and penalties imposed, on white people than on our black brothers and sisters that can’t be ignored. A carryover of Jim Crow, brought to us by the 13th Amendment, which at the time codified prison slavery, which it does to this day.
But dammit if you aren’t fun to read. You make me think and write, if it can be called that. Which is what I think anyone who appears on this board is trying to do. Results vary. I’m not arguing, I just love the sound of my own voice. : )
Leroy
"my dogmatic position on the matter and my often unpleasant writing style"
DeleteDogmatic? Your position is embarrassing and nonsensical. Dogmatic? It's stupid as you have shown time and time again with whoever it is that pointed out to you. Just clarifying. NBD.
By the way, I am deadrat's biggest fan. Don't be fooled by my "criticism." All I want is his attention.
DeleteLeroy,
DeleteCertainly societal conditioning is real. We’re evolutionarily designed to become comfortable with the familiar and to be cautious, if not alarmed, by the unfamiliar. But this is a slow process, and to make the alarmist case that TDH is harming everything decent in sight, @7:33P needs TDH’s baneful effect to work quickly. Thus the suggestion that classical (i.e., Pavlovian) conditioning is taking place. It doesn’t take many rings for a dog to associate the bell with food and start to salivate when the bell rings. But that’s just nonsense for blog entries.
~~~~~
The “shaky ground” upon which Brown v Board supposedly rests is the contention in the decision that separate but equal can never be equal, based on contemporaneous evidence of its harm. Some people believe it would have been better to ground the decision in Justice Harlan’s famous dissent in Plessy v Ferguson: “There is no caste here. Our Constitution in color-blind….”
In other words, better to rely on a Constitutional principle than empirical data.
But people forget the history of Brown. When the case came before the Court in 1953, the Justices were split 4-5, with the majority (including Chief Justice Vinson) in favor of upholding Plessy. Vincent died in September 1953, and the Court asked for a re-argument for the following year. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to replace Vinson, and that tipped the balance to 5-4.
Warren convinced his colleagues that they had to speak with a single voice, and set out to write an opinion that would get nine votes. But the Justices couldn’t agree that the history of the 14th Amendment provided grounds to overturn Plessy, which meant there weren’t nine votes to adopt Harlan’s Constitutional view.
In a neat bit of gaslighting in 1896, the state of Louisiana had argued in Plessy that the feeling of inferiority in the face of state-mandated segregation was all in the minds of Negroes. But the Court in 1954 had evidence that this was no longer true (if it had ever been), and it was the easier path to a unanimous decision to overturn Plessy.
deadrat, thanks for clarifying your point re: conditioning. I agree that associating Pavlov’s experiments to human social dynamics is an over-simplification.
DeleteAnd thanks for the history lesson. There was a lot condensed in your post. I was compelled to look up the Plessy and Brown cases to put them into their historical context. I’m digging into them now (been away for the last few days), but what I’ve uncovered so far makes for very interesting reading.
As to whether Bob is right about segregation nowadays, I have some catching up to do on his reasoning.
Leroy
Somerby tiptoes very close to the edge of some white supremacist tropes today. First, he thinks that de facto segregation isn't really segregation in the de jure sense. He is right about the cause, but wrong about the result -- any segregation, regardless of cause, is not good for our society or our children. That is the liberal stance (the "associate professor" stance) that Somerby contests.
ReplyDeleteSecond, our country is multicultural. That arises from our long history of welcoming immigration and also from the FACT that diverse people were already living in the US when the first settlers arrived from Europe, including the many Hispanics already occupying the southwestern US (which was part of Spain/Mexico at the time). Our nation is becoming more diverse, not less, so today's and tomorrow's children will need to know how to function in a multicultural society, how to get along with a variety of people.
Third, our country is never going back to any hypothetical situation in which only white people of Northern European heritage live here. That isn't going to happen, no matter how many alt-Right marches are held or workplaces are shot up by disgruntled white gun owners. Militias will not replace anyone.
Fourth, kids will do better if they learn from early ages how to respect and interact with people of different backgrounds. They will feel better if they can value their own subculture while respecting others and feeling part of an encompassing American identity. Schools provide that, as they have from the creation of our country. It is one mandate of public education. Permitting white families to remove their kids and homeschool or send them to private schools works against this by re-segregating schools and teaching children that they should not mix with other kids who are different from them. If that only results in unease outside one's own ethnicity, kids have been done a disservice.
That is why segregation, regardless of cause, is bad for kids today. Somerby should understand this. He apparently does not. I am very glad he is no longer coming into contact with any kids.
Daily Kos says: "Lee [Washington Post] reports that every single Democratic candidate except one has begun doing in-person, big-dollar fundraiser appearances. That lone holdout is Sen. Elizabeth Warren."
ReplyDeleteBernie held a big-donor fundraiser in CA last week.
In need of cash, Democratic presidential hopefuls turn to wealthy donors Washington Post
DeleteJune 2, 2019
By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
...Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who famously built his campaign around small donations in 2016, on Saturday held his first fundraiser of the primary this weekend in San Francisco. However, he has priced the lowest-tiered ticket at $27 — the average donation to his campaign in 2016....
**********************
Huh?
The next President, Andrew Yang, is not doing them either.
DeleteYou quoted the price of the cheap seats, CMike. How much did the big donors pay? That is more relevant, since the Washington Post describes this as a high donor event. You don't fool anyone with this shit.
DeleteHow much did the big donors pay?
DeleteWho knows? 10:59 AM criticized Sanders with an out of context quote from a Kos post LINK which relied on a WaPo article. I pasted the only passage in the WaPo article about Sanders. The one certain conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that 10:59 AM is a person of low integrity.
10:59, since you seem so keen on ignoring everything written on this blog, and chime in on things that haven't been even addressed, what constitutes a "big donor?"
ReplyDeleteGoddam the Democrats. Every one of them is riding on Sander's coattails.
Leroy
Sanders pulled the Democratic Party to the left in 2016, but there are now better, further left options for Democrats to vote for in 2020.
DeleteHe should run as a Republican this time. If he can pull their voters even a little bit to the left, he'd perform a great service to this nation.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSanders caucuses with the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, he is their national outreach chair. Hands down, he's the best politician there is to lead the Democratic Party in a positive direction over the next nine years. Clinton dead-enders like 11:53 PM are the types who should be encouraged to join the Republican Party. So aligned, we would hope they would pull the GOP onto the same center-right electoral shoals they shipwrecked the Democratic Party on in 2016.
Deletei'd vote for Warren over Right-wing Bernie Sanders any day.
DeleteIf I can be called a "Clinton dead-ender", Sanders can surely be called a "Right-winger".
Sure, you can call Sanders a "Right-winger" or a "Cambodian" or a "nuclear physicist"- you're anonymous, why wouldn't you want to sound like a goofball?
DeleteCMike,
DeleteOr I could call him "hands down, the best politician there is to lead the Democratic Party in a positive direction over the next nine years", and sound like an even bigger goofball.
I'll stick with Warren or Harris, because they are further to the left and better candidates to lead the nation.
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