A Conversation on the Constitution: Brown v. Board of Education
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2018
- www.annenbergclassroom.org - Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy discuss with high school students the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education that ended racial segregation in schools. They explore the background of the case, the role of Thurgood Marshall, how Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and the events following the unanimous ruling that said that “separate education facilities are inherently unequal.”
As an educator, I would love to have a classroom full of children intelligent enough to discuss this subject. It is always a pleasure to see members of the Supreme Court discuss landmark cases with the public, and most especially our youth.
Never seen members of the Supreme Court ask and answer questions like this, but they also admit what others have said: that is it very questionable that Plessy vs Ferguson was wrong. Brown vs Board was decided almost entirely on sociological considerations and faced massive opposition.
It was one of the few cases decided squarely on how society was transformed during “separate but equal” era of segregation and the fact it truly wasn’t equal. When you separate the races, you indeed do ensure one race is inferior to the other. Look at the quality of education they received and how that ensured one race was failed by the education system and how one was set up for success. That’s one reason for affirmative action, to catch them up.
@@nickcalmes8987 After spending billions and billions during 50+ years of "affirmative action", are they caught up yet? Are they anywhere close? Of course not. Was it ever even the goal to "catch them up"? The goal, it seems to me, was to gain their vote. If the goal was equality of outcome, it certainly hasn't worked.
"When you separate the races, you indeed do ensure one race is inferior to the other."
The same is true when you put the races in close proximity to one another. There are simply too many other factors that enter into the picture. My bet is that in fifty more years, equality of results will still be non-existent.
Brown was correctly decided. "Separate but equal" cannot work as the quality of an educational facility cannot be determined objectively. There are too many personal preferences and individual factors (one is how students can get to school. For example, if a black child had a white neighbour, one of them would have an inherent unfair disadvantage by having to go to the school that is further away) at play. So by that reason alone did separate educational facilites violate the Equal Protection Clause.
But, in my opinion, just the fact that people are barred from entering a public school violates the Equal Protection Clause, regardless of there being an equal alternative. The fact that you are excluded from a school on the basis of race is by itself clearly unconstitutional. That exclusion has to be analyzed independently from existing alternatives.
Then you also have the fact that these laws were clearly intended to discriminate against African-Americans.. The decision was unanimous for a reason
@@david7996 "The decision was unanimous for a reason"
How it reached the point of unanimity is another story within the big story. It started out 7-2 in favor of Brown. After quite a bit of pressuring, deal-making, and what one might call unscrupulous behavior, it became 9-0. The big reason was that the chief justice (Warren) did not want a lengthy dissenting opinion that would give over half the country hope of having it overturned. Another tidbit is that every justice - all of them - was a New Deal appointee, i. e. liberal, mostly due to Roosevelt's four terms in office. By Earl Warren's own admission, "It had to be 9-0." I always thought Hugo Black was one of the hold-outs, but he wasn't.
"But, in my opinion, just the fact that people are barred from entering a public school violates the Equal Protection Clause, regardless of there being an equal alternative."
Do you live in an area, such as Memphis or the Mississippi Delta, where the negro population in some districts approaches 100%? There are many areas in which it is 75-90%. I do not, but I attended college with lots of people who did. Every one of them went to the so-called "segregation academies", except one.
"The fact that you are excluded from a school on the basis of race is by itself clearly unconstitutional."
It, like abortion, is a matter left up to the states with their varying racial demographics and problems. Isn't that what Plessy did? It did not require New York or Massachusetts to segregate anything (they did it in different ways). What Brown often did was force people who paid the most tax to support the public school system to turn around and pay private school tuition because they couldn't or wouldn't send their own kids to the very public schools they largely supported. We always found it hilarious that the Kennedys one-by-one sent their children to private schools, while lauding the moral high ground of integration when it came to less-privileged people. Even Biden said something about it turning some schools into "jungles."
I don't like the Socratic Method, but it's done well here. Thanks for the video.
I like it for college students, but I don't think it works as well with the younger students.
It works well in the law school setting when done correctly. It helps spell out the correct reasoning, spell out flaws in reasoning if any exist, and lay forth boundaries.
Why not
I loved it for the high school kids. They try their best to explain it but it teaches them they have skills to develop. They have so much to learn. It is exactly what they need. I suspect it was an important spark for most of these kids that attended. Something they can look back to. It's great life experience they will build themselves from. They will be better for it. Amazing!
@@michaeldavis9886 It can be, at times, overwhelming and intrusive.