American Civil Liberties Union

As described in Ben Smith’s Politico article “So much for that ‘conversation’ on race,” the events leading to the firing of Shirley Sherrod, former Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), illustrates the continuing difficulty of engaging in meaningful and productive considerations of race in 21st-century America. The missteps that surround this incident illustrate the problems in the way that race is used in the public discourse. As illustrated in the past few weeks, broad-stroke and superficial accusations only sidestep the real issue of how race and ethnicity still operate to limit full opportunity for many Americans.

(Also published on Daily Kos.)

Widely regarded as the last opportunity to enjoy summer with a three-day weekend of cookouts and trips to the beach, Labor Day, the United States Department of Labor’s website informs us, was originally intended as “a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of the country”. Ironically, this year’s tribute comes in the form of the announcement that the national unemployment rate has reached 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. The increasing unemployment rate is one of the most disturbing results of the economic recession which became the subject of newspaper articles a little more than a year ago.

Each landmark anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education invites us to answer two questions. The first involves a retrospective focus on Brown in the context of the decisions that came before it and the social changes that it engendered. This question seeks to find out how important Brown really was. The second question requires taking stock of where we are now and how far we have come since 1954 in our pursuit of racial justice. This week marked the 55th anniversary of the first Brown decision. Coming as it does in a year that witnessed the inauguration of the first African-American president, those questions seem even more important. At the same time, the answers become more complicated and nuanced.

Brown was decided at a time when most American schools were segregated as a result of explicit legal requirements, or by a series of policies and practices — including rampant housing segregation — that imposed a virtual system of apartheid upon American society. Segregation in education was just one manifestation of that system. Restrictions based on race, color and ethnicity created barriers to housing, patronizing restaurants and other public accommodations, voting and even marriage. By confronting and rejecting the dishonesty and hypocrisy in the doctrine of "separate but equal" in the area of public education, the decision became a keystone in the civil rights movement of the succeeding decades, which saw court decisions and legislation aimed at addressing discrimination in its many forms. Brown was instrumental in initiating many of the civil rights advances that occurred in its wake. It is also true that but for it and measures like the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and the scores of cases interpreting the 14th Amendment, the conditions that lead to the election of an African-American president could not have occurred.

But what, exactly, does Barack Obama's election say about how much we've progressed since Brown? Having an African-American in the nation's highest office suggests we have travelled an enormous distance. A careful look at the state of race in the United States, however, suggests we still have a long way to go to achieve the level of equality envisioned by Brown. Sadly, many of the concerns raised during previous Brown anniversaries — about injustices like racial profiling and the absence of equal access to quality education, employment and housing — are still too much with us.