Thanks to the civil rights revolution, de jure segregation is dead. But vast social, economic and educational inequalities continue to plague American society. Moreover, while the black-white paradigm has never fully described American race relations, we are far more aware today than in the past of the multiracial nature of our society. With this in mind, we asked a range of scholars, writers and activists to reflect on the legacy of Brown and the prospects for future change. Should education be the primary focus of social activism? What strategies will most effectively promote educational betterment in black and other communities? Can we expect the courts to play a role at the forefront of change, as they did for much of the 1950s and '60s, and if not, what other institutions are positioned to adopt that role? Is the goal of educational desegregation irrelevant today? Their responses follow.    --The Editors

Pedro Noguera and Robert Cohen

Although the US Supreme Court called for school integration to proceed with "all deliberate speed" in the wake of its Brown decision a half-century ago, progress toward integration has been depressingly slow.

By the tenth anniversary of Brown only 1.17 percent of black schoolchildren in the eleven former Confederate states were attending integrated schools. With pressure from the civil rights movement, the federal government took on a more assertive role in promoting school busing, so that by the time of the twentieth anniversary, in 1974, real progress had been made and 46.3 percent of black students were attending integrated (white majority) schools. However, in the past twenty years this progress has come to a halt. White flight from the cities and several setbacks in the courts have together undermined the goals of Brown. Sadly, on Brown's fiftieth anniversary the only deliberate speed we see is toward resegregation; today less than a third of African-American students attend racially integrated schools.

The de facto segregation of so many of our nation's schools is no longer an issue that generates conflict and controversy. Like the growing prison population and homelessness, racial segregation is accepted as a permanent feature of life in America. Across the country, schools are segregated in terms of race and class, and as was true before Brown, the vast majority of poor children are relegated to an inferior education.

For this reason, those who still regard the goals of Brown as important find themselves in a quandary. Given that white flight and legal barriers have made integration nearly impossible to achieve, the only way to revive the legacy of Brown may be to push for equity in the conditions under which children learn. Thus, efforts to pursue equalization in funding such as New York's Campaign for Fiscal Equity may be the only means available to insure that poor children are not permanently relegated to woefully inadequate schools. In effect, this means taking several steps back, to reclaim the unfulfilled promise of Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but equal. As problematic as this may be, it is the only course of action available to pursue justice in educational policy in areas where racial integration is no longer likely.

Outside of urban areas, there are still a number of school districts that have defied the trend toward resegregation and that remain relatively integrated. Most of these are located in inner-ring suburban communities, and many are in university towns. In some cases they are liberal communities that have viewed support of school integration as a matter of principle: proof of a commitment to tolerance, openness and racial justice.

Yet despite their support for "diversity," in almost all these communities the goals of Brown remain unfulfilled. In such communities minority students are more likely to be tracked into remedial courses or special education, to be suspended or expelled, or to be excluded from honors and gifted classrooms. Enrollment numbers give the impression that schools are integrated, but closer scrutiny reveals they are segregated within.

Education remains the best hope for the poor and the powerless, and one of the few means of reducing the profound disparities in wealth and opportunity that characterize American society. But we have a long way to go to fulfill the promise of Brown. The fiftieth anniversary of the decision should cause us to reflect on where we stand as a nation in our effort to undo the legacy of slavery, racial discrimination and injustice. It should also move us out of the complacency that has allowed the gains of the civil rights movement to be reversed.

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Pedro Noguera is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University. His most recent book is City Schools and the American Dream (Teachers College). Robert Cohen is associate professor at the Steinhardt School. His most recent books are The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s (University of California), co-edited with Reginald E. Zelnik, and Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters From Children of the Great Depression (University of North Carolina).

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