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

Mari Matsuda

New York Times columnist John Tierney chided candidate John Edwards for lamenting the little girl without a coat, who prays for warm weather. The anecdote misleads, he suggests, since coats "typically sell for about $5 in thrift shops." Funny, I have seen that coatless child. A DC public school teacher whispered a request to me: "Find a coat for her."

This is what urban teachers see: children who wolf down their free breakfast because it's their first meal since they left school yesterday; children with sores on their bodies, untreated because there is no health insurance; children with fevers sent to school because there is no backup childcare; and, yes, shivering children on winter days, coatless for any number of poverty's reasons--including the fact that the consignment stores with the $5 winter coats have relocated to the neighborhoods where the New York Times writers live. Can I get a witness?

No, because the urban intelligentsia have abandoned the public school system. A friend writes recently about his peer group's choices:

"Very few of us sent our kids to our neighborhood public elementary schools, especially if those schools have high percentages of poorer kids, immigrants and limited-English kids. Here's what most of our friends did: 1. sent their kids to private schools; 2. moved to a district that has good public schools; 3. using superior knowledge and connections, sent their kids to better alternative public schools and magnet schools.... The folks I'm talking about are public interest lawyers, NLG members, partners in minority law firms, founders and board and staff of community and public interest organizations, etc., and me."

This e-mail could have come from many of my closest friends, or, I suspect, from a large number of Nation readers. Brown v. Board of Education ended the formal segregation we were born into. We learned politics in the movement to make Brown's promise our lived reality. We marched for civil rights, linked arms to stop eviction, sang "We Shall Not Be Moved" with tear-stained conviction and then walked quietly away from public schools. In the beginning it was called white flight, but the friend who writes to me is not white, and neither are the peers he is talking about. In my DC neighborhood, black parents as well as white choose against the local school.

Here is what you don't see if you are not inside that school: heroic teachers and real learning occurring alongside unconscionable neglect of human needs. Because I see many strengths still intact, my children remain in neighborhood schools. I deploy privilege from my back pocket to help make those schools work and, I confess, to retain the exit option if it comes to that. A plea to my peers: Before you pull out, make sure it is as bad as you are imagining it is, and do the impossible. Cleanse your imagination of racism.

Without witnesses, without the influence and entitlement that educated parents bring, it is hard to muster the political will to provide the simple things we need to fix our public schools: well-maintained buildings; a textbook for every child; well-trained and well-paid teachers; small classes; wrap-around social services;rich curriculum that includes the art, music and sports that we cut long ago; early intervention for the at-risk; and enrichment programs to retain the privileged and their much-needed social capital. It is no mystery. The privatizers have hoodwinked us into believing that public education, like poverty, is hopeless.

We, the richest, most powerful nation on the planet, could solve our social problems in a heartbeat. I don't have to tell Nation readers where the money went instead of to the schools, but I do want to tell you this: Enter your neighborhood school, if not as a parent, then as a tutor. Witness both the good and the abomination. If you see it, your outrage will remind you of what you know how to do. Make power concede to struggle for our children. All of our children.

---

Mari Matsuda is writing a book, with Charles Lawrence, on the abandonment of public education.

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