Talking Points on Lawrence

"One More River to Cross"-Recognizing the Real Injury in Brown: A Prerequisit to Shaping New Remedies by Charles Lawrence

This Article is About:

• How Brown only succeeeded in injuring the view of minority individuals further
• How constitutional violations are more the focus of Brown
• How desegregation is not the only step we need to take
• How schools do not properly prepare minority students for a life after high school

Author's Arguement:
Charles Lawrence argues that the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education was more of a hindrance than a help to the minority students in America. It has placed them in an entirely different category than they had originally been in.

Evidence:

1. "In short, segregation American-style, like South African apartheid, has only one purpose: to creat and maintain a permanant lower class or subcaste defined as race." (pg. 282) Basically, although racism existed because of segregation, racism existed after, it was just seen differently.
2. "...Burger only found constitutional violations within the city of Detroit and, therefore, limited the remedy to that geographic location." (pg. 286) Instead of fixing various problems nationwide... the problems are only fixed in the specific areas in which they are discovered. This needs to change.
3. "Following the rule that the remedy must match the injury, judges have ordered that schools be desegregated if there has been evidence of school segregation, that Blacks be given access to housing if there has been proof of discriminatory real estate practices, that Blacks be given jobs if there is sufficient evidence of discriminatory employment practices, and that states that have engaged in practices denying Blacks the vote cease and deisst from engaging in those practices." (pg. 287) Rules are put out... but not necessarily enforced.

Comments:

This article was so boring, so this comment section will probably be the shortest ever.... I skimmed the article looking for important quotes and points... and I still don't feel like I learned much. It was repetative... I got the idea that desegregation was bad in the sense that it created a whole new class of minority... but I got that idea in the first page... so the rest of the article killed me..... so yeah... I thought this was really boring.... but I can connect this to Delpit because the Caucasian people in power over this case were oblivious to the facts.... they were using thier power to "help" but did not foresee the consequences.....