Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform.

• Author: Onwuachi-Willig, Angela
• Position: Brief Article - Book Review

SILENT COVENANTS: BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION AND THE UNFULFILLED HOPES FOR RACIAL REFORM. By Derrick Bell. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp. x, 201. Cloth, $25; paper, $14.95.

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of himselfe out of the Continent, a part of the maine....

--John Donne

Fifty years after the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education, (1) black comedian and philanthropist Dr. Bill Cosby astonished guests at a gala in Washington, D.C., when he stated, "'Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. [Black people] have got to take the neighborhood back.... [Lower economic Blacks] are standing on the corner and they can't speak English.'" (2) Cosby, one of the wealthiest men in the United States, complained about "lower economic" Blacks (3) "not holding up their end in this deal." (4) He then asked the question, "'Well, Brown versus Board of Education: Where are we today? [Civil rights lawyers and activists] paved the way, but what did we do with it?'" (5) Cosby's comments drew both criticism and praise from the black community, (6) stirring a raging debate about black elitism and the unfulfilled promise of Brown and forcing a release of the frustration that many minorities feel about its failed promise. (7)

In his new book Silent Covenants, Professor Derrick Bell (8) expounds upon this very disappointment, questioning "whether another approach than the one embraced by the Brown decision might have been more effective and less disruptive in the always-contentious racial arena" (p. 6). In so doing, Bell joins black conservatives in critiquing what he describes as civil rights lawyers' misguided focus on achieving racial balance in schools. (9) The focus, Bell contends, should have been on enforcing the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, (10) in which the Supreme Court held that state-mandated racial segregation in railroad passenger cars did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so long as the separate facilities were equal. (11)

Had Bell been on the Court in 1954, he would not have voted to overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy. (12) According to Bell, had the focus been on ensuring the equality of schools between minorities and Whites instead of maintaining racial balance as a means of obtaining quality education for minority children, the overall quality of public schools, regardless of their racial make-up, would be better. Additionally, Bell maintains that integration eventually would have occurred; only then it would have been the decision of Whites and white policymakers, who after recognizing the enormous expense of maintaining two separate, but truly equal school systems, would have chosen to integrate to protect their own economic interests (p. 106).

The basis of Bell's conclusion is manifold. First, as Bell explains, Brown proved to be destructive for minorities because many Whites viewed the decision as dismantling all racially constructed barriers to success, a belief that ultimately created a space in which to blame minorities for any lack of progress instead of linking such failures to institutionalized racism. (13) Additionally, Bell asserts, Brown was a failure because it neglected the social realities of race relations in the United States, in particular, the lengths to which many Whites would go to resist enforcement of the decision (pp. 95-101). Primarily, however, Bell's determinations are based on his interest-convergence theory, which can be stated in two rules: (1) policymakers accommodate the rights and interests of Blacks and other minorities only when those interests converge with the interests of Whites in policymaking decisions; and (2) even when policymakers do acknowledge the interests and rights of Blacks and other minorities, they are always willing to sacrifice those rights when they perceive their enforcement as significantly diminishing Whites' sense of entitlement and superior societal status. (14) Furthermore, Bell explains, even though many of the policies that harm racial minorities also hurt poor and working-class Whites, such Whites will often support these racial-sacrifice covenants and subordinate their own economic interests to maintain feelings of racial superiority. (15)

As expected, Bell's book is provocative and intelligent, providing a historical analysis of events that support his interest-convergence theory. It exposes how deeply entrenched racial hierarchy is in our society and how much the perpetuation of racism rests on a continued division between minorities and poor Whites (pp. 77-86). The book is a stimulating and eye-opening critique of a decision that has been championed by people of all races and ethnicities. I highly recommend the book, even if only to serve as a catalyst for engaging in discussions about the plight of minority children in public schools or, more so, the state of race relations in the United States.

At the same time that I strongly agree with Bell's interest-convergence theory, his thorough explanation of historical instances in which policymakers have sacrificed the rights of minorities in the United States, and many of his arguments concerning white resistance to integration, I disagree with Bell's conclusion that court enforcement of the "separate but equal" doctrine would have proved more effective than the strategy that civil rights lawyers employed in arriving at Brown. Unlike Bell, I am far more pessimistic about whether it even would have been possible within our society, which is dominated by a belief in white superiority, (16) to have achieved "better" results in public schools.

Indeed, Bell's own interest-convergence theory left me wondering how his proposed alternative decision to Brown would have avoided the inevitable sacrifice of minority rights that occurs whenever minority interests diverge from those of Whites and white policymakers. Moreover, Bell's interest-convergence theory raised several significant questions that Bell does not address adequately in his book: First, how could segregation, if not truly by choice, ever produce true equality? In other words, even if the Brown Court had enforced the "separate but equal" standard in Plessy with the requirements and limits proposed in Bell's alternative opinion, how could we have truly expected equality in schools when the very separation of those schools was still premised on white supremacy, or rather, an accommodation of the desire of many Whites to remain segregated from "inferior" minorities? Furthermore, if Bell were to apply his own theory to the enforcement for equality in schools, how would Bell explain white policymakers' interests in even trying to make the schools equal, an act that had been avoided for more than fifty years prior to Brown? In other words, why would white and minority interests suddenly converge at this point and for this goal? Or more importantly, why would the Court have been any more capable of enforcing this doctrine than it was at enforcing integration? Furthermore, if white policymakers never reached a point of attempting to make schools equal, how then would they come to realize that integration was really in their best economic interests? And more so, even if Whites and white policymakers eventually chose to integrate to protect their own economic interests, what would have prevented them from developing two "separate but unequal" systems within any particular school, a system that presently exists in many integrated schools--with Blacks and Latinos tracked into lower courses and Whites tracked into advanced placement and honors courses? Finally, what would the course of the Civil Rights Movement have been without Brown? Bell argues that other forces, such as the Cold War, would have worked to create an environment in which the anti-discrimination legislation of the 1960s would have been enacted. But would desegregation in other areas such as in busing, beaches, and other public accommodations have truly occurred without Brown?

This Book Review probes all of these questions concerning the quest for racial equality in education and, in so doing, argues that Bell's approach to achieving racial equality (as outlined in Silent Covenants) would likely have landed minorities in exactly the same position as they are in today. Part I of the Review provides an overview of the current status of integration in public schools. Part II recounts important segments of Bell's book, detailing his analysis of how the failed promise of Brown fits within a long history of policymakers either disregarding or sacrificing minority rights (except when those rights coincide with the interests of Whites). Part III demonstrates how Bell's own interest-convergence theory does not support his criticism of Brown and his endorsement of the "separate but equal" strategy that he claims ultimately would have served minorities the best. Finally, this Book Review concludes with a brief analysis of the moral and practical benefits of the victory in Brown and a discussion about the potential for coalition building between minorities and poor Whites.

1. AND WE ARE NOT SAVED (17)

   The Brown decision is one of the most celebrated cases in the history of the United States, having gained widespread acceptance among the general public today and a status of almost mythological proportions in the legal community. (18) At the time Brown was handed down in 1954, many Blacks viewed the decision as a magical solution to the problem of racism and race discrimination. (19) As Bell explains in his book, civil rights lawyers and activists held so much faith in the promise of Brown that Judge William Hastie, the first black man to be appointed as an Article III judge, (20) advised a young Bell, who in 1957 expressed his desire to become a civil rights lawyer, "Son ... I am afraid that you were...