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Brown Policy and the Moral Pillars of Democracy: Exploring Justice as theOrganizing Principle of Educational StudiesSherick Hughesa; Dale T. Snauwaertb

a University of Maryland, b The University of Toledo,

Online publication date: 24 November 2010

To cite this Article Hughes, Sherick and Snauwaert, Dale T.(2010) 'Brown Policy and the Moral Pillars of Democracy:Exploring Justice as the Organizing Principle of Educational Studies', Educational Studies, 46: 6, 545 — 559To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2010.524133URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2010.524133

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EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 46: 545–559, 2010Copyright C© American Educational Studies AssociationISSN: 0013-1946 print / 1532-6993 onlineDOI: 10.1080/00131946.2010.524133

ARTICLES

Brown Policy and the Moral Pillarsof Democracy: Exploring Justice

as the Organizing Principleof Educational Studies

Sherick Hughes

University of Maryland

Dale T. Snauwaert

The University of Toledo

The purpose of this article is to revisit Brown as a paradigmatic understanding ofsocial justice and its barriers, by reconsidering Brown in light of the three moralpillars of democracy identified by Cornel West (2004). West maintains that authenticdeep democracy is grounded in three fundamental capacities and dispositions, orpillars: (a) Socratic questioning, (b) a prophetic commitment to justice, and (c)tragicomic hope. West’s articulation of these pillars constitutes 20 a philosophicalframework for the exploration of the basic demands of justice in a democratic society.These moral pillars can also offer useful insights into this phase of living explorationof Brown and its central place in educational studies.

Correspondence should be addressed to Sherick Hughes, University of Maryland, Department ofCurriculum and Instruction, College of Education, 2229 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD 20742-1115. E-mail: shughes1@umd.edu and Dale T. Snauwaert, The University of Toledo, Mail Stop 914,Toledo, OH 43606. E-mail: dale.snauwaert@utoledo.edu

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One of the defining features of educational studies is the centrality of the concernfor social justice. This concern manifests in at least two senses: Education as ameans of social justice and social justice within educational systems and practices.It can be argued that justice is the core organizing principle of social institutions,including educational institutions, for all educational systems, policies, and prac-tices seek to achieve some social purpose and that purpose must conform to theimperatives of justice.

The purpose of this article is to revisit Brown as a paradigmatic understandingof social justice and its barriers, by reconsidering Brown in light of the threemoral pillars of democracy identified by Cornel West (2004). West maintainsthat authentic deep democracy is grounded in three fundamental capacities anddispositions, or pillars: (a) Socratic questioning, (b) a prophetic commitment tojustice, and (c) tragicomic hope. West’s articulation of these pillars constitutes aphilosophical framework for the exploration of the basic demands of justice in ademocractic society. These moral pillars can also offer useful insights into thisphase of living exploration of Brown and its central place in educational studies.

One must revisit Brown anew, as an educative social event with key figures andconcepts from which educators teach and learn about the certainties and agony ofengaging the educational moral pillars of American democracy. It is in this mannerthat teachers begin to position Brown within a larger democratic context throughtheir educational studies curriculum, one that addresses mono-ethnic triumphs,interethnic shortfalls, and any of Brown’s short-lived thrills that were evidence ofpyrrhic victories. From the purview of democracy’s moral pillars, one finds one’sexploration of Brown bringing one to a paradigmatic understanding of distributivejustice through reflexive inquiry, prophetic pragmatism (West 2004; also see Oakes& Lipton 2003), and educational hope (West 2004; Hughes 2006).

BROWN, EQUALITY, AND JUSTICE

A commitment to justice is the core moral pillar of democracy. Democracy isa political form of organization, however, it has a much larger scope. Broadlyconceived, democracy pertains to a way of life that includes a moral core. Itconstitutes an ethic. As both a form of political organization and as an ethic, justiceis central to democracy, as it is to any sustainable moral and political community(Dahl 2000; Dewey 1916). Justice is inherent in the very logic of human socialinstitutions. As the political philosopher John Rawls (1971) suggests:

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. Atheory, however elegant and economical, must be rejected or revised if it is untrue;likewise, laws and institutions, no matter how efficient and well-arranged, must bereformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolabilityfounded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override (3).

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Justice pertains to what one is due and how best to live (Aristotle 1988; Sandel2009). In modern nation-states generally, and in liberal and social democraciesin particular, justice is equality-based. An equality-based conception of justiceentails the fundamental premise that all human beings possess an equal inherentdignity or worth. The ideal of equal inherent human dignity is reflected in the valueof moral equality, which is common to all modern political and ethical theories(Kymlicka 1990; Sandel 2009).

Although there exists a variety of modern theories of justice, which involve pro-found disagreements about the nature, implications, and philosophical foundationsof justice, they are all equality-based. Utilitarianism (Singer 1993), Libertarianism(Nozick 1974), Liberal Egalitarianism (Rawls 1971), Feminism (Noddings 1984),Communitarianism (Sandel 2009), Natural Law Theory (Finnis 1980), etc., arefounded upon the basic premise of moral equality. They all differ, however, onwhat justifies, follows from (Finnis 1980), and is required by the value of equality(Kymlicka 1990; Sandel 2009). Their differences are not, however, the subject ofthis article; the main point here is that modern theories of justice, and in turn the so-cial and political institutions of liberal and social democracies, are equality-basedin principle (Bobbitt 2003).

Thus, in liberal and social democracies equality-based justice should be instan-tiated in institutions as their core organizing principle; this instantiation is basedupon the broadening of moral equality into political and legal equality. Politicalequality entails two principles (a) the principle of equal consideration of goods andinterests of every person in the process of decision making and (b) the principleof equal participation—consideration of all adult members as equally qualified toparticipate in the political process and in all appropriate institutions (Dahl 2000).Political equality, in turn, is protected by legal equality. Equal Protection Underthe Law, as codified in the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendmentto the US Constitution (“no state shall . . . deny to a person within its jurisdictionthe equal protection of the laws”), is necessary for the actualization of politicaland moral equality.

The principle of equal protection has been generally understood to require neu-trality toward the racial and other ascriptive characteristics of citizens—the theoryof color-blind constitutionalism. Neutrality has been central to the interpretationof the meaning of equal protection in the postbellum era (Moreno 1995). This in-terpretation of legislative history delegitimizes attempts to justify race consciouseducational policies (Anderson 2007). The argument here is that race consciouspolicies are inconsistent with the constitutional order.

However, as the educational historian James Anderson (2007) demonstrates,the understanding that the equal-protection clause was intended to be race-neutralis historically inaccurate. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment were, in fact,race-conscious, not neutral, and their race-consciousness shaped the language ofthe equal protection clause in such a way that it that allowed for the subsequentemergence on the state level of exclusionary racial government policy. From this

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perspective, the equal protection clause was pregnant with a legal justification forracial segregation.

In three fundamental legislative actions, the Naturalization Act of 1870, theCivil Rights Act of 1875, and the formulation of the Fourteenth Amendment, theReconstruction Congress applied a race conscious theory of constitutionalism.Their intent was to utilize race classifications to both exclude and include certainracial groups (individuals of African, Chinese, and Native American descent)from citizenship, and the rights of citizenship under the constitution, as well asto give the States freedom to apply exclusionary racial classifications in State law(Anderson 2007).

By including the operative language of “no distinctions of race and color” in thearticulation of the equal protection clause a small cadre of liberal Republicans didpursue a neutral, color-blind formulation of the Fourteenth Amendment (e.g., “sothat there shall be no denial of rights on account of color or race; but justice shallbe impartial and all shall be equal before the law;” “hereafter all citizens withoutdistinction of race, color, or condition, shall be protected in the full and equalenjoyment and exercise of all their civil and political rights . . .” “there shall be nodenial of rights, civil or political, on account of color or race; but all persons shallbe equal before the law; Anderson 2007, 254). As Anderson (2007) concludes,“All of the aforementioned proposed amendments, however, were debated, clearlyunderstood, and rejected by the Reconstruction Congress, underscoring its decisiveand self-conscious defeat of color-blind constitutionalism (254).”

Rejecting the language of racial neutrality, the moderate-conservative Repub-lican majority inserted “equal protection under the law” as the operative conceptof the equal protection clause. The use of “equal protection” instead of “no dis-tinctions of race and color” avoided any principle that would forbid racial dis-crimination and gave the States the freedom to impose exclusionary, and hencemalignant, racial classifications (Anderson 2007). Jim Crow was built upon thisexclusionary, malignant race-conscious constitutional theory, affirmed in Plessy’s“separate but equal” ruling.

The Brown ruling did not emerge simplistically and logically to overrule Plessyfrom a just consciousness conjured by the popularized Civil Rights protests of the1950s. Bell (1980) contends that the struggle with the Soviets during the Cold Waralso helped to move the Court toward the ruling. During the Cold War, the UnitedStates and its allies were aimed at preventing the growth of communism among lessindustrialized countries. For Bell (1980), this aim was instrumental in compellingthe US government to confront its own credibility issues concerning the civil liber-ties of Black Americans. Valencia (2005) supplements Bell (1980) with additionalinformation about the less popular 1947 California circuit court class action case,Mendez v. Westminster. The Mendez court seems to have also set a precedentfor Brown by ruling the segregated schooling of approximately 5,000 MexicanAmerican students in Orange County as unconstitutional. Mendez and Brown are

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linked inextricably as (a) “Mendez was a federal, Fourteenth Amendment casegrounded in a theoretical argument known as integration theory that stresses theharmful effects of segregation on students,” and (b) the attorneys in Mendez madethat Fourteenth Amendment argument “using social science expert testimony . . . ”and “theoretical arguments that later proved very useful in Brown” Valencia (2005389). Brown’s visibility in the nation’s highest court struck down Plessy and ul-timately overshadowed the exclusion, classifications, and violations questionedpreviously by Mendez and other similar local, state, and federal court battles

Finding that exclusionary racial classifications violated equal protection, theSupreme Court’s Brown decision addressed de jure racial segregation. Such ex-clusion violated citizens’ moral, political, and legal equality, thereby constitutinginjustice. There are thus at least two paradigmatic interpretations of equality andjustice that eminate from the Brown decision and its predecessors: Does equalityrequire color-blind neutrality, or does it require race-consciousness? Does Brownreorient equal protection, and hence equality and justice, toward neutrality, or doesit mandate a conscious recognition of racial and ethnic difference? The latter wouldinvoke an inclusive race-conscious equality and thus legitimate forward-lookingracially conscious government policy.

The question of whether Brown invokes a color-blind or inclusive race-conscious equality reflects the current debate between pluralist and affiliationliberalism (McDonough & Feinberg 2005). The United States is a liberal republicfounded upon the political philosophy of liberalism. Liberalism is based uponthe value of equality and the basic right of negative liberty. The basic tenet ofliberalism is that individual dignity requires freedom from coercive interference.This freedom, in turn, entails a right to freedom of association, which allows forand generates a pluralistic, multicultural civil society. In this reading, neutralityis fundamental to liberalism. Liberal pluralists argue that a right to freedom en-sures the existence of a culturally and racially diverse society, if and only if thegovernment remains neutral. The government should neither promote nor impedediversity; it should allow it to exist on the basis of liberty (Schlesinger 1992).From the perspective of liberal pluralism, Brown provides a needed corrective, areorientation, toward color-blind equality.

Communitarian-oriented liberals have asserted a dialogical and historical un-derstanding of identity as formed in the context of the particular social and politicalrelations that have constituted the society historically (Sandel 2009; Taylor 1994;Walzer 1983). Many liberals have embraced this notion of historical, dialogicalidentity while preserving their commitment to liberty. Based upon the premise thatcultural recognition is a requirement of respect for human dignity (moral equal-ity), there is now a general acceptance of the legitimacy of group rights to culturalrecognition among liberals. This acceptance has resulted in the emergence of affil-iation liberalism. From the perspective of affiliation liberalism, equality requiresconscious recognition of racial and ethnic difference.

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Historically exclusionary race-consciousness is deeply rooted in Americandemocracy (West 1999, 2001). As Cornel West (2004) suggests:

The most painful truth in the making of America—a truth that shatters all pretensionsto innocence and undercuts all efforts of denial—is that the enslavement of Africansand the imperial expansion over indigenous peoples and their lands were undeniablepreconditions for the possibility of American democracy. There could be no suchthing as an experiment in American democracy without these racist and imperialfoundations (45).

Given the profound influence of race and ethnicity in the history of Americansociety in general, and in its constitutional history in particular, coupled with theunderstanding of the dialogical, socially constructed nature of identity, Browncan be interpreted as invoking a paradigm shift toward inclusive race-consciousequality.

Although Brown can be interpreted as offering a corrective reorientation ofequality and justice, there are at least two limitations to Brown that are highly sig-nificant (a) Brown did not directly address the injustice of specific kinds of de factosegregation; and (b) however significant the protection of equal consideration andequal participation is, it did not guarantee fair equality of opportunity. Brown didnot address the larger scope of justice in a democratic society. In fact some questionthe degree to which Brown was a pyrrhic victory for Black Americans, a legal winat too great of a cultural cost (Bell 2004; Hughes 2006; Ladson-Billings 2004).

However, the previously offered interpretation of Brown toward inclusive race-consciousness does offer a foundation for addressing de facto segregation anddistributive unfairness by legitimating the possibility of forward-looking, race-conscious government education policy (such as affirmative action, metropolitan-wide school desegregation, and school finance reform), policy that would beillegitimate from the perspective of color-blind neutrality. The move toward theacceptance of inclusive race-conscious equality requires a transformation of ourpolitics, which can be facilitated by what West (2004) refers to as Socratic ques-tioning. West’s (2004) Socratic questioning supports the notion of centering Brownto study justice in a way that is not intended to glamorize Brown as just, but toreframe it as a point of inquiry toward possibilities beyond a return to segregatedschooling.

BROWN AND SOCRATIC QUESTIONING OF DISCURSIVEINNOVATION: RIGHT VERSUS CENTER VERSUS LEFT

AND EXCELLENCE VERSUS EQUITY

Based upon the Socratic injunctions, the examined life is not worth living andknow thyself, Socratic questioning is defined to the continual process of critical

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self-examination coupled with a critical consciousness of structures of authority(Freire 1970; West 2004). It involves a quest for intellectual integrity and moralconsistency on the basis of self-reflection. Socratic questioning identifies dissentas the foundation of democracy (West 2004). Democracy is often defined as gov-ernment by consent; consent, however, is contingent upon the freedom, capacity,and commitment to dissent. If one is neither free nor able to dissent throughvenues such as Socratic questioning, then consent becomes a logical and practicalimpossibility.

Ivie (2005) offers some useful thoughts to consider on the dissent componentof democracy. For Ivie (2005), “dissent rearticulates political relationships byan ongoing act of rhetorical critique inside an established framework of under-standing” (276). He locates several dimensions of democratic dissent including:epistemological, political, social, moral, and rhetorical (Ivie 2005, 276). Withthe epistemological and political dimensions of dissent, reason-giving may beimproved and power imbalances rectified by a system where presenters and repre-sentatives undergo constructive criticism from a larger body of those who wouldbe affected by their claims and decision-making (Ivie 2005). The social dimen-sion of dissent involves the relationship of dissenters to the political majority,where groups may engage instrumental (dissent as a means for honoring tradi-tional verities) or categorical dissent (dissent as an end in itself to express ongoingdispute with political authority or to function self-reflexively as a reminder ofdissent’s historic importance in democratic reform; Ivie 2005, 277–278). Dissenthas moral and rhetorical dimensions “insofar as it involves responsibilities thatattach to rights” and insofar as it is involves both discursive and symbolic ex-pressions of dissent “to broaden imaginative horizons, . . . reframe the way aproblem is seen, and . . . propose alternative patterns of reflection” (Ivie 2005,278).

In the end, Ivie (2005) reminds us that the dissenter can be “a rhetorical tricksterdeploying metaphor as a principal heuristic of critique” (276). Therefore, thepossibility of credible dissent in a deep democracy “relies on achieving a certainproductive tension between affirming and disconcerting the political order—adouble gesture of nonconforming solidarity” (Ivie 2005, 276). Ultimately, withoutinformed consent and credible dissent, one is left with the moral hypocrisy ofmanufactured rhetoric masquerading as democratic process (Herman & Chomsky2002). Deep democracy thus entails a culture of critical Socratic questioning,commitment, and hope.

Brown symbolizes and culminates the long struggle of the Socratic questioningof American Apartheid; it constitutes a profound democratic moment of dissentfrom a social system founded upon an immoral and illegal socio-cultural system.Brown symbolizes the power and importance of Socratic questioning for democ-racy and a democratic education. One distinct and specific need for Socraticquestioning is evident in the discursive innovation (Foucault 1970) surrounding

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Brown. Discursive innovation, as conceptualized here, involves words and phrasescharacterized by relative simplicity, dichotomization, incessant repetition, deceiv-ing metamorphosis, timely pithiness, and a certain societal familiarity. Due to thesecharacteristics, the terminology of any given discursive innovation has proven tosomehow have the ability to wax and wane in the public sphere, while continuingto convince a majority of citizens that a message they’ve heard before, is actuallya new language of reform (Noblit & Dempsey 1996).

For example, a post-Civil War Reconstruction era discursive innovation likeseparate but equal can be largely refuted by a majority of people in the Americanpublic, only to reappear in the form of freedom of choice in the 1960s, therebyconvincing many of the same people that it is not only a new idea, but a goodalternative. Once reintroduced, a discursive innovation can be reused to convincecitizens that schooling change this time is necessary, possible, and imperative.Considering West’s (2004) moral pillar of Socratic questioning in conjunctionwith the dynamic and fascinating narrative of Brown can offer a unique space tobreak down the negative influence of discursive innovation.

Through Brown and the many angles, stories, participants, key figures, emo-tions, content, self-proclaimed losses and beneficiaries, one can approach gen-erative knowledge. A living approach to Brown, a value-explicit understandingthat people are speaking of the past, in the present, for the future (personal com-munication, Dr. George Noblit 2002) may help one generate knowledge towarddistributive justice, yet transcend the dull platitudes of discursive innovations ineducation. All the while, Socratic questioning may help stunt the metamorphicgrowth of any newly morphed discursive innovations. The ideas underlying twoparticular dichotomous discursive innovations precede Brown, yet in the aftermathof Brown, they are reintroduced in a way that continues today to induce intellectualbattles on the bridge connecting schooling, the political economy, and morality.The two discursive innovations driving much of what I call the philosophicalBattle of Brown involve the tensions of (a) right versus center versus left and(b) excellence versus equity. The first Battle of Brown suggests right as somethingto evoke either positive connotations like correct, normal, and appropriate, or neg-ative stigmas that often chime racist, and Republican. The center is consideredliberal, on the fence, and Democrat; the left is radical, different, and Independent.Each innovation is accompanied by a group of self- and other-proclaimed sup-porters or dissenters of Brown, all proclaiming to hold the panacea for “America’syouth” that could literally render “no child left behind” by public education in theUnited States.

The other discursive innovation highlighted here as part of the philosophicalBattle of Brown engaged an educational reform seesaw with excellence on oneside and equity on the other. During school desegregation, educational-politicalexcellence became the mantra of some Whites who espoused a need to avoid thewatering or dumbing down of schooling that they were doomed to face without

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“identifying a commitment to identifying true virtue through great texts” (Noblit& Dempsey 1996, 4; Kimball 1986, 228). These excellence proponents used suchnegative examples as the bipartisan human relations and diversity training as foodfor the cause. Such misguided trainings built largely upon stereotypes, rather thanbreaking them down by excluding the multiple and authentic voices of non-Whites.This gross neglect led to examples like that from some liberal White teachers wholearned to believe that it was frowned upon to correct and appropriate BlackEnglish in high school English classes (Hughes 2006).

Educational-political equity proponents at the time of Brown espoused a lit-tle practiced mantra promoting “epistemological skepticism, free and intellec-tual search for a forever elusive truth, possibilities for all views to be toleratedand given an equal hearing, and final decisions left to each individual pursuingtruths for truth’s sake” (Noblit & Dempsey 1996, 4; Kimball 1986, 228). Therace/class/gender neutrality of this approach, in practice, seemed too often to limitsocial action and critique to a justice for just us endeavor. Other discursive innova-tions would attach themselves to either an espoused excellence or equity approachto education as they surfaced to the forefront in our desegregated public schools.None of them seem novel, but merely recycled themes and phrases reintroduced bylegitimized authorities (e.g., politicians, professors, wealthy influential businessowners, etc.), often with few visible dissenters.

An appropriation of Todd Lewis (1988) here helps to further explain howsuch discursively innovative messages come to prevail in America’s largely lit-erate, but questionably critically reflexive, society. Lewis’ (1988) work regardingkey “charismatic variables” in the messages (95) is adapted here to illuminatehow discursive innovation can negatively influence less critical audiences to evenvote against themselves and their own interests. Discursive innovation, with itscharismatic variables, preys upon what an audience doesn’t or can’t know, partic-ularly in social contexts where a perceived or even manufactured crisis allows theembrace of a deceiving “revolutionary message” that is also (a) simplistic, (b) in-dicative of impending doom or hopelessness restricting individual perspectives infavor of collective group identity, (c) conducive to a now situation-distressedcollective group seeking a solution to the stress as a means of escape, and (d) im-plicative of polarized aggression, where a clear oppositional group is establishedand conflicting and easily identifiable (Lewis 1988, 95).

Brown can provide a place to begin Socratic questioning that problematizesand ultimately diminishes the effectiveness of such faulty dichotomous discursiveefforts. People can ask questions like: Why shouldn’t Black Americans be loyalto the Democratic Party, Republican Party, or any other political party without acritically reflexive lens? Is this educational platform reform or recycling somethingthat didn’t work the first time in the way of balancing democratic rights withdemocratic responsibilities? In the story of Brown, there are spaces where thereare public collapses of the dichotomies that may force people to admit, or at least

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to stay abreast of, distributive justice needs in American democracy. Althoughradicals seem to remain staunch supporters of educational equity and equality forall students irrespective of social class, ethnicity, and sex, some so-called Liberalswere against school desegregation while contributing to White Flight, and a fewConservatives were for it.

In areas of all states, there were, and continue to be, representatives of bothpolitical parties against school desegregation. In the story of Brown, one alsofinds emotional and historic stories like that of a former conservative Klu KluxKlansman of Durham, NC, who held up his real Klan card in a community-school meeting declaring that if he had to give up his membership for the bet-terment of the children, he would—and he did, also befriending, for the restof his life, a Black mother attending the same meeting, whose family had ex-perienced the real and symbolic violence of segregation and the move to de-segregate. This story is chronicled in the video documentary, A Most UnusualFriendship.

The principles of justice, as one is searching in the aftermath of Brown, aretherefore often espoused, but rarely enacted in the democracy of discursive inno-vation. Arguably, it is a democracy revolving tightly around right versus centerversus left and excellence versus equity. Additional transferable cases in point canbe found in (a) reports like A Nation at Risk; (b) books akin to The Bell Curve;(c) assessments like the IQ test, SAT, ACT, and GRE; and (c) the incessant highstakes accountability test-driven school curriculum. One finds more evidence inthe persistence of tracking and within-school segregation of the gifted childrenversus special needs children (Mickelson 2001), as well as abrupt between-schoolsegregation and injustices separating good schools from inner-city schools (Ko-zol 1992). Such injustices persist with the aid of discursive innovation, evenin grade schools that host numerical ethnic integration, as well as in predomi-nantly White and predominantly Black schools, with their respective students,school personnel, and officials. Socratic questioning is important, to breakdownthe effectiveness of such discursive innovation, but insufficient for the change weseek.

BROWN AND TRAGICOMIC HOPE

The third moral pillar of deep democracy identified by West is tragicomic hope.Tragicomic hope entails the direct confrontation with the painful brute facts ofinjustice while persevering without cynicism or pessimism. It is expressed in var-ious art forms, most profoundly in the blues. Tragicomic hope, on the one hand,expresses hope in democratic possibilities, possibilities of justice and fairness forall. Brown invokes the hope of a truly democratic society premised upon socialand political equality, fair treatment, social mobility, and full participation in the

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life of the society. The very issue of Brown, racial segregation, and its aftermathalso reveal the imperialistic underbelly of American democracy. Imperialism hererefers to the strong tendency in American democracy, both internally and exter-nally, toward exploitation and dehumanization driven by economic and politicalself-interest—the pursuit of power and wealth. Democracy and imperialism arestill pitted in a fierce struggle. The precedent of Brown engenders hope and positsan imperative to preserve and expand the democratic promise. It is important forpeople to understand hope as active, and as a pinnacle of the present (Freire 1996;Kimball 1984; Noblit & Dempsey, 1996).

Let us take tragicomic hope a step further, where it can be illuminated byconsidering the work of late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1996) in his book,The Pedagogy of Hope. Freire explained hope and struggle (analogous to comedyand tragedy), as necessary concomitant forces toward an education strong in socialjustice, where the adequately educated can transcend social oppression, hopefullywithout reproducing it. In arguing that hope is a fundamental human need, Freireadmonished against separating it from action. Freire tied all of this specifically toeducation, in ways we find possible through this moral pillar and the narrative ofBrown. Freire depicted the union of hope and struggle:

The idea that hope alone will transform the world . . . is an excellent route tohopelessness, pessimism, and fatalism. [T]he attempt to do without hope, in thestruggle to improve the world, as if that struggle could be reduced to calculated actsalone, or a purely scientific approach, is a frivolous illusion . . . without a minimumof hope, we cannot so much as start the struggle. But without the struggle, hope. . . dissipates, loses its bearing, and turns into hopelessness. One of the tasks ofthe serious progressive educator, through a serious, correct, political analysis, is tounveil opportunities for hope, no matter what the obstacles may be (Freire 1996,8–10).

Like Freire, we want to acknowledge and address hope and struggle in thisrevisitation of Brown as a paradigmatic understanding of distributive justice. Con-sideration of the moral pillars moves this work to further the process of unveilingeducative opportunities for hope, by revisiting lived educational experiences ofBrown as a meaningful compilation of events, concepts, and key figures fightingfor democratic rights and hoping for the triumph of democratic ideals. The appro-priation of Kimball’s (1986) and Noblit and Dempsey’s (1996) work here can alsosharpen the lens in two ways regarding tragicomic hope. First, Kimball’s (1986)work teaches one to look beneath the surface for hope, so that one might rec-ognize the reintroduction of philosophical terms and conditions of equity versusoratorical ones related to excellence for what they are—reintroductions and nothopeful reforms. Second, Noblit and Dempsey (1996) remind one how hope istied to the degree to which individuals assume the roles of pawns or participantsin constructing their realities after Brown (74).

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Initially, the Black American author of this article focused especially on the pe-riod when all this social change was new—when desegregation happened and whenBlack families in particular had to construct hope in the face of the unknown—tolearn in the way of the orator, from a pinnacle in the past. The White Americanauthor of this article focused on the philosophical, to learn from a pinnacle in somefuture understanding to be reached. In the end, we are both reminded that “virtueand knowledge are constructed out of the polyphony of everyday life. The result isthat how people construct moral life is unavailable to our educational discourse”(Noblit & Dempsey 1996, 74) until they learn to seek it, name it, claim it, andto remain open to credible dissenters. From this perspective, Brown continues tobreathe struggle and hope today. Therefore, it is not in the past or in the future,but in the present, everyday life of educational studies professors to push and pullfrom a repertoire of issues related to moral pillars and moral shortfalls to engagestudents in the revisiting of Brown. Brown is revisited as a paradigmatic under-standing of distributive justice as it exists today in people’s thoughts, and wherethey happen to be at the moment they begin to trace changes and continuities inthe struggle for adequate and optimal educational opportunities for all.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In closing, we find it important to note here another important lingering discursiveinnovation evolving from limited Socratic questioning, a misguided propheticcommitment, and the tragicomic nature of hope within Brown policy. Unlike theothers, this discursion arguably comes with seeming altruism and perhaps mostunintended negative consequences; it is the notion of empowerment. In teachingempowerment through the story of Brown, we might falsely teach our studentsthat they have the power to empower others, those people of color in the inner-cityschools. Are educators merely teaching students to become what they espouse todespise, what the leaders of the power cluster use to oppress?

Brown teaches that neither can one empower, nor should one try to empower,others. Through appropriating Brown in educational studies, one may however,engage Socratic inquiry, a commitment to justice, and an understanding of tragi-comic hope. People may coconstruct more critically reflexive interpretations ofBrown policy that is more conducive to dismantling the power that can becomepainfully ethnocentric, materialistic, and oppressive—that which potentially al-lows the age-old injustices surrounding Brown to persist.

Ultimately, Brown is, and can be, educative in so many ways that can be benefi-cial to preservice teachers and graduate students in the field of educational studies.It is “neither the panacea that we imagined, nor the problem that we experience”(Ladson-Billings 2004, 11), yet Brown offers clear evidence that democracy is

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not an end, but a commencement, a journey, a consistent battle between two con-trasting forms of engagement. One form seems to center the democratic rightsof individuals to have structured ethical choices and democratic ideals (Oakes &Lipton 2003) of those individuals to choose to reciprocate goodness within theirin-group. The other form seems to center the individual’s right (and some wouldargue the individual’s responsibility) to choose to engage social contracts withthose outside of their ethnic, political, social, and spiritual enclaves for the hybridvigor and vitality of education and sustainability in our society. Brown affordsa real place to employ the dialogic and dialectic approaches to inquiry en routeto positing the problems and possibilities of pursuing social justice. Bell (2004)and Ladson-Billings (2004) remind people to approach Brown with caution. Andindeed, we also intend for Brown to be a landmark for spotting, questioning,and addressing the hypocrisy, complicity, greed, and contradictions that tend topromote the educational humiliation and suffering that followed it.

Hilliard (1999, 2004) reminds that many contemporary education problems arethe direct or indirect residuals of previously explicit designs to maintain privilegeand oppression. He argues, as we do, that although Brown outlawed certain man-ifestations of privilege and oppression in education, it did not change specificpractices associated with de facto desegregation (i.e., fear, greed, ideology, Whiteflight, tracking, mistreatment of children with disabilities, etc.). Brown largelyfocused upon physical segregation and not the interwoven complexities, leadingHilliard to call for, at the very least, a concomitant consideration of the conceptssegregation, desegregation, and integration alongside privilege, oppression, andinjustice.

We agree with Hilliard’s (1999) contention that education is in need of transfor-mation. It is never neutral and will always serve some master. If that master is thedemocratic principles of distributive justice, we believe the possibilities to exposeand diminish injustices can further expand. We have also adapted a concludingportion of Hilliard’s discussion to offer some direction to the existing involvementof Brown to address social justice in our Educational Studies curriculum. Again,our contention is not to glorify Brown as a pinnacle of justice, but to demystify it,deconstruct it, and to “use it as a hypothesis for a new future” (Ladson-Billings2004, 11) in the present. This addition to our curricular considerations could al-low us to offer more comprehensively (a) a consideration of West’s (2004) moralpillars as they relate to school desegregation and Brown; (b) a complete history ofhistorical and contemporary injustices in education; (c) a full description of past,present, and projected future contexts in education with specific attention to socialforces (e.g., racism, poverty, sexism, etc.) that result in injustices in education; and(d) a set of concepts for theorizing about the past, present, and future to explainthe phenomena driving injustices in desegregated educational settings in order toeradicate them.

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