>>> Item number 555, dated 94/03/29 20:06:26 -- ALL

Date:         Tue, 29 Mar 1994 20:06:26 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Brown v. Board and Multiculturalism

The following exchange recently appeared on H-Teach. I thought it might interest H-Law subscribers. Any thoughts?

Date: 28 Mar 94 00:07:24 EST
From: Bill Everdell <70703.1253%CompuServe.COM@WUVMD.Wustl.Edu>

It would be my position that multicultural education as currently understood is a clear violation of the Court's doctrine in *Brown* that separate facilities are inherently unequal. When I teach *Brown*, I find ways to make this clear without pre-empting or stifling the opposing view. I don't suppose I could ever have a chance to deliver a paper to that effect at the Georgia Symposium however. The Symposium announcement makes me wonder again how many of my fellow teachers still believe, as I do, in the insufficiency of belief as a guide to understanding history.
Bill Everdell, Brooklyn

Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 18:52:57 -0600 From: DANIEL A. SEGAL <DSEGAL%bernard.pitzer.edu@WUVMD.Wustl.Edu>

Could Bill Everdell please provide some reasons for his assertion that the current practice of multicultural education is in violation of Brown vs. Board of Education?

A few thoughts on this: (1) I perceive a great many practices now being deemed "multicultural" education; (2) the caricature of multicultural education constructed by neoconservatives may--if practiced--violate the spirit of Brown vs. Board of Education, but this caricature has only a perverse and mischievous relationship to the overwhelming number of practices now deemed "multicultural" education; and (3) when I think of examples of phenomena that are in violation of Brown vs. Board of Education, I think of many of the schools in the United States, given how many of them remain, in effect, segregated.

Daniel A. Segal
PITZER COLLEGE, Claremont, Ca. 91711
tel. 909-621-8555, ext. 3645; fax 909-621-8481

>>> Item number 557, dated 94/03/30 18:30:39 -- ALL

Date:         Wed, 30 Mar 1994 18:30:39 -0600
Reply-To:     Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
Sender:       Legal History discussion list <H-LAW@UICVM.BITNET>
From:         cfcrw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Subject:      Brown v. Board and Multiculturalism

Date: 30 Mar 94 00:18:18 EST
From: Bill Everdell <70703.1253%CompuServe.COM@WUVMD.Wustl.Edu>

Daniel Segal asks, "Could Bill Everdell please provide some reasons for his assertion that the current practice of multicultural education is in violation of Brown vs. Board of Education?"

Here in NYC some schools have been partially or even largely resegregated for reasons relating to the current understanding of multiculturalism. The excuses are various, including student security (a school for homosexuals), a curiously racist view of "learning styles" (a school for black males), a desperate need for federal money offered only for "bilingual education" (a school in the Bronx divided de facto between Spanish and non-Spanish speakers), and the ignorant discomfort, traditionally American, which segregates school from school and groups within schools by ethnic allegiance. All of these are now justified as positive achievements of multiculturalism and legitimated by vague citations of civil rights decisions by the courts. We mainstream the handicapped in public education, occasionally at considerable cost to the education of others; but we are increasingly deciding not to mainstream our many subcultures. Many seem to think there's no mainstream. I still think that the Court's view in *Brown* that separate is never equal provides a legal requirement to find a mainstream. Of course, this is a large debate, and I may have mischaracterized some of my fellow-citizens who disagree with me, but I would certainly be interested in their views or anyone else's - on or off the net.

This is reply to Bill Everdell's elaboration on Brown and multiculturalism: My reaction is to his assertion that "mainstreaming the handicapped" leads to a cost in the education of the non-handicapped. I disagree. it seems to me that precisely the reverse is true and that it is the education of the non-handicapped that is lessened when handicapped children are isolated. Stereotypes and prejudices remain unchallenged and any hope

Joseph M. Hawes                  Tel:  901-678-3380
History Department               Fax:  901-678-4831

Memphis State University
Memphis, TN 38152
Bitnet: HAWESJM@MEMSTVX1.BITNET
Internet: hawesjm@msuvx1.memst.edu
of creating a just community is set back.