Thomas Sowell.
"Today, with 50 years of experience behind us, it is painfully clear that the educational results of Brown have been meager for black children. Meanwhile, the kind of reasoning used in Brown has had serious negative repercussions on our whole legal system, extending far beyond issues of race or education. While Brown in effect overruled the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that racially "separate but equal" facilities were constitutionally acceptable, it avoided saying that Plessy was simply a wrong interpretation of the Constitution--that is, wrong in 1896 as well as wrong in 1954. Instead it relied on "modern" psychological knowledge, not available to the court in 1896 .. Brown v. Board of Education was the crucial case establishing a pattern in which rhetoric beats reasoning -- and we are still paying the price today. The painful irony is that black schoolchildren, the supposed beneficiaries of all this, have gained little or nothing in their education .. ".
More SOWELL on Brown vs Board of Education in the WSJ.
Posted by Greg Ransom
