Davis: It is time for a new Brown-type court decision
Dr. Theodore J. Davis Jr. is a professor in the University of Delaware's Department of Political Science & International Relations.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and White students were unconstitutional. This court decision effectively overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The decision declared that separate educational facilities, opportunities, and outcomes for Blacks were inherently unequal.
A class action lawsuit would see five cases consolidated, including the Gebhardt v. Belton case of Delaware. In 1952, Delaware’s Court of Chancery ordered White schools to admit Black students, but the Delaware Board of Education appealed the Court’s decision. Interestingly, the Delaware case was the only one that wasn’t reversed in Brown due to the state’s prior order of public school desegregation.
In 1955, the Court, realizing the politics surrounding its decision declaring racial segregation in public education unconstitutional, took on an unprecedented task. It mandated that state and local communities move “with all deliberate speed” to comply with the ruling, a phrase that would become a source of controversy and debate. The Supreme Court was concerned that compliance with the Court’s decision would not constitute “good faith implementation” and took the unusual step of giving the Federal courts oversight authority.
On May 17, 2024, we will mark the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision, a pivotal moment in Delaware’s and our nation’s racial history. From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, the Brown decision was responsible for producing many changes in Delaware’s education, including improving the educational outcomes of Black students. However, many would suggest that the desegregation plans in Delaware were one-sided in favor of Whites.
Despite the one-sided nature of desegregation, Black students demonstrated remarkable resilience and achieved significant academic progress. In Delaware and across the nation, the academic performance of Black students improved drastically compared to earlier generations. Moreover, before the 1990s, the educational achievement and performance gap between Black and White students was significantly narrowed, a powerful testament to the transformative impact of the Brown Decision. Thus, in theory, I would argue that the Brown decision accomplished its goals, but it could not control individual behavior. This may have contributed to its shortfall.
Starting about the mid-to-late 1990s, Black students’ educational gains in Delaware relative to White students began to stall. The politics over education and Whites' backlash to Brown caught up with the racial realities of the state.
It started with many Whites rejecting school busing as a remedy to school desegregation. Similarly, the housing segregation patterns of the past would be a major problem in desegregating some public schools in the state. Furthermore, White flight from public schools would dramatically contribute to the decline in the educational success of Black students’ that occurred during the initial phase of school desegregation. The irony was that many of those Whites who said they favored school desegregation were the same ones who moved to the suburbs or sent their children to private schools.
Since the 1990s, Delaware also experienced a Black middle-class flight to the suburbs that complicated the educational outcomes of Black students as a group. Likewise, during this period we saw the start of the charter school movement (mainly benefiting middle—and upper-middle-class White families), the increase in substandard private schools, and the rise of homeschooling in the state.
Nationally, there has been a slow movement toward the resegregation of public schools along class and racial lines. In 2024, White students are more likely to be in racially segregated schools. At the same time, public schools with sizeable Black student populations are overrepresented with lower-income and impoverished students.
While some Black students continue to make educational progress, too many are being left behind and building the foundation for a permanent Black underclass. Nowhere is this more evident than in Delaware.
For example, in 2023, the difference between Black and White 11th graders in Delaware’s public schools proficient in math was 24.5 percent. This difference held constant between the two racial groups regardless of the student’s socioeconomic status or sex. Less than ten percent of Black 11th graders in the state were proficient in math in 2023.
The data showed only marginal differences in math proficiency among Black students in Delaware, regardless of sex or the family’s socioeconomic status. The most significant decline in the rate of Black students’ proficiency in math occurred between the 5th and 8th grades, and this decline continued through the 11th grade (but not as sharply). In other words, something is happening in Delaware’s public schools between the 5th and 8th grades that is working to the detriment of Black students’ academic performance.
It is time for a new Brown-type court decision or piece of legislation. For the most part, Brown did what it was supposed to do, it ensured the application of equal protection of the law in education and overturned the doctrine of separate but equal.
However, today’s problem with Black students’ academic success in Delaware isn’t about access. Rather, many are being denied a quality education because of equity issues. Thus, the problem today is how the lack of “equity” in education impacts Black, Brown, and lower socioeconomic status students’ educational outcomes. It is also about fairness, social justice, and the distribution of opportunities that influence life’s well-being beyond the educational system itself.
