Abstract

Excerpted From: Kumar Ramanathan and Matthew D. Nelsen, The Dignitary Harms of Racism in Public Education: Expanding the Lens of Brown Beyond Segregation, 73 Cleveland State Law Review 85 (2024) (84 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court's landmark decision still looms large in debates over the proper remedies for historical and ongoing racial inequality in schools. The unanimous Court in Brown ruled that the Constitution's equal protection clause prohibited racial segregation in schools. As a basis for this interpretation, the Court famously cited social science research to claim that segregation caused psychological harm for Black students, generating “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community.”

In this article, we argue that the Court's diagnosis of psychological harm and its prescription of integration were narrow and insufficient. We begin by noting that the claim of psychological harm can be understood as one type of dignitary harm, i.e., actions that undermine an individual's sense of worth or status by causing emotional or psychological distress. We argue that the Court ignored various other kinds of dignitary harms that racially marginalized students face. Importantly, dignitary harms can persist in integrated schools. As such, integration alone is an insufficient solution to guarantee equal protection and dignity for all students.

The promise of equal protection for public education, we argue, must go beyond integration and address ongoing dignitary harms faced by racially marginalized students. For example, civics and social studies courses generally use white-centric curricula that signal lower social status and worth for racially marginalized groups. Such curricula can cause dignitary harm in both segregated and integrated classrooms. Redressing this harm requires other kinds of interventions, such as inclusive curricula that center the experiences and contributions of racially marginalized groups.

The article proceeds as follows. In Part II, we summarize Brown's claim about psychological harm and review arguments from some of its critics. We situate this claim in the broader concept of dignitary harms, and argue that Brown elided other dignitary harms in schools. In Part III, we discuss examples of how dignitary harms can persist in integrated classrooms. In Part IV, we focus on one example--curricular content--and detail how dignitary harm in this area can be redressed. We draw on the historical example of ethnic studies and social science research on curricular interventions to show how inclusive curricula can foster dignity and empowerment for racially marginalized students. Part V concludes the article with a call for scholars to more expansively envision the dignitary harms of racism in public education and accordingly advance a more robust interpretation of the demands of equal protection.

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Seventy years ago, the unanimous Court in Brown v. Board of Education justified its ruling on the grounds that segregation caused psychological harm to Black students. As many scholars have detailed in the decades since, the Court's view of the harms caused by racism in public education was deeply narrow. In this article, we have stressed that the Court's narrow view incorrectly excluded other dignitary harms racially marginalized students face. Importantly, Brown's arguments about psychological harm posited segregation as the cause and integration of pupils as a sufficient solution.

As we have argued, dignitary harms can persist in integrated schools. Various policies and practices--including disciplinary policies, academic tracking, and curricular content--can cause emotional and psychological distress to racially marginalized students and undermine their sense of worth or status. We have argued that such dignitary harm can and should be redressed. Focusing on the case of curricular content, we have provided examples of alternative approaches that can redress the harms that racially marginalized students continue to face in both segregated and integrated classrooms.

To put it simply, the demands of equal protection do not stop at school integration. Even within the integrated school and the integrated classroom, more must be done to affirm the equal dignity of all students.

We make this point not to offer a readily applicable legal remedy for courts to apply. Rather, our intention is to invite other scholars and advocates to imagine dignitary harm in public education and its possible remedies more expansively. Where the Court in Brown cited social science research to make a narrow claim about psychological harm, we urge scholars today to offer a more expansive view of dignitary harms in education by drawing on extensive social science research. And where the Court advanced an interpretation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection as requiring integration, we invite scholars to advance a more robust interpretation of the Constitution as requiring much more than integration.

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Kumar Ramanathan, Bridge-to-Faculty Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Chicago

 Matthew D. NelsenAssistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Miami