OPINION: 70 years after Brown vs. Board decision, key takeaways remain buried

Even as we approach the 70th anniversary of Brown vs. Board this May, key parts of its history remain buried. Reporting has begun to engage with some of the lost, and often complex, aspects of Brown’s legacy, such as the mass firing of Black educators following the Brown decision.

At least one critical piece, however, still remains largely unknown: NAACP lawyers submitted a letter with evidence about segregation’s impact on white students as well as Black students.

In the letter, signed by more than 30 social scientists, Thurgood Marshall and his team at the NAACP warned that, in addition to its more well-known harms to Black educational opportunity, segregation also has detrimental effects on white children.

If school integration is going to reach its full potential — for schools and for democracy in general — we should take a close look at this neglected letter and its chilling resonances with contemporary society. The letter notes that “segregation imposes upon individuals a distorted sense of social reality” that can take shape in different ways for white students.

As we approach a milestone for Brown, let’s seize this opportunity to recommit to one of its primary goals: integrated public schools as “the very foundation of good citizenship.”

This requires thinking about Brown more expansively than we have in the past. Thinking of school integration not as an individual benefit for one group of students but as an essential component of a healthy multicultural democracy.

Related: Any educational reform that ignores segregation is doomed to failure

Indeed, research clearly illustrates that white students in diverse schools gain social awareness and intercultural understanding among other benefits. In a recent study, my colleagues at the University of Massachusetts and I compared white students in segregated white schools with those in racially diverse schools. We found that the latter reported higher levels of civic engagement and a sense of belonging.

This is just one example in a long history of social science research that connects racial contact to enhanced participation in a diverse democracy — including increased sociocultural empathy and reduced belief in stereotypes.

The NAACP letter warns that those at the top of a social hierarchy can experience “confusion, conflict [and] moral cynicism” when trying to reconcile a contradiction between the stated “importance of justice and fair play by the same persons and institutions who, in their support of racial segregation and related practices, seem to be acting in a prejudiced and discriminatory manner.”

It notes that those majority members, in their effort to make sense of this apparent paradox, may “develop patterns of guilty feelings” or embrace “rigid stereotypes.”

Others may “attempt to resolve this conflict by intensifying their hostility toward the minority group,” the letter notes.

And in perhaps its most prophetic line, the letter warns that racial hostility is often accompanied by an “uncritical idealization of all authority figures” and “the development of a social climate within which violent outbreaks of racial tensions are likely to occur.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s for good reason. And it’s deeply troubling. Consider the recent steady rise of hate incidents that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the “Trump effect.”

The former president’s current campaign is even more explicit in its embrace of racial stereotypes and dictatorial rule.

Surely, part of Trump’s support is connected to those “feelings of hostility” the letter described.

We see this today in efforts to ban curriculum on the history of school desegregation or even to outlaw any analysis of racism that inspires feelings of “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.”

Our current political climate might look different if the court had emphasized the benefits for all students in its final Brown ruling; of course, it did not.

Related: OPINION: Why segregation and racial gaps in education persist 70 years after the end of legal segregation

Segregation’s impact on white students is noticeably absent from one of the decision’s most iconic lines: “Segregation of white and colored children in the public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children.”

Taking its cues from the court ruling, our country pursued Brown’s mandate narrowly, as an often one-way form of desegregation. Families of color bore a disproportionate burden — long bus rides, the white mobs — because it was presumed that desegregation was for their benefit only.

Thankfully, there are vibrant existing venues for a more expansive conception of school integration, much of which is organized by the National Coalition on School Diversity.

In some cities, youth organizers are carrying forward the similarly forgotten legacy of student protest for school integration. The student organizing operates according to a reimagined notion of Brown’s mandate, described as the 5 Rs of real integration: race and enrollment, resources, relationships, restorative justice and representation.

There are also efforts underway across the country to organize white and/or affluent parents — of course, the chief opponents of desegregation — to choose racially diverse schools for their children.

Research gives us reason to feel hopeful that these kinds of efforts can usher in a new era of school integration. Recent polling illustrates that white parents opposed to school integration are likely to change their opinions after learning more about the impact of segregation on white children: the exact results the NAACP letter warned us about 70 years ago.

We need to address segregation as a collective challenge and create a new approach that breaks from the one-sidedness of the past. Even as Brown turns 70, it’s not too late.

The seeds were planted long ago, and our current moment gives us plenty of motivation to help them grow.

Peter Piazza is a research assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an associate director of the university’s Beyond Test Scores Project.

This story about Brown vs. Board of Education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.