Hearts and Minds

Last week's 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in the case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was filled with ironies.

The ruling ushered in a generation of anguished testing and advances of the idea of equality. Yet in Topeka, Kans., in 1954, the parents of Linda Brown, an eleven-year-old black girl, had mere ly sought the right for her to attend a segregated white school in her own neighborhood, and the court upheld them. Since Brown, the complexities of desegregation have been transformed into the volatile issue of metropolitan busing. Opponents argue -- on behalf of the neighborhood school -- that children should not be forced to attend schools miles from their homes merely to achieve racial balance. In the same week that the anniversary of Brown was being marked, the U.S. Senate by a vote of 47 to 46 defeated an amendment that would have halted all enforced busing to schools farther away than the one next closest to a child's home.

The court ruled that separation of black children "generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." Yet as the segregation battle moved from the South (where today 46% of blacks attend schools with white majorities) to the North (where less than 30% do), the goal of racial accommodation was thrown into violent question.

The effort begun by the Brown decision remains to be completed, and it will be no easy task for the nation. But when the push for equality since 1954 is measured, at least one task seems harder: imagining the past 20 years without Brown.

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