May 21, 2019
Friday, May 17th was the 65th anniversary of the momentous Brown v. Board of Education decision. Brown was a landmark, not just because it outlawed segregated schools, but because it declared “separate but equal,” the doctrinal foundation of Jim Crow, an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Much has been written about the enduring resistance to that ruling. It is a sad fact of life that American schools are more segregated in 2019 than since before Brown (Source: “65 Years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation is getting worse,” by P.R. Lockhart, Vox.com, 5/10/19). We lament the fact that NYC schools are the most segregated in the nation and that there is zero political will to change that.
It is true that these facts are legitimately discouraging. It is horrifying to watch the Republicans from Trump down to try to return this country to a pre-Brown era of a rigidly enforced segregation. We cannot allow those stark realities to paralyze us with fear, such that we squander the very real power that those of us who attended integrated schools in the twenty year window between the Brown decision and the Supreme Court’s 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision, which sharply curtailed the ability to integrate public schools, still have.
Some statistics will help us put this in context. In 1950, only 2.2% of Black Americans had a bachelor’s degree (as compared with 6.6% of white Americans), (Source: Infoplease.com, citing census.gov). Conversely, as of 2017, the percentage of Black Americans with a bachelor’s degree was 23%, more than double the percentage in 1991 (Source: “Census: More Americans have college degrees than ever before,” by Reid Wilson, TheHill.com, 4/03/17).
Robert Smith’s astonishing act of generosity on Sunday served as both a reminder and a rebuke to all of us. On Sunday, Smith upended the sleepy ritual of commencement speakers by unexpectedly pledging to erase all of the student loan debt of the entire Morehouse College Class of 2019 (Source: “Morehouse College Graduates’ Student Loan Debt to be Paid Off by Billionaire,” by Audra D.S. Burch and David Gelles, The New York Times, 5/19/19). Smith’s act reverberated around the country. Smith’s promise dramatically expanded the possibilities for 396 young men, who could now start their adult lives armed with a Morehouse education and unburdened by crippling debt. It doubled as a rebuke to those billionaires whose largesse is little more than an ego driven effort to whitewash the great crimes behind their great fortunes, (Source: “When Your Money Is So Tainted Museums Don’t Want It” by Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times, 5/16/19). Robert Smith led by example, showing what an actual investment in human potential looks like. At the same time, his gift spotlighted the unsustainable system that burdened 400 young men with $40 million dollars of student loan debt just to secure a bachelor’s degree.
At the same time, Robert Smith’s outsized generosity was a reminder to the rest of us in the Brown generation of the resources we do have. We may not be billionaires, but we do have intellectual, social and yes, even economic capital. In the face of an increasingly cruel and undemocratic government, we have a responsibility, not only to demand change from that government, but to invest our capital in our own community. We must each do what we can, where we are, with what we have. From Nipsey Hussle to Robert Smith, the examples are all around us. We cannot say that we didn’t know.