The Promethean Promise: Responding to the Educational Dilemma Facing Black Students, Seventy Years After Brown

• In Event: Research, Remedy, and Repair . . . Lessons From the 70th Anniversary of Brown

Abstract

In this paper, we use Prometheus and his perpetual punishment as an analogous reference to the plight of Black people to draw attention to the historic role they/we have played in U.S. education. As we contemplate the state of education for Black people in the U.S. 70 years after the historic Brown decision, we ask the question: Why has the promise of inclusive and equal education for Black people in the U.S. been unfulfilled? We begin by analyzing the obstacles to integration that emerged in the 1980s to explain why school segregation on the basis of race and class has increased over the last several years. We also note the parallels between the period following Reconstruction, when the rights of Black people came under fierce attack, to the current period in which overt racial and racist attacks against the educational and human rights of Black people have proliferated. To understand how this context shapes the educational opportunity, expectations, and desires of Black people (and other people of color) in the U.S. we use a case study of a school in Oakland, California - the Roses in Concrete Community School (RiC), to draw attention both to Black frustrations with educational inequality and the aspirations that led to the creation of a new school that was envisioned as a community-based institution that would provide an independent, culturally affirming education. In presenting the case of the Roses in Concrete School we seek to point out the types of actions that Black parents and educators are taking to provide educational opportunities to Black children, given that the courts have failed to live up to the promise of Brown – racial equality in education. Many are understandably tired of waiting for the system to improve through some new cycle of reform. We offer this case not as a rejection of the goals of the historic Brown decision, but to show that amidst of the current backlash against Black educational advances, it is important to understand that the aspirations of many Black parents and educators have not been crushed; they are actively working to create new options and alternatives.
We call our readers’ attention to the plight of Prometheus because, like this mythic figure, Black people appear to have been punished for dreaming (Love 2023); for believing in the promise of Brown even as it remains elusive and out of reach. We argue that like the perpetual victimization of Prometheus, the current attacks against critical race theory and DEI, and the denial or attempt to erase the history of racial violence and subjugation in this nation, are a symptoms of a persistent structural violence (Farmer, 2001) being carried out against Black people in the U.S. (Du Bois, 1903). As we consider the directions that those concerned about the education of Black people may take seventy years after Brown, we believe this historical context is important for assessing current prospects and possibilities.

Authors

• Pedro A. Noguera, University of Southern California

• Joaquin Noguera, Loyola Marymount Universtiy