American Democracy and the Promise of Justice

Introduction

Racial segregation, like all other forms of cruelty and tyranny, debases all human beings - those who are its victims, those who victimize, and in quite subtle ways those who are mere accessories.

Kenneth B. Clark¹

In his book Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power, pioneering social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark described how segregation separates people of color not only from white people, but from resources and opportunities. He asserted that segregation is largely the result of societal forces rather than individual choices, writing that:

The dark ghetto’s invisible walls have been erected by the white society, by those who have power, both to confine those who have no power, and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The dark ghettos are social, political, educational, and—above all—economic colonies.²

Dark Ghetto was published in 1965, a year after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations, and 11 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a case for which Kenneth Clark had provided expert testimony.

In the 1940’s, Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, a psychologist who studied identity issues in African American children, conducted a series of experiments. They interviewed young African American children who attended segregated schools in Philadelphia, Boston, Worcester, Massachusetts and several cities in Arkansas. The children were presented with two baby dolls. The dolls were identical except for their hair and skin color. One doll had blonde hair and white skin, while the other had black hair and brown skin. When asked which doll they liked best, most of the children displayed a preference for the white-skinned doll and a rejection of the brown-skinned doll. The children were asked which of the dolls looked like them. Some children pointed to the white doll, while others became upset and refused to answer the question. “Some of these children, particularly in the North, were reduced to crying when presented with the dolls and asked to identify with them,” Kenneth Clark told Ricard Klugar in the 1975 book, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education.³

In 1951, the NAACP enlisted Clark to lend his expertise to Briggs v. Elliott, a school segregation case in Clarendon County, South Carolina. He performed the doll experiment with African American children there. Again the children favored the white doll, and became upset when asked to compare themselves to the African American doll. Clark testified that the black children’s preference for the white doll indicated psychological damage that was reinforced by segregation.⁴

Briggs v. Elliott was rolled into Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and the doll tests were referenced in the footnotes of the Supreme Court’s opinion. The Court ruled unanimously that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Echoes of Kenneth Clark’s testimony can be heard in the opinion, written by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

To separate [African American children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race 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.⁵

Brown v. Board overturned the 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which had ruled that segregation of public facilities was constitutional, as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality.

Brown invalidated Jim Crow laws that had mandated school segregation in the South. It was a major victory in the fight for civil rights, but whites in southern states (government officials, law enforcement and citizens alike) continued to resist integration in the years following the high court’s decision.

Furthermore, racial segregation was not limited to the Jim Crow South. In Kenneth Clark’s hometown of New York City, segregated neighborhoods meant segregated schools. These schools remained segregated long after Brown. Clark grew up in Harlem and had experienced firsthand the poverty and lack of resources that resulted from segregation. He was a vocal advocate for integration, and grew impatient with the lack of progress in desegregating schools in New York City. He was disheartened by the persistence of racial isolation and

inequity despite hard-fought legislative and court victories during the civil rights movement. He decried the lack of social services and resources in black communities.⁶ This frustration led him to write Dark Ghetto.

When we reflect on segregation in the Northern cities like New York and Chicago, we often think of de facto segregation, or segregation by common practice and individual choice. Individual racism and bias amongst northern whites have contributed to residential segregation, and in turn school segregation. But de facto segregation is just one piece of the puzzle. By taking a closer look at housing policy in the U.S., we see a long history of de jure segregation, or segregation by law. Over the past century, federal, state and local governments collaborated with banking institutions and real estate associations to enact policies designed to create and maintain residential segregation in our nation’s cities and suburbs.