White Culture

American Presidents have to explain why Black people haven't prospered. Their first theory was that Black people haven't done better because they are biologically inferior.  When that theory eventually faded, because it was stupid,  a second theory was developed: Black people are biological equals, but they have an inferior culture. According got this theory, the legacy of slavery is that Black people have dysfunctional families, lazy workers, a lack of interest in education, etc. 

Also the Sioux had an inferior culture, and their children needed to be made White and so on. That once seemed self-evident.

Brown vs. the  Board of Education took the cultural supremacy  theory seriously. The goal of public education--as the Warren court saw it--was to move Black children out of Black culture and into White culture. And the way to do that was desegregation, seating Black kids next to White kids in classrooms. Juxtaposition would do the trick.

The court meant well. Many people of color agreed with its approach at the time. Today the assumption that White culture is the best culture of all strikes some scholars as an overreach. What we call "White culture" draws on the achievements of Mesopotamia, Peru, Rome, China, Egypt, Mexico, Greece, Austria, India and so on. White people in different places have different cultures, and the same is true for Black people, the Chinese, the Arabs, etc. The explicit claim by Warren that an all-Black school must necessarily be inferior to an integrated school is founded on racism (and underfunding Black schools). 

I'm committed to integration and intermarriage. I was delighted last week to learn that my granddaughter is 1% Nigerian. But I learned from reading Ibram X. Kendi that the Warren court conclusion that separate cannot be equal was based on unwarranted assumptions about the superiority of the so-called White culture. Think again.