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"Reflections on Little Rock"

#40: Nov. - Dec. 2007 (Non-Fiction)
irishrose

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Mad wrote:Black parents could also have fought for improved standards within black schools. Post factum, we tend to agree that separate but equal rarely ever pans out in practice, but that's a conclusion that wouldn't be drawn until much later.
I disagree Mad. If Arendt wrote this in 1959, as dated, Brown v. Board had already been decided in 1954. One of the controlling issues in that case was the "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. And, in fact, in several cases decided before Brown v. Board, it was found that there were inequalities between the schools. And the Plaintiffs, themselves, in Brown v. Board contended that the schools were not equal.

But, in the end, the Court did not rule on whether "physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal" between segregated schools. The Court relied instead on an earlier separate but equal case with regard to law schools, noting that segregated law schools could not provide equal educational opportunities because of "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school." The Court concluded that "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place" as "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Actually, in reviewing Brown v. Board, I really don't see that Arendt's argument, with regard to maligning black parents, holds up at all. The black parents, particularly after such a ruling by the Supreme Court, had no other legal recourse than desegregation to provide equal educational opportunities for their children. I don't imagine most of them were in the position, financially, to make black public schools better for their black kids through private donations and the like. And since the highest court had already ruled on separate but equal, they couldn't appeal to the Court for assistance in making black schools better.

Now, maybe they should have done the leg work, years before, in urging desegregation in other public spaces. But, as I said before, I'm sure there was an immediacy and urgency about addressing desegregation in public schools, that can't really compare to securing desegregation on buses and in restaurants. One should also consider that Plessy v. Ferguson, in addressing separate but equal, did so with regard to transportation. And that was in 1896. So not all the battlegrounds were staged in school yards. And, certainly, black advocates had attempted desegregation on adult public grounds, half a century before Brown v. Board.
Maybe. I tend to think of marriage as a social institution.
Well if you want to look at it that way, the civil union, or the signed contract, is a political institution; the ceremony/statement of commitment before family and friends, be it in a religious building, hall, park, home, is a social institution; and the cohabitation and life-building is a private institution.
Ophelia : The author advises Black parents to go the extra mile and send their children to schools where they will mix with non-black kids.

Mad: I think that's a totally valid rationale.
The question is whether or not it's feasible. Perhaps black parents in the Philadelphia school district (the district McWhorter went to school in) would love to send their kids to schools where they would mix with non-black kids. But that would mean sending their kids to private schools, and that's just not in the financial cards for many families. Saying black kids should go to schools with non-black kids is a lot different than actually making it possible.
irishrosem

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I've outlined above a bit of the fallacy I see in Arendt's assertion that "if it were only a matter of equally good education for my children, an effort to grant them equality of opportunity, why was I not asked to fight for an improvement of schools for Negro children..." I think a statement like that demonstrates Arendt's ignorance either with the case law, as it already existed, or its function within the U.S. Clearly, demanding improved black schools was a legal struggle that was not available to black parents after Brown v. Board was finally decided, and for them to take social responsibility, in the alternative, would, I imagine, have been nearly impossible. As I said, how could one expect the black population to eschew public schools, where they were not welcomed, and with their own financial muscle build
MadArchitect

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I'm not opposed to the suggestion that Arendt just didn't know, or wasn't competent to judge, the pertinent material here. The essay struck me as a strange inclusion in the volume, in large part because it represents Arendt ranging from the historical period and subject matter that made up the bulk of her work. But for precisely that reason, I'd advise against letting her missteps here cast any shadow on her other work. Contemporary non-fiction affords us plenty of examples of writers and researchers offering opinions outside their speciality, and as often as not, those opinions are awkwardly formed or incompletely considered, but we don't often take them as evidence of the author's incompetence in the field in which their reputation was made. It may be that Arendt's work on totalistic governments is flawed, but that's a judgment better reached by examining her writings on that subject. Which isn't to suggest that you've let "Reflections of Little Rock" decide the matter for you, but even the doubt itself seems, to me, misplaced until you've come across something in her other work that gives you the same misgivings.
irishrosem

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Well first, Mad, my above post wasn't a suggestion; it was an assertion, if not a downright accusation.
Mad wrote:Contemporary non-fiction affords us plenty of examples of writers and researchers offering opinions outside their speciality, and as often as not, those opinions are awkwardly formed or incompletely considered, but we don't often take them as evidence of the author's incompetence in the field in which their reputation was made.
I'm not sure why you would limit this to contemporary writers. And I don't think I've ever consciously accepted writers' work within their field as adequate when they've demonstrated gross negligence outside their field. In fact, when I found obvious errors in Dawkins's work, I said quite the opposite
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