This paper examines three articles through the Sociological lens, asking if Brown vs. Board of Education posed the best enduring solution for African Americans.

     "Social Transformation Theory, African Americans, and the Rise of Buffalos Post-Industrial City" by Henry Louis Taylor, Jr.

     This treatise engenders examination of Social Transformation Theory, formulated by sociologist William Julius Wilson, looking at Urban Development postindustrial and it's impact on the Black community in Buffalo, New York circa 1940, moving forward.

     The fascinating meat of the matter is the declination of progress in the community post-Civil Rights era, and material losses. This phenomenon is apparently not exclusive to Buffalo.

     "Wilson's social transformation theory asserts that since 1940, the black ghetto has undergone a radical social transformation (with the most dramatic changes taking place since 1960) due to the blockage of opportunities, declining racism and a shift in the economy from industry to service and high technology. Under this theory, the resulting social changes have been characterized by five overlapping trends.

     First, since 1960, there has been a decline in the labor force participation of blacks and an increase in their unemployment, underemployment and poverty. Second, these economic dislocations have led to the eruption of severe social problems in the ghetto, including the growth of an underclass, soaring crime rates, murder, drug addiction, alcoholism, out-of-wedlock births, marriage dissolution, single female heads of families, welfare dependency and inadequate schooling. Third, there has been a growing class schism within the black community. As the middle-class and higher paid workers improved their socioeconomic position in the years following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the income gap between the classes widened. Fourth, and most significantly, as the barriers to residential integration came tumbling down, the middle class and higher paid workers left the ghetto in search of better housing and neighborhood conditions.

     Today, the black ghetto consists of low-wage workers, the poor and the underclass, all of whom have become socially isolated from the more advantaged members of the race. Fifth, the loss of the middle-class and higher paid workers had a devastating effect on ghetto life and culture. These higher income groups had led black institutions, sent their children to inner-city schools and supported neighborhood shops and retail outlets. They stabilized the ghetto and perpetuated and reinforced black values, attitudes, beliefs and traditions. 'In short, their very presence enhanced the social organization of ghetto communities.' The migration of higher-income groups made it difficult for the remaining low-income groups to sustain basic institutions, including churches, stores, schools and recreational facilities. As these institutions declined, so too did the ghetto's social organization. People lost their sense of community, positive neighborhood identification faded and explicit norms and sanctions against aberrant behavior broke down. In the end, not only did the low-wage workers, the poor and underclass become socially isolated from higher income African Americans, but everyday life and culture in the ghetto itself became a major barrier in the fight for economic and social advancement."

      A question that I've wrestled with as an attendee of an Historically Black University, studying myriad facets of African American history: was integration as it was enacted a mistake? Black conservatives of the 1940s like Zora Neale-Hurston were pro-segregation, preferring a Black establishment in the States - primarily autonomous education, business, and industry. Brown vs. Board of Education and the insights of the Clark experiments were based on the emotions of children. As a pragmatic adult, I cannot think of a WORSE reason to set policy. Decisions affecting the body politic require steady and sober logic, as the emotions of millions will be affected through economics, self-worth, health care, transportation, nutrition, and scores of other factors. I believe some forebears of Black culture foresaw the fragmentation of African culture in America, and the fraction of community, not to mention the resentment that followed when integration led to absorption. Thats what naturally happens when a minority chooses to be adopted by a vaster body. The children felt left out, the dolls didnt look like the broad population, and a lot of decisions were made in courts based on these concerns. Other demographics like Chinese and Italians built communities of clan support. The foothold for Blacks would have been the educational centerpiece, not merely insular living accommodations. If the Black conservative movement with it's staunch no-charity, self-sustaining ethics had dominated, would the African continental influence in the country be strong, and sustain immunity in the face of the postindustrial situation like we see in this article?

     

"The Inner Development of Durkheim's Sociological Theory: From Early Writings to Maturity" by Jeffrey Alexander

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     "People keep reading Durkheim, and arguing about him, to find out whether the determinateness of social structures must involve the sacrifice of autonomy and, conversely, whether insisting on human agency entails denying external control."

     Here again is the sacrificial piece, the surrender of autonomy. We speak of the individual, which to myself is massive as a champion of empowerment and ardent individuality. However, the complaint of lost African identity is recurring, as is cultural appropriation that only seems lobbed from Blacks to Whites in the States. I see this examination of Durkheim as more suggestive evidence of our path to integration being a fallacy.

      I believe now that a self-determined African American environment reflective of Chinatown, Little Italy, or their rejoinders that early Black conservatives envisioned could have solved enduring poverty, instead of its encapsulation via the welfare state that abolished the Black nuclear family overwhelmingly. Decreasing successes for women supporting families alone and dependent has placed a demographic in stasis, put a huge number of disenfranchised young men that had to be excised from their homes at 17 behind bars, with role models at a distance, as the first article demonstrated.

     I believe strongly if that community would have been allowed to proceed without rusted Caucasian training wheels, the resentments of the present would not be as they are.

     

"Research on African-American Families: A Holistic Perspective" by Robert B. Hill

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"Unfortunately, the conventional perspective accepted by large segments of the news media and by social scientists and policymakers is 'the deficit model,' also known as 'blaming the victim'. This perspective has contributed to a widespread lack of understanding of the causes and nature of the contemporary situation of African-American families. The deficit model has the following features: It attributes the problems of black families to internal 'defects', such as single-parent families, 'a culture of poverty,' lack of work orientation, low educational achievement, poor work ethic, welfare mentality, etc. A recent manifestation of the 'deficit' perspective was the CBS-TV documentary produced by Bill Moyers in January 1986, which characterized female-headed black families as 'vanishing' non-families and attributed most of their problems to family structure."

     Unfortunately, this piece penned in 1990 augured a present day normality. The resentment crackles from the page, and I loathe to say he is biased somewhat in his analysis, as today's situation tells us, with the escalation of the single-mother, multiple children home and human paycheck scenario (numbers prove this is NOT racially exclusive any longer). These prison walls house the multitudes, with the products of that culture easily discernible from the rest.

     We need to remember the voyage and struggle of the African TO America. The ghetto should not be the destination, and I have come to place a healthy portion of the blame on a rash decision made in court with the best of intentions. In all facets of society, plummeting occurs when we allow our children to make the decisions. We do this for them. We do not outlaw broccoli and cough syrup because they taste bad. We do not allow the household to stay up all night watching TV because it feels right. I see Brown vs. Board of Education and the Clark's doll experiment akin to these examples. We are wizened by time for a reason. Hopefully, we can have meaningful dialogues around situations like this to avoid such mistakes in the future. It is always more difficult to halt a machine in motion, albeit, not impossible.