Abstract
Reflecting on the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, we reconsider the landmark ruling’s conception of dignitary harm in public education. In its argument against the separate-but-equal standard that undergirded segregated schools in the South, the Supreme Court focused on the psychological harm that segregation imposed on Black children. Building on past critiques, we argue that the Court’s analysis was too narrow: the psychological harm it identified is only one of many forms of dignitary harm that racially marginalized students can face in schools. Importantly, dignitary harms can persist even in integrated schools and classrooms, through practices such as disciplinary disparities, tracking, and white-centric curricular content. Focusing on the example of curricular content, we detail how white-centric curricula can impose dignitary harms, and draw on historical examples and social science research to show how inclusive curricula can foster dignity and empowerment for racially marginalized students. We close with a call for scholars to more expansively envision the dignitary harms of racism in public education and accordingly advance a more robust interpretation of the demands of equal protection.
Recommended Citation
Kumar Ramanathan and Matthew D. Nelsen,
The Dignitary Harms of Racism in Public Education: Expanding the Lens of Brown Beyond Segregation,
73 Clev. St. L. Rev.
85
(2024)
available at https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevstlrev/vol73/iss1/12