In his analysis of Brown v. Board of Education, Chief Justice Roberts emphasizes that before this case, students were denied access to certain schools based on their skin color. He writes, “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.” Furthermore, in Students for Fair Admissions, Roberts argues that Brown established that the time for making distinctions based on race had passed.
However, the core issue in Brown v. Board of Education was not about states making racial distinctions. The central question posed to the court was whether state governments could legally use racial classifications to separate Black Americans from white Americans, thereby denying rights to the former and extending privileges to the latter. Essentially, the question at hand was whether racism could be considered a legitimate state interest.
According to legal scholar Joel K. Goldstein, Brown did not address the use of race-conscious classifications to integrate schools. He states, “Brown did not raise the issue of whether states could use race-conscious classifications to integrate schools,” and adds that the focus of the briefs and oral arguments was primarily on how racial classifications were used to segregate and demean Black individuals.
In my analysis, I want to highlight Chief Justice Roberts’s avoidance of addressing racism directly, which exemplifies the concept of “racecraft” coined by historians Karen and Barbara Fields. Racecraft refers to the transformation of actions (racism) into characteristics or qualities (race). According to the Fieldses in their book “Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America,” racecraft is a subtle manipulation that shifts the blame from the aggressors to the targets.
To illustrate this point, consider the statement “black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color.” While it may sound natural, it overlooks the peculiar causality of segregation. In this sentence, segregation is removed as the action of segregationists and is mystically transformed into a trait of only one segment of the segregated population.
This exemplifies the Roberts two-step. He removes the actors of racism, leaving behind only the mark of racism – race. In his interpretation, the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, which challenged the legitimacy of racial hierarchy, becomes solely a case regarding the use of race in school placements.
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