Footnote to Brown v. Board of Education

In the Fall number of the Villanova Law Review, Professor Ernest van den Haag (of New York University) wraps up an extended argument he has been having with Professor Kenneth Clark (of the College of the City of New York), over the years since the Supreme Court voted, in Brown v. Board of Education, to deconstitutionalize separate public schooling for Negroes and whites. The dispute between the two gentlemen had reached the “Dear Sir. You Cur” level of intensity. But the combatants are scholars, and the brawl was, appropriately, conducted in books and learned journals; and every time either called the other a fool or a knave, the charge was deeply footnoted. Well, the last round has been fought, and Professor van den Haag is clearly the winner. And the victory is of stunning consequence.

Professor Clark is a social scientist who played a major role in Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court was looking for “scientific” evidence to “prove” that Negro children are made to feel inferior by segregated education. Mr. Clark stepped forward to furnish the “proof.” Nine out of sixteen little Negro children in South Carolina (Clark’s survey reported), having been given white and black dolls to choose from, selected the white doll as the “nice one”; seven of the sixteen picked the white doll as the one that “looked like” them. That test, Clark summed up, harmonizes with other more extensive doll-tests conducted in segregated Arkansas and integrated Massachusetts, and so it may be assumed that “a fundamental effect of segregation is basic confusion in the individuals and their concepts about themselves conflicting in their self images.” Chief Justice Warren cited Clark as an authority for the basis of his decision—that personality damage was being done on Negroes by segregation laws, without due process.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

In the Fall number of the Villanova Law Review, Professor Ernest van den Haag (of New York University) wraps up an extended argument he has been having with Professor Kenneth Clark (of the College of the City of New York), over the years since the Supreme Court voted, in Brown v. Board of Education, to deconstitutionalize separate public schooling for Negroes and whites. The dispute between the two gentlemen had reached the “Dear Sir. You Cur” level of intensity. But the combatants are scholars, and the brawl was, appropriately, conducted in books and learned journals; and every time either called the other a fool or a knave, the charge was deeply footnoted. Well, the last round has been fought, and Professor van den Haag is clearly the winner. And the victory is of stunning consequence.

Professor Clark is a social scientist who played a major role in Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court was looking for “scientific” evidence to “prove” that Negro children are made to feel inferior by segregated education. Mr. Clark stepped forward to furnish the “proof.” Nine out of sixteen little Negro children in South Carolina (Clark’s survey reported), having been given white and black dolls to choose from, selected the white doll as the “nice one”; seven of the sixteen picked the white doll as the one that “looked like” them. That test, Clark summed up, harmonizes with other more extensive doll-tests conducted in segregated Arkansas and integrated Massachusetts, and so it may be assumed that “a fundamental effect of segregation is basic confusion in the individuals and their concepts about themselves conflicting in their self images.” Chief Justice Warren cited Clark as an authority for the basis of his decision—that personality damage was being done on Negroes by segregation laws, without due process.