Professor Laurence Tribe, a scholar of constitutional law, discusses the underlying significance of Brown v. Board of
Education. Though Footnote 11 (which elucidated the psychological impact of educational segregation on black children) was certainly
important, Brown was actually about something "much more stark and simple, and had nothing to do with schools, as such." It was
fundamentally a recognition that the social meaning of legally forcing blacks and whites to drink from separate fountains, use separate
swimming pools and parks, and go to separate schools was white supremacy. The case signified a legal acknowledgment that these
laws were not simply about segregation, but about hierarchy, domination, and subordination.
Tribe also respectfully challenges John Payton's claim that Brown's legacy is the complete obliteration of white
supremacy. He invokes the example of Loving v. Virginia, a case in which the Supreme Court finally decided that laws
criminalizing intermarriage between whites and blacks were unconstitutional. The fact that this decision occurred a full 13 years after
Brown may be an indication that, although we've supposedly obliterated white supremacy, there are actually far greater depths of progress
that we have not yet realized. "So the challenge for all of us, I think, is enormous. But the inspiration that Brown achieved can drive
all of us and can be a beacon by which we measure whether our lives have made a difference."
In his final remarks, Tribe expresses his opinion that Brown was indeed sound constitutional law because it referred to
literal non-subordination, not just abstract equality.
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