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Rosenberg: Brown v. Board had virtually no effect - Coggle Diagram
Rosenberg: Brown v. Board had virtually no effect
Rosenberg's argument
Executive branch acted
courts had virtually no direct effect on ending discrimination
congress + executive only when acting in tandem with courts did change occur
Discrimination: the aftermath of slavery
deephold grasp of principles of inequality
social. political, economic factors controlling the grip of inequality
Rosenberg constantly criticizes the amount of time it takes for any change to occur
"The statistics from the Southern states are truly amazing. For ten years, 1954-64, virtually nothing happened" (52).
Rosenberg says that "...before Congress and the executive branch acted, courts had virtually no direct effect in ending discrimination" (70). This is false as the actions of the courts allowed the other branches to start passing legislation and creating policies to carry out the Supreme Court's rulings
"Despite the unanimity and forcefulness of the Brown opinion, the Supreme Court's reiteration of its position and its steadfast refusal to yield, its decree was flagrantly disobeyed" (52).
This quote reveals that Rosenberg believes that the Supreme Court was taking a strong stance against slavery, thus they weren't sitting around doing nothing like some of his argument throughout the article
The Court was ignored, there is nothing the court can do about this due to the structure of our government, the Court just says if something is constitutional or not, it does not have the power to enforce its laws. That is up to the other branches to carry out, especially the executive
Additionally this quote reveals the Hamiltonian principles of government. During this time the South was a majority faction and as Hamilton says this is the greatest threat to democracy as people united by a common cause are very hard to stop from hurting the minority faction
"The Supreme Court appears to have had an important impact on school desegregation in the six border states and the District of Columbia" (50).
"For ten years, the Court spoke forcefully while Congress and the executive did little" (49).
Rosenberg seems to measure individual contributions of the branches, however due to the separated powers of our government, it seems more effective to measure the overall contributions to desegregation the federal government had
"First that the Court made a major contribution to desegregation of the schools in the boarder states and second, that the rate of desegregation noticeable increased after the passage of the 1964 and 1965 acts" (51).
makes reasonable sense that the branches would have to work together to eliminate the system - if not, our governmental system would be very fragile if one branch could eliminate such a large system similar to this