Guest AuthorAt one point, a black university (generally known as historically black colleges and universities: HBCU) was comparable to a high school in academic worth, even aspiration.
Schools had to attempt a Herculean struggle to give black students something that amounted to an education because of Jim Crow intransigence.
But once black schools got free of that oppression, things changed: Better funding, though never equal with white institutions. Better facilities, though never equal with white institutions.
But things changed. Things changed.
U.S. Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia brought that matter into greater focus with his more recent comment during oral argument in the case University of Texas v. Fisher. The 79-year-old jurist suggested either that blacks are innately inferior or that blacks do better at lesser schools. That is, lesser than those competitive Ivy League or elite public institutions where they tend to get in with the help of affirmative action programs based on race.
Scalia used data listed in a brief on black scientists as the basis of his view (which was easily disproven: Never take what Scalia says as prima facie evidence!)
Affirmative action, according to this line, is counterproductive: It hamstrings blacks in a climate of hostility and isolation as a result of less than meritorious standards.
Rather than place blacks in a position of struggle, put blacks where they are naturally suited. Doing it the other way, only puts black academic success in peril.
That is Scalia’s point of argument. It’s his understanding of “academic mismatch theory”: a contested theory among social scientists who have studied the matter seriously.
Yes, this at once sounds reasonable, and at once, presumptuous. Maybe racist, depending on your view.
Yet Scalia has been expounding on this point (or some variation thereof) with his colorblind jurisprudential commonplaces since the 1980s.
If a real life example of the merit, integrity, and moral urgency of building up and sustaining black institutions is not apparent, one could examine the life and career of the late Leander Shaw. He was the state’s first black chief justice (1990-1992), second black jurist on the Florida Supreme Court (first: Joseph Hatchett), and a product of black education.
For Scalia, Shaw’s education is inferior to that of the students of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.
Let it be said the judiciary has been well-served by such figures as Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose philosophical reflections, originality in the law, and worthy contributions to English style exemplified the very best of a Harvard mind.
Ditto Felix Frankfurter.
But black education gave this country moral giants, a rarer species than the intellectual, such as Thurgood Marshall (Howard University). And it gave us Shaw.
Shaw went to West Virginia State College. He went to Howard University School of Law. He would serve his country in the Korean War.
He would take the Florida Bar examination in a Jim Crow hotel, and then return to the black hotel where he was staying.
He would serve as prosecutor, public defender and Florida A&M University law professor before that law school became transmogrified, or less politely, confiscated by Florida State University.
His was a family of HBCU progenitors: his father a professor at FAMU. His was a family of black education proselytizers: his mother a teacher in Lexington, Virginia.
He became the reforming face of a court in moral turpitude in the 1970s.
He was, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, a model of judicial temperament: a man of probity, mental alertness, a deliberative nature.
One lawyer on Facebook called him a model and inspiration for black attorneys finding their place in the legal system. Shaw regaled with stories about making it in the legal profession during Jim Crow and generously handed out encouragement to young proteges.
His was an incredible life. His life encompassed the worst and best of American democracy. His life was a great saga of human possibility.
And finally: His life was a testament to the worth of “lesser” schools and the work that continues.
Rest in peace, Justice Leander Shaw.
Chris Timmons is a native Floridian, a columnist, and a fellow with the James Madison Institute. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
