Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. the Board of Education on May 17, 1954 (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). The court found that racial discrimination, which was the norm in American public schools, was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause described in the 14 th Amendment to the constitution. The upshot of the ruling was that students of color in the nation would no longer be mandated by legislation to attend black-only schools that were inherently under-resourced. The ruling of the court was a turning point in the legal aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, it is argued that the case catalyzed the Civil Rights Movement, which is most importantly remembered for and credited with equal rights for the public in the country (Patterson & Freehling, 2001). The case and its outcomes were met initially with enthusiasm by Southern states considering that segregation was more rampant in the region than it was in others. Close to half a century after the Supreme Court’s ruling, much progress has been achieved although the vision of the ruling is yet to be realized fully.
This paper applies the court’s argument in Brown v. Board of Education to the American policy environment, especially in the context of health care and the public administration sectors. The significance of the paper is to interpret the court’s ruling in line with the constructs of the Political Process Theory, which highlights the influence of public pressure on the development of social policies in communities. To attain the objective of the paper, it first describes the Political Process Model before appraising its relevance to explaining the rise and effects of the Civil Rights—according to the Brown v Board of Education— movement before concluding with the outcomes of the movement in relation to the public and health care sectors. The paper concludes the American policy environment is pegged on public advocacy for change that targets the existing social, political, and administrative systems, and the success realized so far, especially concerning public administration and healthcare, has been reliant on the persistence of public advocacy.
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The Political Process Model: A Summary
The Political Process Theory, also referred to as the Political Opportunity Theory, provides a congruent explanation to the actions, mindset, and conditions that result in the success of social movements. Precisely, the model suggests that political opportunities for transformation should always precede the attainment of the objectives of a social movement (McFarland, 2004). Following that, the model argues, the social movement tries to attain the changes desired through the extant political processes and structures. The principle ideas that the theory propagates led to the argument by analysts that the theory was the core of social movements and the manner in which they mobilize. Sociologists developed the theory in response to the student movements, anti-war, and Civil Rights of the US during the 1950s and 60s (McFarland, 2004). Before the creation of the model, social scientists considered that social movements were crazed and irrational, which caused them to frame the social movements as deviants rather than political actors. The theory disrupted the classical view of the role of social movements through exposing its patriarchal, racist, and elitist roots.
Literature on the Political Process Theory reports that the model has five primary components determining the failure or success of social movements. For example, according to McAdam (2013), political opportunities are the most significant aspect of the theory since the model argues that the absence of political opportunities would mean that the social movement would fail. In this case, it is important noting that political opportunities refer to chances for interventions and transformation within the extant political system, and they only exist when the current system has some vulnerability (McFarland, 2004). The cited author indicates that system vulnerabilities would result from several reasons, and that they are hinged on the legitimacy of crises in which the public stops supporting the economic and social conditions that are maintained or fostered by the current system.
The second component identified in literature is mobilizing structures. According to McAdam (2013) mobilizing structures refer to the extant organizations—political or others—within the affected communities that are need for change. The organizations, therefore, act as mobilizing units for the social movements through the provision of membership, communication, and leadership to the social networks that would be useful in budding social movements. The third factor is the framing processes, and studies indicate that they are defined by the leaders of the social organizations with the objective of allowing the groups to describe the existing issues clearly in addition to articulating the need for social change, the type of change that should be attained, and the means of attaining such changes (McFarland, 2004). A protest cycle is the fourth aspect of the Political Process Theory that defines the success or failure of social movements. The cited literature suggests that a protest cycle is a prolonged period during which the activities of the social movements, especially those protesting the current structure, are heightened. Contentious repertoire is the last aspect underpinning the success or failure of social movements, and it refers to the means through which the social movements make their claims.
Analyzing the Political Process Theory in the Perspective of the Brown v Board of Education
Understanding the contributions of the Brown case to the American policy environment would require interpreting the outcomes through the lens of the theory. Precisely, the political opportunities of the time of the case emanated from the idea that government did not have inclusive social policies, especial those that would ensure children of color attained the same educational status as their White counterparts. A significant section of the public, especially the parents of children who were discriminated by the education system, resorted to use the legal system as the mobilizing structures. The Brown case started as five separate lawsuits that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, initiated in its representation of Black children as well as their families in Washington, DC, Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Kansas (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). In the cases, Oliver Brown had sued the Topeka Board of Education in 1951 after a White elementary school denied his, Linda, daughter admission. While Linda’s all-Black school was fortunate to have had efficient learning resources, the rest of the cases that were embedded concerned the lack of such resources that would promote equal learning for students.
Concerning the framing process, it should be noted that the Supreme Court ruling in Brown overturned a precedent that had been established in 1896 in Plessy v Ferguson that had set the idea of equal but separate doctrine, which meant that children of color and their White counterparts would be educated in separate settings, but their teachers should strive to offer the same quality of education (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). Furthermore, the ruling sparked the Civil Rights movement, which added to the protest cycles that were established, whose primary objective was to desegregate the public sector, including employment, education, healthcare, and other socioeconomic factions.
It should be understood that the Supreme Court did not specify the approach that would adopted to end segregation in schools, but invited views on the issue. The timidity of the court, coupled with steadfast local resistance meant that the landmark ruling did not have much impact to attain the desegregation goal at community level. For instance, to a large extent, Black children continued attending schools that had substandard facilities, expired textbooks, and without basic facilities. Another case, Brown v Board II, which was heard in 1955, the Supreme granted most of the responsibility for desegregating schools to school authorities, as well as the lower courts with all the speed that they could manage. However, most of the lower courts would soon resist desegregation because they had been appointed to their position by segregation politicians (Patterson & Freehling, 2001). The backlash against the decision of the court was at its peak in 1952 when nineteen senators and eighty-two representatives endorsed the Southern Manifesto that urged Southerners to apply all the lawful means to resist the confusion and chaos that would come with the desegregation of schools (Patterson & Freehling, 2001).
The protest cycles of the Civil Rights movement were most expressed from 1955 to the early 1960s. The movement challenged the segregation of Blacks and called for legal equality through voter-registration, freedom rides, sit-ins, and boycotts. The verdict in Brown motivated Blacks living in the South to defy any punitive and restrictive Jim Crow legislation even though the verdict also shielded Whites in the same region who fought for segregation, such as the infamous Little Rock high school standoff in 1957 (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). There was an escalation of violence against Civil Rights activists, which outraged the North and abroad, which aided in speeding the passage of legislation on civil and voting rights towards the mid 1960s. In 1964, two provisions of the Civil Rights Act granted the government the power and responsibility to end desegregation, and the Justice system could sue institutions that rejected integration in addition to denying them funding. Close to a third of Black students in the South were attending integrated schools before 1973 (Orfield & Eaton, 1996). The achievements of the Civil Rights movement, as indicated, raised the levels of awareness about the need for desegregated institutions, and this paper covers the health care and public sectors.
The Implications of Brown v Board of Education on Health Care Policies
Civil Rights movement in healthcare may not have begun in the fifties, but the most prominent period was witnessed simultaneously with other factions. For instance, while responding to racial discrimination by a majority of nursing and medical colleges, community activists, nurses, and physicians in Chicago raised money that would fund the establishment of Provident Hospital Training School as early as 1891 (Kenney, 2003). It is also imperative that other medical schools for blacks had been founded before this period, but provident was the first to be placed under the full leadership of African Americans, and that it was founded with the primary objective of fighting discrimination. Poverty, discrimination, and segregation resulted in disproportionately high rates of mortality and sickness among the African American population. Community organizations, churches, and civil rights groups fought the conditions through educational initiatives that included the NNHW, the National Negro Health Week, which was run between 1914 and 1951.
Medical civil rights movement conceptualized the elimination of segregation within mainstream health care system after the Second World War (Kenney, 2003). The organization of Black medics, National Medical Association, supported provisions that sought to end discrimination by the 1948 Hill Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act. Furthermore, the group demanded that the American Medical Association end segregation and discrimination. The MCCR, Medical Committee for Civil Rights, an interracial group, was established in 1963. The same year, the MCCR, the group made headlines when it picketed a convention of the American Medical Association in Atlantic City through calling for the body to abolish discrimination and segregation in medical care. Notably, members of the MCCR also took part in the March on Washington in 1963 ( Circulation Now, 2016 ).
In 1965, Leonidas Berry was appointed the leader of the National Medical Association. The medical rights activist was a renowned gastroenterologist who had spent a significant proportion of his career at Provident Hospital and experienced discrimination at other Chicago hospitals. During his tenure at the National Medical Association, Berry mounted more pressure on the AMA to desegregate, and his efforts bore fruit in 1968 when AMA yielded to the pressure and ended racial segregation ( Circulation Now, 2016 ). Nevertheless, the end of discrimination and segregation did not stop the differential treatment of people of color in healthcare. For instance, Berry noted continued issues with affordability and access, which caused him to shift his attention to the poorest African American communities, especially living in Cairo, Illinois. Much more might have happened in the history of the disintegration of the healthcare sector of the nation, including the establishment of the Affordable Care Act in the recent time that would strive to promote the health of minority groups, especially through focusing on accessibility and affordability. However, the years before this stage were the most significant in ensuring equal accessibility of health care services for all Americans.
In line with the constructs of the Political Process Theory, it is notable that the efforts to disaggregate the healthcare system followed almost a similar trajectory to that for which the Brown case set precedent in education. For instance, the development of healthcare policies that would end the discrimination and segregation in healthcare required the existent of the five factors that determine the success of social movements described in cited literature. The most important idea to note about the effects of the social movements is the fact that the public, especially the African American groups, were not satisfied with the type of services and policies that the current regime was administering, which is why they resolved to using the same approach that the Civil Rights movement employed in combating discrimination in education.
The Contributions of Brown v Board of Education to Public Administration
Having established previously that the Brown case sparked the Civil Rights movement, it is possible to construct the contributions of the case to public administration through reporting the effects of the movement. As much as the history of the connection between the Civil Rights movement may be long, the election of 1960 should be the most relevant historical connection of the two. According to Social Welfare History Project (2011), civil rights had become an issue by the time of the 1960 election. For instance, only a few days before the election, while leading protests in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Junior was arrested. President Kennedy, was running by then, phoned Coretta Scott Junior to express his concern for the arrest and continued to call the judge in charge of his case, which secured Luther King Junior’s release. Consequently, Martin Luther endorsed JF Kennedy, which made the former an influential leader of the Civil Rights Movement. Close to seventy percent of the Black population of the nation voted for President Kennedy, and the votes were instrumental for his victory. The president’s victory raised the expectations of African Americans in the next few years, especially with the hope that the new regime would further their interests.
Nevertheless, the president had a narrow working margin in Congress because of his slim victory. The president displayed reluctance to losing Southern support for Congressional legislation through lobbying hard for the enactment of laws that would promote civil rights ( Social Welfare History Project, 2011 ). For this reason, President Kennedy made several appointments of African Americans into high-level positions in his administration in addition to strengthening the powers of the Civil Rights Commission. For example, literature suggests that the president praised the desegregation of schools, singled several cities for praise because of an integrative approach to education, and appointed his Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, to head the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity ( Social Welfare History Project, 2011 ). The cited study also reports that the then Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, focused his attention on voting rights through initiating suits that were brought to the previous regime and exceeding the number five times. The period after the election saw several other developments towards the integration of African Americans into leadership, including the federal intervention to help freedom riders who volunteered to end bus ride segregation in places, such as Alabama and South Carolina, and other instances.
African Americans were also allowed to enroll to courses that were initially reserved for their White counterparts. The best documented example, which occurred during the Kennedy regime, was that of James Meredith Junior who had been denied access to the University of Mississippi even after he had attempted to register five times. Governor Ross Barnett, the Attorney General, and the President held long conversations with the administration of the institution, but they did not yield fruit. In another attempt federal marshals accompanied Meredith to the institution, which sparked a riot that killed two persons and injured scores of other demonstrators. The President mobilized National Guard that delivered federal troops to the institution, which secured Meredith’s admission to the university and ended segregation ( Circulation Now, 2016 ). The events that occurred during the Kennedy regime, ignoring his assassination, indicate the contributions of the Civil Rights movement—a product of Brown —to public administration. As does the history of the segregation of the healthcare system of the nation, that of public administration—as short as it is presented in this paper—highlights the application of the Political Process Theory, whose central premise is a call for administrators to perceive social movements positively as opposed to attempting to combat these groups.
Conclusion
As much as this paper does not provide an in-depth description of the history of social policies on healthcare and public administration in the US, it sufficiently interprets the American policy environment according to the constructs of the Political Process Theory. The model calls for administrative regimes to treat social movements positively because they communicate the need for change. The five aspects that the model deems necessary for the success of social movements suggest the need for the public to use the available political and social systems to advocate for change. For instance, this paper has contextualized the Brown v Board of Education to the development of integrative healthcare policies in the nation and an inclusive public administration approach. As much as the case did not concern the two aspects directly, this paper has noted its contributions to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s that pushed for inclusive policies in the two spheres. Consequently, one may conclude that the American policy environment is pegged on public advocacy for change that targets the existing social, political, and administrative systems, and the success realized so far, especially concerning public administration and healthcare, has been reliant on the persistence of public advocacy.
References
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Kenney Jr, J. A. (2003). Medical Civil Rights: The Drive for Medical Equality. Journal of the National Medical Association , 55 (5), 430.
McAdam, D. (2013). The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and political Movements. Malden: Blackwell .
McFarland, A. S. (2004). Neopluralism: The evolution of political process theory . Univ Pr of Kansas.
Orfield, G., & Eaton, S. E. (1996). Dismantling Desegregation. The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education . The New Press, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110.
Patterson, J. T., & Freehling, W. W. (2001). Brown v. Board of Education: A civil rights milestone and its troubled legacy . Oxford University Press.
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