Still Climbing the Hill: Intersectional Reflections on Brown and Beyond

Abstract

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb”—among the most powerful moments of the 2021 presidential inauguration—inspired the central inquiry of the 18th Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research: Why are we still climbing the hill of educational equity 67 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education? The purpose of this article is to challenge dominant narratives surrounding Brown and introduce perspectives that might help account for a general lack of progress—perspectives that typically are overlooked or erased in wider Brown discourses. Inspired by her poem, Patton Davis offers a scholarly analysis and contributes a robust understanding of Brown and its historical and contemporary meanings in the sociopolitical contexts of racism and white supremacy. Patton Davis considers pressing questions: How can study of the circumstances that have intensified the COVID-19 pandemic fuel collective understanding of racial inequities and intersectional injustices in education? How might a critical race lens guide educators, policymakers, and researchers toward a more progressive realization of the promises of Brown? What would it take for education researchers, the majority of whom are situated in postsecondary settings, to engage in activism modeled after the work of communities still fighting for the racial and educational equity envisioned in Brown?