ABSTRACT
Over half a century ago, the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that, in the context of a long history of racial and educational apartheid, separate schools were inherently unequal. Brown v. Board (1954) was hailed as the case that would lead to educational equity for African Americans. True equity, however, has rarely been achieved. At the time, the legal battle was being waged over the inadequate and inequitable conditions of schools that African American students were confined to. Since then, we have come to understand that separation is only one aspect of educational inequality. There are numerous in-school and out-of-school disparities that must also be taken into account, most of them neither addressed by the Supreme Court’s decision nor adequately dealt with since. Among the most important is access to the language of wider communication-which is to say, Standard English proficiency.
