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Abstract
This legal history of desegregation in Kansas traced how a social movementworking toward the attainment of equal educational opportunities was replaced by adiscourse of desegregation. It addressed the following research questions. (1) How wereeducational practices and policies related to the schooling of African Americansproduced in Kansas from 1850-1949? (2) How was a social movement working towardthe attainment of equal educational opportunities replaced by a discourse ofdesegregation? (3) How did legal discursive practices protect white privilege in thestruggle to desegregate education? This study found that the simplification of thestruggle for equality of educational opportunity into the issue of desegregation neglectedthe contingent foundations on which the legitimization of power is constructed and failedto take into account the shifting and contested terrain of the ideological battle regardingidentity politics in the United States. Additionally, legal discursive practices operated inways that controlled the parameters of the Kansas Supreme Court decisions as a resultprotected white privilege. The legal both/and space created by the Brown II decisionprovided a mechanism through which the hegemonic practices of white privilege couldbe reinvented in ways that both satisfied the legal mandates of desegregation, andprotected white power and privilege. Finally, the discourse of desegregation protectedwhite privilege by allowing it to sidestep how race, class and gender intersect and impactequal educational opportunities and focus on numbers , not quality of education. As aresult, many impoverished children and children of color are left behind pleading for anequal education.