Ethnic Identity Development of African Americans: Experiences in Search of a Paradigm‪.‬

Introduction A significant, and compelling, part of the argument that Thursgood Marshall used in the landmark case of Brown Vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, was that the segregated school system had damaged and was continuing to damage African American children by inflicting them with a negative self-concept (Cross, 1991). By the time of the Brown case, "Negro self-hatred," as the negative self-concept was called, was firmly established in the scientific literature (Kardiner & Ovesey, 1951; Myrdal, 1944). Through his expert witness, Kenneth Clark, himself a believer in the Negro self-hatred paradigm, Marshall argued that as Black culture offered no redeeming qualities, Black children needed integrated schools to, among other things, deliver them from their self-hatred by putting them in the company of Whites.