Re: QED & Marshall McLuhan & Brown v. Board of Education

Kynn Bartlett asked:

> Can you create a web page that explains Brown vs. Topeka in a
> way that someone who is illiterate could understand?  I would 
> like to see such as an example of what you and others are talking
> about.

Here is a long description of a single image for this one.  I think you can
visualize this collage of cliches faster than I can draw it.

There is a picture of a stream of students coming to an officer at a
lectern the way that St. Peter is conventionally portrayed at the Pearly
Gates.  The single stream of arriving students is mixed race.  The two
streams coming out after this checkpoint are going to different
schoolhouses, and one stream is all white and the other stream is all
non-white.

Overprinted on this picture is the "not" symbol in the form of a red circle
with a diagonal bar through the center of the circle.

If you want, you can show this all in front of the U.S. Supreme Court with
the chief justice banging his gavel on the "not" circle, and holding the
constitution in his other hand.  But that's gravy.

Show this to people in Soweto.  In Djakarta, or anywhere; and ask them to
tell you the story in that picture.  Tell me, how many will give you the
same story?

Al

PS:  for my fellow left-brain-dependent suferers, one will do better
looking up this case if it is spelled "Brown v. Board of Education" even
'though it was the Topeka Board of Education.

Received on Tuesday, 8 June 1999 14:11:26 UTC