LivingPlessey in the context ofBrown: Cultural politics and the rituals of separation

This article examines the rituals of exclusion present in some public schools in southern Georgia. While ostensibly desegregated nearly twenty years afterBrown, many of these schools still articulate the concept of “separate but equal” through ritualized curricular practices. Such acts fly in the face of the stated purposes of integrated public schools. The writer analyzes this phenomenon relative to ritual theory and poststructural conceptions of power. Working from the analytics of Foucault and the work of McLaren, the writer argues that regardless of the rationales of the stated discourse of inclusion, the discourse of exclusion and separation is clearly the dominant form of social practice. The writer then discusses the impact of these discursive practices relative to the continuing problem of self-imposed segregation in schools and posits some possible courses of action. Extended implications of these practices are illustrated through interviews concerning the symbolic inequalities extant throughout the region.