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I'm delighted to kick off our coverage of the Brown vs. Board of Education anniversary with Harvard professor Lani Guinier. Her most recent book was 'The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, and Transforming Democracy.' She joins us tonight from Boston. Lani Guinier, nice to see you.

Lani Guinier: It's nice to be here.

Tavis: I couldn't ask for a better person, I think, to kick off this series of conversations about Brown v. Board 50 years later than you. Let me start by asking you what you make of Brown v. Board 50 years later, first and foremost.

Guinier: Well, it remains, as you said, a legal icon. It had enormous psychological and symbolic significance and, in terms of constitutional law, it was groundbreaking. However, there are also a lot of reservations about the decision in terms of its practical effect.

Tavis: You have a fascinating notion that I want to jump right into as quickly as I can to get your thoughts on this about Brown v. Board 50 years later. The notion goes like this: race liberalism vs. race literacy. Race liberalism vs. race literacy. You could do a whole seminar on this. I've only got a few minutes, but jump into it for me and tell me what that notion is all about?

Guinier: Well, basically I argue that Brown was prompted by a rejection of scientific racism, which is good. In other words, the liberals behind Brown-- and it was a biracial elite, people who believed that prejudice was wrong and that prejudice was basically at the root of the problem confronting blacks in the United States and that prejudice was an individual problem--I'm arguing that those who thought racism in the United States was simply a function of individual prejudice misdiagnosed the problem and that we need to move from this idea that racism is a departure from otherwise sound principles to an understanding of the role that racism played in both orchestrating the way in which our country has evolved and also as an instrument of social control for whites, not just blacks. So, racism is really a structure of advantage based on race. It's not simply a function of individual bias about race.

Tavis: OK, in relation to the Brown v. Board decision that we now celebrate 50 years later, what's the significance of us having missed the mark, as it were, on this notion that you're now promulgating of race liberalism versus race literacy? So we missed it. What's the significance of missing that argument that you now make?

Guinier: Well, there are several important consequences. The first is that we ended up re-stigmatizing blacks because the decision was based on the notion that because of segregation, blacks' personality development was thwarted. And so we focused on the damage done to blacks, but we didn't look at the damage done to whites. And so it was a skewed, or imbalanced, approach that I'm arguing re-stigmatized blacks. And the second consequence is that we misunderstood the way in which whites rely on race to explain failure in a society that values individual success. So basically, the American dream promotes success as something that you get if you work hard and you play by the rules.

And what happens if you fail? Well, the American dream doesn't really have an explanation for failure other than that there's something wrong with you individually. Since you succeeded individually, you must fail individually. And racism becomes this really important explanatory variable to explain failure to whites, because when they don't want to accept the idea that they are failing individually, then they immediately point, or scapegoat, blacks and say blacks stole the American dream.

Brown essentially allowed that understanding to continue uninterrupted. So you had enormous white backlash to Brown because many poor working-class whites saw Brown and saw desegregation as downward economic mobility, forcing them to associate with blacks, because the decision focused almost exclusively on the damage done to blacks and not looking at the damage done to whites, again, giving whites this understanding--or misunderstanding, actually--of what they benefited from in terms of racism.

Tavis: As I hear you make the argument, which I'm fascinated by, I'm wondering whether or not, Lani, this conversation, 50 years later, would be different had the issue around which Brown was debated not been one of education, but one, say, of employment or housing discrimination or some other vestige--some other institution of racism that black folk were subjected to back in the day as well. I guess what I'm asking you is how uniquely different is the conversation 50 years later because the vehicle that we used to strike that blow--the tool, rather--that we used to strike the blow against the notion of separate but equal happened to be around the issue of education and not some other issue.

Guinier: That is a great question, because in some ways education allowed people to think that the issue of segregation was just a status injury. It was just about dignitary offenses and that what black people simply needed was the opportunity to be next to white people in order to learn. And as a result, it destroyed the kind of community that had been created by the schools. If this issue had been developed around the issue of, for example, employment or around the issue of housing, that's not about status; that's about resources. And ultimately, that's what was behind Jim Crow. And that's what we need to deal with even today because we focused so much on individual prejudice led by the racial liberals and didn't deal with the issue of redistribution of resources, not only to benefit blacks but also to benefit poor and working-class whites.

Tavis: I was giving a speech the other day about Brown v. Board myself, Lani, and I started to make the point, the words started coming out of my mouth, that 50 years later, racism is still the most intractable issue in America. I caught myself mid-sentence and stopped because I started to think maybe racism isn't the most intractable issue in America--maybe the education issue, the education crisis, 50 years later, is still the most intractable issue in America. I guess the question is whether or not those 2 things can be separated.

Guinier: Well, I think that race is at the heart of the problem, but I don't think it's just about race. I think you're right that we are miseducating a generation--several generations, actually--of whites as well as blacks because we're not teaching people how to think critically. Instead we're assuming that education is simply about acquiring information rather than pushing people to be able to use that information to really challenge the status quo in the ways in which it's disadvantaging them.

Tavis: What is, then, the unfinished agenda? I think everybody agrees--I said this to one of our guests the other night. I think everybody agrees, Lani, that there is an unfinished agenda of Brown v. Board. The debate is, what is the agenda, and how ought the agenda be completed? Your take on that?

Guinier: I think the agenda is racial and social justice. We have to go back and fix the problem that we should have fixed in the beginning. This is not simply about the status of blacks. It's also about the opportunities for economic and social upward mobility, as well as for poor and working-class whites.

My point about using race as an instrument of social control for whites I think has to be reinforced because, in many ways, poor and working-class whites are more aligned, in terms of their thinking, with affluent or wealthy whites. They think that their interests are combined, or that they have more in common with the person who's the president of their company than with their fellow employee, who is, you know, working on the assembly line just like they are. And as a result, poor and working-class whites, rather than joining with blacks to fight for economic opportunity, have joined instead with the people who are denying that opportunity to both whites and blacks.

Tavis: Do you think the Supreme Court might've underestimated the white backlash that there was going to be to Brown v. Board? And I ask that because as the first woman, first black woman, ever tenured at the Harvard Law School, you know better than I, Professor Guinier, that there was Brown 1 and Brown 2. And what Brown 2 really was about was saying to Southerners that you can take 'all deliberate speed'--take your time, essentially, rather--to institute what Brown v. Board 1 was really all about. My sense is that the Supreme Court had no idea of the white backlash that was going to come to that first decision.

Guinier: Well, they certainly didn't want to trigger any kind of backlash, and that's why they were acting so cautiously. I think that they made a mistake in terms of 'all deliberate speed' because 'all deliberate speed' ended up meaning no speed at all. It wasn't, in fact, until the Civil Rights movement got underway and until the Congress passed legislation backed by the mobilization of grassroots support that you really saw dramatic change in terms of opportunities for blacks both in voting--well, I shouldn't say both--in voting, in education, and in employment.

Tavis: Well, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that I've had to move through this conversation with all due deliberate speed because I'm only allowed so much time, and the good news is in the coming days, we'll talk more about this. But, again, no better person to start this series of conversations about Brown v. Board 50 years later than Lani Guinier. So, Professor Guinier, nice to have you on. We'll do it again sometime.

Guinier: OK. Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: My pleasure. Up next on this program, the amazing Miss Patti LaBelle. Stay with us.