The Segregation Pandemic: Brown as Treatment or Placebo?William F. Tate IV, University of South CarolinaAbout the 2020 LectureA pandemic is an epidemic occurring on a scale that crosses the globe. A condition is not a pandemic merely because it exists in different regions of the world or results in the death of many people; it must also be infectious. In this lecture, Tate will argue that, over the past 500 years by way of mutually reinforcing regimes consisting of politicians, intellectuals, religious supporters, business leaders, and others, an ideology of racial biology "infected" the world, causing a disease to spread in global fashion. The disease fed on a rhetoric that assigned biological superiority to certain races. A pandemic of segregation resulted. In the United States, the Brown decision offered hope as a therapeutic. The lecture examines Brown through the lens of a medical model, while exploring its various pervasive effects on society and education.