The Daytona Beach (Fla.) News Journal has an interesting article today on the history of integration, or lack of it, in that community by a historian at the local community college. I found it informative and generally well done but ultimately quite depressing in its casual reflection of a conventional wisdom, at least among liberals, that I think is not only wrong but also a major contribution to our ongoing polarization over racial issues.
Here is what was for me the key passage:
Unfortunately, the progress toward racial integration peaked during the 1980s and began reversing by the end of that decade as federal support for measures promoting integrated education and minority opportunities waned. Attacks on affirmative action programs and growing tolerance of segregated schools by the government have taken their toll.
That we now have a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, and an Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who have spent much of their careers opposing racial integration is indicative of the political climate that has fostered steadily increasing school segregation for the past 15 years.
What are the “measures promoting integrated education” that the federal goverment formerly supported but no longer does, contributing to the rise of “segregation”? It is clear from the context that the “segregated schools” that the author laments are not segregated by law or even school board policy, but it is not clear what policies would be produced by the intolerance of such “segregation” that he favors. On the basis of what evidence (there is none in the article) does the author claim that Rehnquist and Ashcroft “have spent much of their careers opposing racial integration”?
Since “affirmative action,” almost no matter how it is defined, would have no impact on “segregated” elementary and high schools and junior colleges, the focus of the article, the only thing that I can think of that governments could do to undo this “segregation” is school assignments by race and its inevitable corollary, busing. Does the author really believe that opposition to racial busing is opposition to “integration”?
Excuse me, but we tried busing. It led to “white flight” and the tragic equation for many whites of integration with “forced integration.”
ADDENDUM
For the next week or so, as we approach May 17 (the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision), you can expect a spate of “how far have we come?” articles similar to the above. (Sobering thought: we are now almost as far removed from Brown as Brown (1954) was from Plessy (1896)). Read them carefully for their assumption about what Brown prohibited and what it required, which is to say what it meant by “equality.”
The Seattle Times has a good example today of what you can expect to see: a long — and, again, interesting — article about the troubled history of post-Brown integration in Seattle.
First, notice these two similar-sounding but in substance quite different descriptions the article provided of what Brown actually decided:
1. Fifty years ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregating children by race was unconstitutional, creating in the minority children a “sense of inferiority (that) affects the motivation of the child to learn.”
2. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal,” ruling in five cases collectively known as Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
No. 1 identifies the unconstitutional culprit as a racially discriminatory policy of “segregating” students by race. No. 2 does not, suggesting that the mere fact of racial separation in the schools, no matter what the cause, is unconstitutional. No. 1 requires an end to racial discrimination. No. 2 requires racial assignments, busing, etc.
The No. 2 assumption is quite widespread, although usually not recognized for what it is. It is what allows people to say such things as this, from today’s Seattle Times article:
In 1977, Seattle carried out the legacy of Brown in becoming the first major city to adopt a comprehensive desegregation busing plan without a court order.
Good history does not always lead to good policy, but bad history — such as misunderstanding Brown, and even more fundamentally, the nature of American equality — does seem to lead to bad policy with depressing regularity. It certainly did here: as a result of busing, American schools are much less integrated today than they otherwise would have been.
