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PAGE 30
85TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 News World Communications, Inc.
The Washington Times
June 24, 1997, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: Part A; NATION; Pg. A4
LENGTH: 667 words
622-1206
HEADLINE: NAACP to air disputes over mandatory busing;
Internal dissent, previously quashed, now open
BYLINE: Ralph Z. Hallow; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BODY:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in a
historic move, will permit the public airing of its long-simmering internal
doubts about forced busing, President Kweisi Mfume said yesterday.
The organization will formally debate the issue at the NAACP national
convention in Pittsburgh next month, Mr. Mfume told The Washington Times.
"We believe a dialogue and discussion in Pittsburgh on forced busing does
not change our course, Mr. Mfume said, but added, "Busing is but one tool to
achieve desegregation of the public schools. Housing, new-school construction,
magnet schools and gifted-and-talented programs are among the others.'
"If you have a predominately black school system, then forced busing is not
the issue, but whether we can get enough resources into it to make sure there is
equal opportunity, Mr. Mfume said.
NAACP Chairman Myrlie Evers-Williams expects the delegates to vote on
whether to change the 88-year-old organization's advocacy of public-school
integration.
Michael Meyers, a former assistant national director of the NAACP, said no
issue as important as this one is permitted to come to the floor for open debate
unless the leadership wants to change policy.
Mr. Meyers called the move a sellout of integrationist principles on which
the civil rights organization was founded.
"The leadership of the NAACP has capitulated to the forces of black
nationalism and black separatism," said Mr. Meyers, who now heads the New York
Civil Rights Coalition. "It has been occurring privately behind closed doors
for years. This breaks it wide open now. They' 11 vote to change it in
Pittsburgh. It's a fait accompli."
Mr. Mfume vehemently disagreed, saying, "It's definitely not a fait
accompli. The NAACP stands by its founding principles of a single, integrated
society for all of America.
PAGE
31
The Washington Times, June 24, 1997
"We believe we can still support integrative policies and at the same time
fight to guarantee educational quality for students within the public schools.
Public shifts in attitudes on race and changing demographics periodically
require a careful review of policies and positions in an effort to measure their
effect versus their intent. "
Until now, the NAACP has not permitted internal dissent on segregation to
surface without recrimination. Over the last two years, the group has dismissed
a branch president in New Jersey and another in New York for publicly
questioning the utility of busing to achieve integration.
Asked if there would be more such dismissals, Mr. Mfume said, "I think you
will see a great deal more tolerance with respect to a divergence of opinion.
Every possible future situation should be measured case by case and judged on
its merits. 11
Opponents of forced busing say it has harmed black and white communities,
causing "white flight" to the suburbs and leaving many inner cities
predominantly black with fewer job opportunities. Meanwhile, the educational
performance and safety of inner-city public schools have declined precipitously.
"The NAACP would be smart to end its support of forced busing because it
would show the NAACP is in touch with the true feelings of the black community,"
said William Keyes, a black critic of forced busing who was a senior policy
adviser in the Reagan White house.
"For more than 25 years, most black people have known that the best way to
educate their children is in schools within the community where a support system
exists, " Mr. Keyes said. "The only thing busing has done is take the kids away
from their natural support system.'
Mr. Meyers said the NAACP had stopped bringing school desegregation suits
some time ago because, the group claimed, it was broke.
Mr. Meyers said the last three NAACP chairmen have sought to reverse the
organization's dwindling membership and resources by trying to attract young
blacks who were not alive during the civil-rights movement and who identify with
black separatist philosophies and leaders.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 24, 1997
PAGE
28
62ND STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
June 25, 1997, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 19; Column 1; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 570 words
HEADLINE: Saving the N.A.A.C.P.'s Soul
BYLINE: By Denton L. Watson; Denton L. Watson, a former public relations
director for the N.A.A.C.P., is author of "Lion in the Lobby, Clarence Mitchell
Jr.'s Struggle for the Passage of Civil Rights Laws."
DATELINE: FREEPORT, N.Y.
BODY:
Twenty-five years ago, when the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People was at its influential peak, its leaders looked forward to the
day when the United States would no longer need an N.A.A.C.P. The nation's
endemic racism clearly shows that that day is far away. Yet the organization is
now talking of abandoning the fight for integration of public schools that had
defined its very soul.
Myrlie Evers-Williams, the group's chairwoman, recently said that she
expected delegates to the N.A.A.C.P. convention next month in Pittsburgh to
consider modifying the organization's stand on integration. Kweisi Mfume, the
group's president, tried to soften those comments yesterday by saying the
N.A.A.C.P. remained committed to an integrated society. But his statement only
confirmed the confusion on the issue. Ms. Evers-Williams's comment indicates
that she is willing to accept the notion that many black Americans are, like the
biblical Israelites, tired of the struggle for freedom.
Disillusioned with integration in public schools and overwhelmed by the
conservative onslaught on liberal social policies, some African-Americans are
ready to revert to the separate-but-equal doctrine that until 1954 gave
constitutional sanction to second-class citizenship for the race.
Such a seismic change in the N.A.A.C.P.'s policy not only would change the
constructive nature of the organization but also would deprive the nation of its
best hope for mobilizing political pressure to attack problems that continue to
destroy the lives of many African-Americans.
The N.A.A.C.P. needs to learn from its own history.
In the 1930's, for example, when Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the
organization, shifted from advocating integration to embracing self-segregation
for blacks because the N.A.A.C.P. was encountering fierce opposition to its
policies, Walter White, the group's executive secretary, promptly blocked his
efforts and forced his resignation. About the same time, White also defused the
demands by black intellectuals that the organization abandon its anti-lynching
and other legal campaigns and instead make economic development for blacks a
priority.
PAGE
29
The New York Times, June 25, 1997
Twenty years later the Supreme Court resoundingly vindicated White's vision
in Brown V. Board of Education. That decision, in turn, made it possible for the
N.A.A.C.P. to lead the fight for civil rights laws -- laws that have benefited
those same African-Americans who now want the organization to abandon its tried
and tested course.
The problem that has caused so many blacks to be SO cynical about the
nation's commitment to full equality is the N.A.A.C.P.'s inability to develop
new programs to combat systemic discrimination.
Clarence Mitchell Jr., the late director of the N.A.A.C.P.'s Washington
bureau, warned in 1977 that the civil rights battlefront had shifted from the
South to the North. And, he said, "some of those who were with us before now
realize the problem is on their doorstep, and they are becoming selfish."
The incipient white backlash that so worried Mr. Mitchell and others has now
mushroomed into a conservative counter-revolution. Rather than running from the
new challenges, however, the N.A.A.C.P. needs to reaffirm the historical wisdom
of those like Medgar Evers, Ms. Evers-Williams's late husband, in pursuing the
long and bitter struggle to give America a truly integrated and better society.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 25, 1997
PAGE 23
22ND STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
July 1, 1997, Tuesday, ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. A6
LENGTH: 428 words
HEADLINE: A GOOD EDUCATION IS A STUDENT'S RIGHT
BYLINE: BY LORETTA GREEN; Knight Ridder Newspapers
BODY:
True or false?
The segregated school I attended was better than an integrated school.
The segregated school was worse than an integrated school.
The answer to both is ''true'' - and false. No one can fail the questions
because the reality is that there were both good and bad aspects of being in a
racially segregated school.
I hated opening my worn textbook in the fall and seeing that it was a discard
from the ' white' ' schools.
But I loved singing ''No Hiding Place'' for the class and knowing everyone
there knew it.
Now the NAACP has a tiger by the tail as it grapples with the idea of
abandoning its long-standing commitment to school integration.
The NAACP may well have been caught in a time warp of the old Brown V. Board
of Education of Topeka school desegregation case in which the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that ''in the field of education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has
no place'' because segregated facilities were found to be inherently unequal.
It was critical then to have that 1950s legislation. But today's black
Americans are moving on and recognizing that the mere act of busing children out
of the nation's inner cities will not by itself make them learn.
Sitting beside white students for the first time as a college freshman didn't
make me smarter. Good equipment, teachers and academic discipline did.
Children can learn anywhere if they have the support of parents, community
and teachers who expect them to learn and give them good facilities, curriculum
and resources.
It makes sense to take the energy being expended to integrate schools and use
it to make inner city schools better.
PAGE 24
News & Record (Greensboro, NC), July 1, 1997
The struggle to integrate the South, including its schools, was won by blood.
As a child, hearing of the integration efforts, I could not help feeling that
it would be wonderful to do arithmetic with privileged Americans who drank
different water from fountains and were allowed to play in the city park.
But some ''colored'' school alumni say modern-day schools integrated by
busing have flunked their test. Students suffer isolation and teachers'
expectations of them are low.
But it is one thing to wish that inner city schools could reach parity and
quite another to have it happen. Students should be able to go to school in
their neighborhoods, but every student is entitled to a good education.
We must not fail them.
Loretta Green is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Write to her at:
750 Ridder Park Dr., San Jose, Calif. 95190, or by e-mail at
LGreen (at)sjmercury.com.
LOAD-DATE: July 1, 1997
PAGE
21
18TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
July 3, 1997, Thursday, FIVE STAR LIFT EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. 06B
LENGTH: 558 words
HEADLINE: BACK TO 'SEPARATE BUT EQUAL'?
BODY:
It would be a shame if the nation's largest mass civil rights group, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, withdrew its support
for integration of public schools.
Support for an integrated society has been a core NAACP belief. For the
organization to turn its back on this ideal would be devastating, especially at
a time when the courts have largely abdicated their role in pushing for
desegregation and when much of society seems willing to abandon an idea it never
fully embraced.
NAACP chairwoman Myrlie Evers-Williams brought up the issue when she said the
group would reassess its view at its national meeting in Pittsburgh this month.
Fortunately, NAACP president Kweisi Mfume softened her statement. He said the
NAACP could talk about bringing educational quality to mostly black schools
without giving up on its "founding proposition of a single, fully integrated
society, for all of America."
The NAACP's position has particular importance in St. Louis where the local
chapter spearheaded the school desegregation suit. The rights of the black
children could be jeopardized if the federal judges now deciding the fate of the
program think its backers have lost their will.
Dr. James DeClue adamantly says they haven't. The head of the NAACP's
education committee sharply criticized Ms. Evers-Williams. "I think it was an
inappropriate statement, Mr. DeClue said in an interview. "She's essentially
saying, we're tired of fighting SO let's go back to the old situation of
separate but equal. But that's illegal."
Admittedly, there are reasons that blacks might be disillusioned by school
integration. They usually bear the burden of riding the buses. They sometimes
get a cool reception at the end of the bus ride. They have a harder time
participating in extracurricular activities. Their parents have trouble getting
to school functions. And some black leaders believe busing undermines urban
neighborhoods.
It's demeaning that blacks still have to plead for desegregation. And it's
insulting to say that a black child has to sit next to a white child to learn.
Justice Clarence Thomas said it passionately when he wrote, "It never ceases to
amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is
predominantly black must be inferior.'
But a recent national study of remedial education showed that poor children
who go to predominantly middle-class schools do much better than poor children
PAGE 22
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 3, 1997
who go to schools where most children are poor.
The St. Louis school desegregation plan bears this out. Black children who
attend suburban and magnet schools are graduating from high school at twice the
rate of students who stay behind in the all-black schools. Even though more than
$ 100 million has been spent improving all-black city schools, test scores of
12th graders fell between 1990 and 1995.
If Attorney General Jay Nixon succeeds in bringing a precipitous end to the
desegregation plan, there will be more all-black classrooms with less money.
Then the number of black and white students with a chance to get to know each
other will plummet. We'll soon be back to separate and unequal.
Maybe the courts will order up this prescription for educational disaster.
But that's no reason for the grand old dame of the civil rights movement to
throw in the towel.
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: July 3, 1997
PAGE
19
17TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 The Advertiser Company
The Montgomery Advertiser
July 03, 1997, Thursday
SECTION: Op Ed; Pg. 15A
LENGTH: 598 words
HEADLINE: INTEGRATION FAILED TO PRODUCE WHAT MANY PROPONENTS HOPED
BYLINE: By SALIM MUWAKKIL
BODY:
Integration: The word that became the mantra of the civil-rights movement has
been falling out of favor among the very people who used to support it.
The group that inserted integration into the public discourse -- the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - - is stepping away
from its traditional support of public school integration.
The NAACP adopted integration as official policy in the early 1940s, when it
began pushing for an integrated military. And the nation's oldest civil rights
group also led the legal battle that broke the back of school segregation in the
Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling of 1954. Thus, for many, the
NAACP's move away from integration is akin to heresy.
TO BE FAIR, the group has yet to take any official action. Speculation about
impending policy changes was churned up by a New York Times article detailing
internal debates on the issue of school desegregation. But NAACP President
Kweisi Mfume said the Times' story exaggerated the significance of the group's
internal debates.
There's no denying that the issue has provoked conflict within the group,
however; internal differences regarding school desegregation have forced the
resignations of at least two branch presidents.
And among African-Americans outside the NAACP, the ideal of integration is
even more endangered. For some critics, the four-syllable word may as well be a
four-letter one. "It's obscene how this concept of integration has been used to
dilute black power and delude black people," said Conrad Worrill, chair of the
National Black United Front.
Black nationalists such as Worrill condemn the quest for integration as a
quest for fool's gold. By eliminating black control of schools and other
community institutions, they argue, desegregation served to erode the natural
foundation of political leverage in the struggle for black power and autonomy.
OPPOSITION TO integration is growing among African-Americans across the
ideological spectrum.
Conservative African-Americans, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
have long expressed doubts about the value of school integration as effective
social policy. Not only do they decry federal intervention into local issues of
education, they oppose the policy for reasons of race as well.
PAGE 20
The Montgomery Advertiser, July 03, 1997
Integration's unintended consequences have also soured many liberal
African-Americans on the policy. Desegregation policies allowed many working-and
middle-class blacks to leave ghetto neighborhoods to seek greener pastures. But
they left behind a community bereft of the human and economic resources they
provided; the declining quality of life in these communities, many argue, is a
direct consequence of this black "brain drain. "
At the same time, although many white Americans may pay obeisance to the
ideal of integration, most have shunned its practical application. Black and
white Americans still live in rigidly segregated worlds.
"NO GROUP IN the history of the United States has ever experienced the
sustained high level of residential segregation that has been imposed on blacks
in large American cities for the past 50 years," write Douglas Massey and Nancy
Denton in their book "American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the
Underclass.
"
The accelerated decline of these increasingly isolated communities is
provoking a search for new strategies. The alluring promise of integration may
have misled the black community. And rather than continuing to give lip service
to this tarnished ideal, more and more black activists are abandoning it.
LOAD-DATE: July 08, 1997
PAGE
17
15TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
July 04, 1997, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A21
LENGTH: 775 words
HEADLINE:
Reason for Awkwardness
BYLINE: William Raspberry
BODY:
A droll southern gentleman of my acquaintance once spoke of an awkward
situation that had him "feeling like a bastard at a family reunion."
It's a feeling I suspect many black Americans share on the Fourth of July.
We'd rather be here than not; where else, after all, would we be? And yet we're
sure that many of our fellow celebrants see our presence at this American
birthday party as faintly embarrassing - - as not quite legitimate.
We know the celebration wasn't planned with us in mind. But, then, there are
lots of other Americans who weren't on the minds of the authors of the
Declaration of Independence. Should they feel illegitimate, too? Or does our
descent from slavery make our awkwardness special? How much of the awkwardness
is in our own minds and how much the result of being treated as outsiders? Is it
a permanent condition?
Questions like these have haunted us for most of our sojourn in this country.
They were implicit in W. E. B. Du Bois's reflections, nearly a century ago, on
the "twoness" of being black in America. They are reflected today in Tiger
Woods's self-designation as Cablinasian -- and in our reaction to it.
Do we declare ourselves simply American, and risk the pain of rejection by
those who arrogate unto themselves the right to tell us no? Or do we retreat to
the comfort - - and limits -- of our blackness?
Complicating all of this is the fact that a large number of white Americans
find the whole thing self-pitying and silly. Since white people don't have to
spend much time thinking about their whiteness (except, perhaps, during certain
late hours in certain parts of town), many of them think African Americans spend
too much time thinking about our nonwhiteness. Some suggest that if we'd just
behave like ordinary Americans -- if we'd drop our hyphens, our sensitivity and
our demands for affirmative action, for instance most of the problems we
dwell on would just go away. (Those who think this way should have seen Tom
Brokaw's NBC special last week on the Chicago suburb of Matteson, where whites
are fleeing from the influx of middle-class blacks. It might have occurred to
them that race as a way of organizing society and distributing benefits is not
our invention.)
Still, we're not sure we'd get rid of race even if we could. We don't like
being outsiders, but we fear letting go of our racial identity enough to become
simply American.
PAGE
18
The Washington Post, July 04, 1997
I once described America as comprising a series of racial, ethnic and
religious islands. Americanization, in this analogy, is the process of leaving
the islands and joining the mainland.
We've watched over the years as the residents of one island after another
have gone through the process. The Irish island, the German island, the
Scandinavian islands, the Mediterranean islands -- all have become essentially
depopulated. They remain, if at all, as a sort of vacation home to visit on
special occasions like St. Patrick's Day or Oktoberfest.
Ah, but most of that depopulation was of islands with European labels -- that
is, islands populated by people whose white skin made it easy to blend in.
But in recent years, we've seen the gradual depopulation of islands bearing
such labels as Chinese and Japanese and Vietnamese islands whose inhabitants
are distinctly nonwhite. We still see a few Chinatowns, of course, but they are
tourist attractions, or else they exist primarily for the old folk. When the old
folk die, so will these ethnic islands.
Do we believe the same thing can happen for us?
How could there be any doubt? Isn't the answer as obvious as Colin and Tiger
and Oprah? Aren't blacks leaving their ethnic island and becoming simply
American all the time? And won't the process inevitably lead to the island's
depopulation?
The response from the pessimists among us is: Not necessarily. Of course "the
system" will let a few blacks succeed -- particularly those who opt for
assimilation at the expense of their left-behind brothers -- but don't ever kid
yourself that the system intends depopulation.
Suppose, for instance, that major-league baseball never had any purpose of
real integration but only wanted enough "diversity" to sell black folk a few
tickets and keep the NAACP from raising hell. In such a case, would Jackie
Robinson and the first dozen black players who followed into the majors have
been heroes? Or would they have been traitors for devastating the Negro Leagues?
As it turns out, baseball really did achieve integration, at least on the
playing field. Can the same thing happen for the entirety of America's black
island?
It's a question only white people can answer.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
COUNTRY: UNITED STATES;
LOAD-DATE: July 04, 1997
PAGE
15
13TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
The Plain Dealer
July 4, 1997 Friday, FINAL / ALL
SECTION: NORTHEAST OHIO; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 428 words
HEADLINE: LOCAL NAACP AFFIRMS STAND ON INTEGRATION
BYLINE: By APRIL McCLELLAN-COPELAND; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
BODY:
The Cleveland chapter of the NAACP has reaffirmed its support for
integration of schools at a time when the national NAACP is rethinking its
position
The NAACP traditionally has supported integration as a way to improve
education for black children. But at the upcoming convention in Pittsburgh July
11-17, members will discuss whether it is time for the organization to change
its stance to strengthening majority-black schools.
The Cleveland chapter's decision, announced yesterday, was made Tuesday, the
day after the Cleveland School District and the state filed a motion in U.S.
District Court seeking a declaration of "unitary status." If granted, the
declaration would release the schools from the court's desegregation order.
The order was issued in 1978 as the result of a lawsuit filed by the local
chapter of the NAACP.
Tuesday's decision was made by the chapter's executive board, which voted
unanimously to continue supporting the "concept of integration both inside and
outside school classrooms."
"We cannot support unitary status, and I urge the national organization not
to change its position on school integration," said George L. Forbes, president
of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP. "I fully support the position we have
taken.
Lawyer James Hardiman, a local NAACP board member who represents the
plaintiffs in the Cleveland school desegregation case, said: "This is not only
symbolic, but consistent with the NAACP being the driving force behind school
desegregation nationally and locally.'
Last week in the midst of the national debate, Forbes had said it might be
time for the NAACP to focus less on integration and more on providing quality
education for black children. He said busing, while well intentioned, had not
worked.
Forbes said he was contacted last week by the national board to speak at the
convention in favor of a change. However, at the time, he had not decided how he
would vote if a resolution was presented.
PAGE 16
The Plain Dealer, July 4, 1997
But Forbes made a decision this week after Cleveland school officials
requested "unitary status," which would end court control by July 1, 2000.
Forbes said that despite the end of court-imposed cross-town busing in 1996,
the overall quality of education has not improved. So to support a change in the
NAACP's national stance on integration, he said, would be a vote in support of
unitary status.
"I can't do that in light of what's happening in Cleveland," Forbes said.
"It's unfair to the kids. If they end the desegregation lawsuit, they will end
it by themselves, without our assistance."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 5, 1997
PAGE
11
7TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 Gannett Company, Inc.
Gannett News Service
July 5, 1997, Saturday, FINAL EDITION
LENGTH: 1402 words
HEADLINE: New ideas needed for failed urban school integration efforts
BYLINE: RICHARD WHITMIRE; Gannett News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
WASHINGTON - - In Denver, Seattle and scores of other cities, the
story is the same: Forced busing has failed to improve test results,
school districts are winning releases from desegregation orders,
parents want neighborhood schools.
With the resegregation of America's urban schools well under way,
many black parents -- those who have borne the greatest burdens
of busing want the great experiment halted and a return to
neighborhood schools.
With that in mind, the NAACP will reconsider its position on busing
at its national convention in Pittsburgh July 12.
"I commend the NAACP for taking a second look at this historic
position," said Aaron Gray, a black minister who won the presidency
of Denver's school board on a platform of ending busing.
The good side of years of busing in Denver, said Gray, is an agreement
to funnel extra resources to the students who need help the most.
Busing also produced devastating middle-class flight, no improvement
in test scores and an estrangement of parents from local schools,
said Gray.
"After 20-some years of busing for integration, the gap between
minority and Anglo students was not closing,' he said.
The NAACP is split on generational lines, said Gray: the veterans
of the civil rights wars want to stay the course; and young, black
parents want to trade busing for a Denver-style solution -- neighborhood
schools with souped-up resources.
Said Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a recent decision
further hampering desegregation: "It never ceases to amaze me
that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is
predominantly black must be inferior."
America's separate-but-equal doctrine, first ruled unconstitutional
in 1954, appears to have come full circle to a new policy:
separate-but-equitable
PAGE
12
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, July 5, 1997
While they sound alike, there are differences. The former was
born of racism, the latter arises from hard-fought agreements
to share the wealth.
"They don't strike me as the same things, said integration
advocate Mike Casserly from the Council of the Great City Schools.
"But, in some ways, it's a sadder argument because it solidifies
the separation."
Although several hundred cities still carry out segregation remedies,
school busing in America has reached a tortured stalemate -- busing
proponents cannot point to a solid success story, and opponents
cannot point to an urban school district that is successfully
educating large populations of poor children.
Most Americans would cite the 1954 Brown VS. Board of Education
as the landmark case in school desegregation, where the Supreme
Court struck down separate-but-equal. However, the key decision
was the more obscure 1974 Milliken V. Bradley, where the court
stopped busing at the Detroit city line.
Exempting the suburbs from court-ordered busing unleashed a flood
of middle-class flight, leaving many American cities with an ever-dwindling
number of whites available for mixing.
Faced with white flight and black middle-class flight, and in
many cases a surge of Latinos into the cities, busing proved pointless.
Some examples:
- - In the midst of the busing years in Denver, the Latino population,
mostly exempted from busing orders, climbed to nearly half the
entire student body.
"We had the bizarre situation where whites and blacks continued
to be bused, shipped across town and losing school time, when
there were 10 or 12 elementary schools where nine out of 10 students
were Hispanic and nobody was saying a word," said district spokesman
Mark Stevens.
The Denver busing extracted a huge social cost, said Gray.
"I have come to believe that one of the downsides of busing was
kids lost a sense of family, community and neighborhood. One reason
you had the problems of gangs, graffiti and vandalism was that
for kids, it's not theirs."
-- In 1972 when the first busing order was issued in Prince George's
County, a middle-class Maryland suburb of Washington, the student
population was 80 percent white. Today, 73 percent of the students
are black and school officials want to end the busing and return
to neighborhood schools.
One problem facing officials there: Upper middle-class black parents
are leaving the county to seek better schools in a neighboring
PAGE
13
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, July 5, 1997
county.
During 20 years of voluntary busing in Seattle, the white population
dropped to 41 percent from 66 percent.
Seattle's new superintendent is John Stanford, a retired African-American
Army general who moved swiftly to end busing, which he said did
nothing to improve test scores.
The new priority, he said, is keeping middle-class families in
Seattle.
Said schools spokeswoman Dorothy Dubia: "We want to improve test
scores and improve safety in schools. When we accomplish those
things, we will attract more students of all types."
- - Busing advocate Robert Crain from Columbia University's Teachers
College picked Louisville, Ky., as his top candidate for a busing
success story.
What is different about Louisville is the absence of white flight,
due mostly to merging the nearly all-white Jefferson County schools
with Louisville city schools, which were about 50 percent black
at the time.
The good news in Louisville is that, more than 20 years after
the merger, nearly 70 percent of students in the combined district
are white. The bad news is the test gap between white students
and blacks has widened over the last four years.
Plus, an analysis by the Louisville Courier-Journal showed black
parents pay a far higher price for racial integration. In the
interest of maintaining racial balance, black students are more
likely to be turned away from neighborhood schools and local magnet
schools, the newspaper said.
Despite the stalemate, busing proponents argue the NAACP should
never reconsider its pro-integration position.
"It would be catastrophic," said Jay Heubert from the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
Integration, said Heubert and other proponents, still offers the
best chance for both black children and an integrated society.
Giving resegregation official sanction, he said, is unthinkable.
"I don't know of a single urban district where they have more
than a handful of schools with poor children where those students
are doing well by any traditional measure," said Heubert.
The expert who usually testifies against busing is David Armor,
a George Washington University professor who just completed a
book titled "Forced Justice."
PAGE
14
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, July 5, 1997
Forced busing can claim some credit for reducing segregation,
said Armor, especially in several Southern cities. The success
stories, such as Charlotte, N.C., were districts that started
with large white populations, Armor said.
Desegregation failed fastest, he said, in cities such as Detroit,
Birmingham and Cleveland, where the districts had closer to a
50-50 balance. In those cities, white flight was immediate.
Busing failed to produce any educational benefits, said Armor.
"I don't know of a single, large-scale desegregation case where
there's been a substantial improvement in test scores,' said
Armor.
Whatever the NAACP decision, it probably won't make any difference.
School districts are moving quickly to shed their desegregation
orders, shifts in minority populations continue to make a mockery
of quarter century-old busing policies, and young black parents
continue to ask for neighborhood schools.
Many black parents also are enthusiastically embracing charter
schools -- half the students in the nation's 428 charter schools
are minorities.
Board member Julian Bond doubts the NAACP will back away from
advocating integrated schools -- "I just don't see that happening."
What may emerge, said Bond, are new strategies for school districts
that have become majority black.
Both blacks and whites willing to resegregate are missing the
larger point, warned Columbia University's Crain. Test scores,
he said, should not be the central focus of school integration.
"Going to integrated schools makes you want to live an integrated
life," said Crain.
Integrated schools, for example, teach black students how to survive
in mostly white colleges, boosting their graduation rates, he
said.
Said Crain: "If you want to integrate society you have to integrate
schools.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 07, 1997
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Copyright 1997 The Dallas Morning News
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
July 6, 1997, Sunday, HOME FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SUNDAY READER; Pg. 1J
LENGTH: 1263 words
HEADLINE: INTEGRATING PUBLIC SCHOOLS: YES;
As the NAACP reconsiders its its stance, two civil-rights experts debate whether
desegregation in education is still important
BYLINE: Michael Meyers, Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
BODY:
Later this month, delegates to the annual convention of the NAACP, the
nation's oldest and largest civil-rights group, will debate whether that once
venerable organization should continue to pursue the integration of public
schools. The alternative, detractors of school busing contend, is to put the
bulk of the NAACP's resources into improving the inner-city schools attended by
the masses of black children.
Until recently, the NAACP has been a staunch defender of integration. The
spreading influence of black nationalism, however, has reached its ranks. With
so many blacks proclaiming, "We don't need to sit next to whites to get a
quality education, the demise of integration seems at hand, especially if the
NAACP gives in. So the question is, "Is integration still an important goal,
even if blacks say they don't want it?"
The answer is yes. It deserves endorsement, notwithstanding the wishes of
cabals in society who resist it, and the courts' waning resolve to foster it.
The courts have refused to interpret the federal and state constitutions'
equal-protection clauses in ways that could provide for meaningful, effective
remedies to racially-isolated urban school districts and resegregated Southern
school systems. But the courts did not start the integration movement. That
was always a grassroots effort, when litigants presented their claims of
discrimination to judges.
If the civil-rights groups stop bringing such cases, the courts will have no
inducement to rethink the barriers they've imposed on school desegregation.
Indeed, we are in danger - if even the NAACP is serious about its policy switch
- of ending Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's dream of a single nation, free of
racial segregation.
America is supposed to stand for racial equality, Dr. King taught us. It was
that principle, and an abiding faith in the Constitution, that brought the
NAACP's Thurgood Marshall before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue that its
infamous "separate but equal" doctrine of 1896 was wrong. Segregration,
Marshall and a host of social scientists said, erodes the moral fiber of our
nation and makes a mockery of its democratic institutions. In a real way,
segregation teaches our citizens the very opposite of the skills they need to
navigate into the 21st century - a world where "race" should have no more
significance than hair or eye color.
PAGE
5
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, July 6, 1997
Schools play a special role in preparing children for democracy.
If they, like our neighborhoods, are separated by race - as "black" and
"white" and "theirs" and "ours" - children will inevitably learn that
opportunity is color-coded. The persistence of such a dual society and system
of schools will make a mockery of laws that purport to convey everyone's
equality and that ours is an open society.
Moreover, segregated schools and segregated neighborhoods instruct our
citizenry in the "inevitability" of a racially structured society. They make it
obvious to both minority- and majority-group children that American institutions
don't reflect what we say they should.
Segregation distorts and perverts the most basic values of American freedom
and justice. This is what was meant when the Supreme Court - citing "modern
social science" - said in 1954 that enforced segregation in the public schools
harms black children's psychological development in ways "unlikely ever to be
undone."
Interestingly, the Supreme Court, while acting unanimously to strike down
"separate but equal" public schools, did not say what social science revealed
about segregation's harm to majority-group children.
Segregation creates in whites moral conflict and confusion and gives them a
false sense of superiority over other human beings - a status that many seek to
preserve, either wittingly or unwittingly, as they oppose - or flee from -
desegregated schools and communities. Of course, all progress toward a society
where "racial distinctions" are overcome depends on the achievement, first, of
desegregation.
Yet, the courts have limited their involvement with desegregation to
situations where agents of the states intentionally practiced racial
discrimination. In fact, whenever the federal courts have ordered desegregation
or busing, they've done so only after plaintiffs, represented by the Justice
Department and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, showed government-induced
segregation in the schools.
As a remedy, courts have required the redrawing of school district lines,
changes in school locations and transfer policies and the reassignment of
students. Busing is a tool imposed to correct a pervasive pattern of
segregation, caused by purposeful, extensive acts of government agents.
However, busing per se was not designed or intended to either raise academic
achievement levels or to be the express to an integrated society.
Achieving high-performance schools and an integrated society will take much
more in terms of human effort and coordinated strategy. Indeed, when Dr. King
and other civil-rights figures marched for integration in the 1950s and 1960s,
they realized that desegregation needed to be a halfway point, not a stopping
point, or people would never proceed to dismantle in its entirety a system of
racial privilege and subjugation.
Racism, they surmised, was an entrenched habit - a complex, difficult,
tenacious foe of individual freedom which required the commitment of vision,
will and resources to defeat. Unfortunately, many civil-rights organizations,
now perhaps including the NAACP, have raised the white flag of surrender.
PAGE
6
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, July 6, 1997
They are retreating behind the color line where separate but equal is not
only acceptable again, but fashionable. This retreat is as philosophic as it is
strategic. They're not just frustrated by barriers to integration; they no
longer desire to cross over.
They think that education is strictly about the three "r's" and not about
human interaction. Their black nationalism is matched by whites' indifference
and fear - reflected in the attitude that their quality of life is measured by
their distance from dysfunctional, largely black school systems.
In their separate schools and communities, whites and blacks continue to
learn stereotypes about each other and show contempt for "those people" across
the racial divide. Historically, the NAACP has drawn from such alienation moral
clarity and resolve to persevere against segregation, maintaining that
segregation perpetuated racial caste, whatever the qualitative similarities in
facilities or services to a particular school or community.
Freeing all people of their racial phobias and superstitions was such a high
priority that the NAACP often battled against "de facto" segregation, as well as
segregation sanctioned by law. Now, buffeted by demands for relevance to poor
blacks in their "own" communities and schools, the NAACP is in danger of
capitulating to cynics and racial separatists. Those weary souls compromise
with racism and adopt a black pride version of it, thereby resurrecting the
discredited separate but equal doctrine. Is this a course that the visionaries of
the civil rights movement would have counseled? No way. The modern NAACP's
not-so-subtle invitation to the nation to "go slow" on school desegregation
opens the gates for sugarcoating a widescale retrenchment on remedies to
society's racial divides. In this connection, the NAACP would do well to heed
the advice of one of its former lawyers who said, "One does not feed sugar to a
cavity.'
Michael Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 7, 1997
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5TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 The Dallas Morning News
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
July 6, 1997, Sunday, HOME FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SUNDAY READER; Pg. 1J
LENGTH: 1340 words
HEADLINE: INTEGRATING PUBLIC SCHOOLS: NO;
As the NAACP reconsiders its support of the policy, two experts debate whether
desegregation is still important
BYLINE: Glenn C. Loury, Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
BODY:
The Harvard Project on School Desegregation issued a report several months
ago finding that racial segregation in the nation's public schools has increased
steadily over the past 15 years.
According to the report, segregation is now greater than at any time since
the era of "forced busing" to achieve racial balance in the public schools was
launched by the Supreme Court with its 1971 decision, Swann vs.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
And the NAACP, set to begin its weeklong national convention Friday in
Pittsburgh, plans to consider a change in its policy emphasizing school
desegregation. The evidence of growing segregation - and a decreasing emphasis
on changing it in the African-American community - has set off an alarm among
other civil-rights activists who are concerned that it must imply a decrease of
educational opportunity for black youngsters. I believe those concerns are
misplaced.
This is not to say that all is well with the education of African-American
youngsters. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a comprehensive
effort to test the knowledge of a representative national sample of primary and
secondary school students, has revealed a widening gap between the educational
achievements of white and black students over the past decade.
Moreover, as Columbia University education scholar Linda Darling-Hammond has
documented in a number of studies, racial minority students do not enjoy the
same level of access to qualified teachers, courses, curriculum materials and
equipment as do white students.
But while great disparities do exist in the quality of public education -
black and Latino students in central cities are especially poorly served - a
renewed emphasis on busing to create racially integrated schools is the wrong
response. Rather, achieving true equality of opportunity for the poorest public
school students means securing for them better teachers, smaller class sizes,
longer school hours and greater support services in the schools they attend. If
these things can be achieved, minority youngsters will be well served, whatever
the racial composition of their schools might happen to be.
Of course, as should go without saying, we must not permit any public school
district to discriminate on the basis of race, or to actively promote racial
PAGE
9
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, July 6, 1997
segregation. Other things being equal, and where possible, I believe it is
better that children be exposed to the racial diversity of our society by
attending integrated schools. But in the many public school districts where
most students are non-white, it has long made more sense to address those
students' educational needs directly, rather than to spend scarce resources
trying to get white families to send their children to the same schools as
minorities.
In any event, both the Supreme Court and the American people have shown
little enthusiasm for the kind of open-ended judicial intervention aimed at
securing racial balance which civil rights activists have advocated over the
years. To take but one example, the Court's opinion in the 1995 case Missouri
vs. Jenkins reversed a lower court's order that Kansas City undertake an
expensive plan to attract suburban whites to an increasingly black, inner-city
district through specialized "magnet schools."
Indeed, federal courts around the country, especially in the South, have
relaxed earlier decrees ordering school districts to promote integration, even
though those districts have been moving toward resegregation. I am not arguing
that these cases were rightly decided in every instance. What is clear,
however, is that it would be unwise to expect a revival of 1970s-style judicial
activism on behalf of the cause of integration.
Nor are the courts the only obstacle in the way of bringing about greater
racial integration through activist social policy. As a practical matter, the
flight of white middle-class families from urban districts subject to
desegregation decrees has made it all but impossible to achieve anything beyond
token integration in many places.
In 1972, before court-ordered busing began in Boston, 60 percent of the
city's public school students were white. Today, despite the fact that the
courts have been more flexible about integration efforts in recent years, whites
make up only 18 percent of the students in Boston's struggling school system.
Throughout the country, the decisions of white parents to move to suburban
communities or to send their children to private schools have limited the
efficacy of desegregation efforts. Though not as dramatically as in Boston,
white enrollments have also declined in Denver, Norfolk, Va., and Savannah, Ga.,
which were subject to mandatory busing orders as well.
Such behavior by whites is a stubborn reality, limiting the extent to which
judicial mandates can increase racial mixing in the schools. A Supreme Court
decision of some twenty years ago, in the case Milliken vs. Bradley, sharply
restricted the circumstances in which federal judges can order
metropolitan-wide, cross-district busing plans to promote integration. Yet,
even if the prospects for significant racial integration in a city like Boston
are now minimal, there is still plenty of room to improve the quality of
education delivered to the families who must rely on public schools in that
city.
Many nonwhite parents realize this all too well. Opinion surveys reveal that
they are more concerned about the quality of their children's schools than about
racial balance for its own sake. All parents, black or white, want basically
the same things from public schools: safety, order and the teaching of solid
academic skills.
PAGE
10
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, July 6, 1997
Schools that deliver these things, regardless of racial composition, will be
judged successful.
Some advocates argue that only where white students are sufficiently numerous
can safety, order and good teaching be confidently expected. But, to take that
view is to abdicate parental responsibility to hold school officials
accountable.
Parents must bring pressure to bear on teachers, principals, superintendents
and local politicians, in order to ensure that the public schools are responsive
to the needs of their children.
Moreover, a compulsive focus on racial integration can involve condescension
toward non-white students and their families. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote
in his concurring opinion in Missouri vs. Jenkins: "It never ceases to amaze me
that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly
black must be inferior.' The belief that "black students suffer an unspecified
psychological harm from segregation that retards their mental and educational
development,' Justice Thomas said, rests on an assumption of black inferiority.
This echoes something the great black intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois, said to other
blacks earlier in this century: "Never in the world should our fight be against
association with ourselves because by that very token we give upthe whole
argument that we are worth associating with."
To presume that blacks must have a sufficient quota of whites in the
classroom in order to learn, is to presume that there is something inherently
wrong with blacks. But while black kids may not need to have whites sitting
nearby in order to master arithmetic, the most disadvantaged children do need
better schools, with resources sufficient to compensate for the influences of
poverty they bring to the classroom. Integrationists assume that the presence
of whites is the only sure way to draw attention to this need. But that was
yesterday's struggle.
Advocates of the interests of African-American youngsters should instead
focus on achieving equal educational opportunity, but not by forced racial
mixing. Instead, we must demand that students isolated in hard-pressed,
big-city school districts receive the attention and the resources which, as
Americans, they so richly deserve.
Glenn C. Loury is director of the Institute on Race and Social Division at
Boston University.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 7, 1997
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Copyright 1997 The Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
July 6, 1997
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. H2
LENGTH: 541 words
HEADLINE: Equity in schools
BODY:
More than 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed separate but equal''
schools. The nation embarked on school integration plans that now have virtually
ground to a halt.
An article in last Sunday's American-Statesman noted that housing segregation
is a chief culprit in the resegregation of public schools, along with boundary
and school site decisions.
We cannot integrate public schools in Austin and the nation without
challenging housing segregation. Yet we have dismissed the importance of
economic and racial integration. Our social retreat is glaringly expressed by
our racial camps called neighborhoods.
Since 1987, the number of Austin schools with predominantly minority
populations has nearly doubled. A City of Austin study shows that a majority of
minorities and poor people in the area live east of Interstate 35.
In Charlotte, N.C., city and county leaders are working with school officials
to locate the best schools in the central city, where more minorities and
low-income people live. They also are using their ability to locate affordable
housing to encourage neighborhood integration.
Such efforts can be augmented by ensuring that proper resources exist in
schools in which minorities are the majority. Realtors know that schools
influence home-buying decisions.
AISD officials have attempted to influence school integration through the
drawing of district boundaries. However, some parents still argue that the
district made a big mistake when it returned to neighborhood elementary schools
more than 10 years ago. During last year's AISD bond election, many minority
parents argued that more money should be given to central city schools rather
than new schools in Southwest Travis County.
We can't look to past practices for all the answers anymore, as illustrated
in the NAACP's discussion on the merits of integration. America's race problems
have mutated to more complex and vexing forms. Racism wasn't going to end by
placing black and brown students in seats next to white students. Racism is an
intricate web of often belligerent beliefs and institutional practices that
aren't overcome with songs.
Today, the government and courts are not playing the role they once did in
legislating change. Furthermore, some minority parents ask: Would it be wiser to
fight for equity in minority schools rather than rely on busing to achieve a
PAGE
3
Austin American-Statesman, July 6, 1997
better education for our kids?
The frustration with integration has a lot to do with the unequal burden of
busing and disappointment in its results, said Julian Bond, a former Georgia
Congressman and civil rights activists, in a recent New York Times article.
But we should not give up on school integration, Bond concluded. He is right.
Most educators believe there are benefits to be gained by minority and white
students attending the same schools. After all, the world is full of diverse
people. However, attention must be paid to meeting students' sometimes different
needs.
As in Charlotte, school officials in Austin and nationwide should join hands
with city and county leaders who can and should use their authority to help
develop economically and racially integrated neighborhoods.
LOAD-DATE: July 6, 1997
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Copyright 1997 Associated Press
AP Online
June 23, 1997; Monday 18:47 Eastern Time
SECTION: Domestic, non-Washington, general news item
LENGTH: 667 words
HEADLINE: NAACP Mulls Its Fundamental Policy
BYLINE: JENNIFER C. YATES
DATELINE: BALTIMORE
BODY:
The NAACP, which fought for decades to put black and white children in the
same classrooms, is reconsidering its support of integration amid criticism that
the practice is failing.
Critics say the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
should focus on improving predominantly black schools instead of busing children
away from them.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Nation of Islam leader Louis
Farrakhan, for example, have argued that it is demeaning to suggest that black
children can only get a good education in predominantly white schools.
NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said Monday that discussions about the group's
integration policies have been ongoing, but that doesn't mean they will change
anything.
"We can still support integration while fighting other problems, Mfume
said. The NAACP is a big enough tent to allow that discussion to take place.
We believe that we're better for it.
The debate comes as NAACP officials prepare for their annual meeting on July
11 in Pittsburgh.
With desegregation, blacks have gained access to programs and schools that
were once the sole domain of whites. But many white families have responded by
enrolling children in private and parochial schools, or by moving away.
Melvin Skip Alston, president of the North Carolina NAACP State Conference,
understands the frustration with busing but said backing away from integration
is not the answer.
''I think busing is a problem. I think it's a primary problem, Alston said.
'If busing is unequal to blacks, then we need to fix that. But I don't want my
children to have to fight the same fight my grandparents fought.
The NAACP has been a champion of integration since its inception more than 80
years ago.
PAGE 34
AP Online, June 23, 1997
Thurgood Marshall, who headed the NAACP's legal department, successfully
argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown VS. Board of Education
case, which struck down segregation in schools. Marshall later became the
nation's first black Supreme Court justice. Thomas is the second.
Gary Orfield, a Harvard professor of education and social policy, said that
abandoning integration policies would hurt children.
'The practical problem is we tried (segregation) for 70 years and it never
worked, Orfield said. Separation by race produces separation by poverty, he
said.
Integration, though, is the only way to teach children how to live with
people who are different from them, argues Willis Hawley, dean of the University
of Maryland College of Education.
"We know school desegregation can make a difference for kids in positive
ways when it is done in the right way and when it does not put enormous
hardships on children, Hawley said.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 23, 1997
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Copyright 1997 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
June 15, 1997, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 989 words
HEADLINE: Where Do We Go From Here? Clinton Must Resist the Impulse To Control
the Race Debate to Come
BYLINE: Randall Kennedy
BODY:
Promise and peril surround President Clinton's initiative on race relations.
The promise is a focused examination of racial issues that will clarify
dilemmas so that at least we can know where and why we agree or disagree with
one another. This is a precondition for sensible reform. Nearly everyone
recognizes, as the president recently said, that "we have a long way to go."
What precisely, however, is our aim? Thirty years ago, in the title of a book,
civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. asked "Where Do We Go From Here?" But
neither he -- nor anyone since -- has answered that question in a compelling,
detailed and comprehensive fashion.
Do we want a society governed by racial demography in which presidential
cabinets, criminal juries and editorial offices must "look like America"? Or do
we want a society governed by an anti-discrimination principle that requires
citizens to look beyond looks? To understand the ramifications of this choice,
as well as many others along the way, requires considerable thought and
discussion.
That is why the public should eschew the objections of those who contend that
we have had too much "mere" talk about racial matters. We have not had too much
talk; we have had too much rhetoric and spectacle. We have not had enough
focused conversations from which participants and observers leave with more
information and insight than they had when the conversation began.
The peril is that Clinton and his aides will squelch the possibilities for an
informative, intense and perhaps surprising discussion and instead sponsor a
series of scripted, pseudo-events devoid of the candor and contentiousness
required for any serious attempt to grapple with the race question.
I hope, of course, that the president will rise to the occasion and frame and
participate in debates that will be looked upon subsequently as a significant
and productive venture. I fear, though, that this will not occur and that the
president will be swayed by the sort of advice that appears to triumph all too
often in the Clinton White House -- advice that is primarily concerned with
short-term benefits that are easily discernible by pollsters whose only frame of
reference is political advertising. I fear that over the next year, we will hear
little more than a series of extended exhortations in which the American people
are told things that virtually all of them already know and believe: "Racism is
bad; "Don't hate people because of the color of their skin," and so on.
PAGE
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The Washington Post, June 15, 1997
Most of what the president has said in his recent forays into race talk is
unobjectionable. But most of it has also been devoid of challenge. The tribute
to Jackie Robinson, the medals for the long-ignored black heroes of World War
II, the apology for the Tuskegee experiment, and the condemnation of racially
motivated violence were all politically safe gestures rendered according to
wholly conventional formulas. That these gestures were so totally
uncontroversial is a testament to their marginal relationship to America's
racial divisions.
The president's address yesterday at the University of California at San
Diego was somewhat different in that the locale forced him to at least touch
upon a current dispute. After all, during the past year, California had ended
affirmative action in all state agencies and programs. As a supporter of
affirmative action, Clinton disagrees with California's governor and a majority
of its voters. Many who feared that Clinton would pull a "Lani Guinier" on
affirmative action -- i.e., abandon his position in the face of strong
opposition - - are relieved and pleased that he has reconfirmed his commitment to
this embattled policy.
In terms of public enlightenment, however, even Clinton's engagement with the
affirmative action issue has been uninspiring, since his defense evades the
deepest, most difficult questions posed by its critics.
If Clinton's initiative is to amount to anything memorable it must create
forums in which knowledgeable thoughtful people address their fellow citizens
about the racial matters that touch them most intimately.
We need to hear about and from people who live in the nation's black and
brown ghettos. Do they have reason to believe that if they "play by the rules"
their lives and the lives of their children will become more prosperous, secure
and enjoyable?
We need to hear about and from white women who view race as a signal that a
black male stranger poses more of a threat to them than a white male stranger.
Is their calculation sensible? Is it fair?
We need to hear about and from those who view Asians as the model minority.
Are they implicitly labeling blacks as the non-model minority?
We need to hear about and from Latinos, Asian Americans and blacks, who view
one another with racial resentment and distrust. What is the basis of their
discord? What would satisfy the antagonists?
We need to hear about and from those who encourage their children to marry
persons within their race, religion or ethnic group. Does such advice warrant
praise or condemnation?
To pose these and even more pointed questions, and to permit and consider a
range of divergent responses, might help to create the thought-provoking
conversation that many Americans would like to have about their racial dilemmas.
Allowing, much less facilitating, such a venture, however, cuts against the
grain of the administration's style. It typically wants to control, not learn
from, public discussion of difficult issues.
PAGE 18
The Washington Post, June 15, 1997
The conversation about race that the country needs is one that entails taking
risks. Because we are unlikely to see much presidential risk taking in the race
initiative, we are unlikely to benefit much from it. Hopefully, the man from
Hope will prove me wrong.
Randall Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of "Race,
Crime and Law, II published last month by Pantheon Books.
GRAPHIC: Illustration, john overmeyer for The Washington Post; Illustration,
oliphant
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 16, 1997
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Copyright 1997 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
NBC News Transcripts
SHOW: NBC NIGHTLY NEWS (6:30 PM ET)
June 10, 1997, Tuesday 11:21 AM
LENGTH: 313 words
HEADLINE: HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR AND AUTHOR RANDALL KENNEDY DISCUSSES HIS VIEWS
ON AMERICAN RACE RELATIONS
ANCHORS: TOM BROKAW
BODY:
TOM BROKAW, anchor:
Black Americans and white Americans still have very different views about
opportunities for blacks to advance in this country. A new Gallup poll out this
week says that whites believe there is not much of a problem, but blacks argue
that discrimination still limits their chances in America. Almost equal
percentages of both groups think that race relations will always be a problem in
the United States. But Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, a student of race
relations, says that Americans have always depended too much on skin color and
too little on achievement. He's written a provocative book called "Race, Crime,
and the Law."
Mr. RANDALL KENNEDY: My strong preference would be to have a social and
political order in which race had really no moral, or political, or legal
significance.
BROKAW: Why don't you believe in Affirmative Action?
Mr. KENNEDY: Well, I would prefer that we not treat people differently
according to race. To the extent that Affirmative Action does that, it
immediately causes me tremendous anxiety.
Group of Children: (In unison) I am special. I am young and gifted.
BROKAW: You write about blacks, for example, who are perfectly comfortable
with the idea of bonding with other blacks, whether they know them or not, but
are outraged when, for example, whites get together and say, We're proud of our
white race and our white family.
Mr. KENNEDY: People ought not to have racial pride. Why should anybody be
proud of something that they merely inherit? People should be proud of things
that they themselves accomplish.
BROKAW: How do you fit into all of that? Do they call you brother?
Mr. KENNEDY: Oh, sure.
BROKAW: And how do you feel about that?
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NBC News Transcripts, June 10, 1997
Mr. KENNEDY: Well, it's like many things. It has a good side and a bad
side. I have lots of friends, lots of family members who were at the Million
Man March, and it was uplifting for many people. On the other hand, things like
the Million Man March entrenches race consciousness. It entrenches the idea
that there are--that we belong to different racial teams.
BROKAW: You seem to be divided between your heart and your mind on this issue
of race. Is that a fair summary?
Mr. KENNEDY: I'm no more immune to the various sentiments than anyone else.
But I'm not uncomfortable with fighting these sentiments that are within me.
BROKAW: Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy tonight.
When we come back, this young man wants to be a police officer, but should
his past stand in the way?
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: June 11, 1997
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7TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
June 12, 1997, Thursday, Home Edition
SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 9; Op Ed Desk
LENGTH: 754 words
HEADLINE: PERSPECTIVE ON RACE RELATIONS;
SOCIAL JUSTICE DEMANDS SACRIFICE;
THE PRESIDENT MUST PERSUADE THE AMERICAN MAJORITY TO SHARE POWER AND PRIVILEGE
IN A 'PIGMENTOCRACY.
BYLINE: RANDALL KENNEDY, Randall Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School
and the author, of "Race, Crime and the Law.
BODY:
Thus far in his campaign to summon Americans to confront and overcome their
racial problems, President Clinton has focused almost exclusively upon bigotry
that virtually all intelligent and respectable people now abhor: the color
barrier that excluded black baseball players from the major leagues, the
notorious medical experiments on black men in Tuskegee, racially motivated,
violent hate crimes.
It is useful for the president to highlight these despicable acts insofar as
some Americans remain unaware of the extent to which contempt for people of
color has poisoned society. It would be a mistake, however, for the president to
suggest that aggressive bigotry lay at the heart of our current racial dilemmas.
If racially motivated violence, the Ku Klux Klan, the N-word, and the ugly
sentiments that nourish these vile outcroppings of racial animus were suddenly
to disappear, we surely would be left with a better society. This welcome
development, however, would have little effect on the isolated, miserable,
criminogetic circumstances in which disproportionately large numbers of blacks,
Latinos and Native Americans live. Nor would the sudden, magical disappearance
of racial hatred massively reduce the discriminations that unfairly burden
minorities in the criminal justice system and housing and employment markets.
Many of the deprivations that ensnare large numbers of racial minorities are
vestiges of past injustices that perpetuate harms even in the absence of any
continuing purposeful aim to do SO. Thus, unfortunately, the horrid conditions
that menace so many Americans stuck in our black and brown ghettos continue to
wreak havoc even without the aid of racial malevolence. Mere indifference will
suffice.
The problem facing the president or anyone else seriously concerned with
addressing the core of racial inequity is not persuading the Great American
Middle that burning black (or any other) churches is terrible or that it is
disgusting to hate people simply because of the color of their skin. The vast
majority of people have already been persuaded to embrace these propositions.
The real problem is persuading the Great American Middle to reorient
fundamentally the allocations of power and privilege that continue to make
PAGE
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Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1997
America a "pigmentocracy" despite the substantial and heartening changes for the
better that have occurred over the past 50 years. To carry out this task will
require more than a willingness to avoid gratuitously insulting or harming
others because of their race. It will also require something that President
Clinton has yet to mention with any real clarity: sacrifice.
Redressing the wounds left by our long history of racial oppression will
require an expensive reconstruction. But the ascendant politics of the moment is
averse to redistributing wealth and opportunity downward, whether in terms of
class, gender or race. To push the nation toward the realization of its ideals
will require the president to tell the public something that he appears loath to
articulate: that social justice, like many of the best things in life, is
costly, and that for us to pay this cost is worthwhile.
The president, like many commentators, speaks as if ceasing to engage in
racial discrimination is cost-free, as if all that such a renunciation would
entail is merely the forgoing of an arbitrary gesture. But that is often not SO.
Of course, some racial discrimination stems solely from bigotry; but a lot of
racial discrimination is strategic. Strategic racial discrimination arises when
people calculate, often correctly, that they can attain some extra bit of
security by using race (typically coloredness) as a proxy for an increased risk
of danger. Much of the racial discrimination engaged in by home buyers, taxi
drivers and employers is of this sort. They initially disfavor colored
neighborhoods, potential customers and prospective employees not because they
are bigots but because they perceive that doing so will maximize their
self-interest, at least in the short term.
If racial discrimination that adversely affects minorities were solely an
activity carried out by marginal creeps, it would not constitute the major
problem that it is.' The fact that racial discrimination often does advance the
narrow self-interest of intelligent, decent, influential people is what gives it
deep roots and makes any serious effort to uproot such practices a far more
difficult and disruptive venture than the president's rhetoric has so far
indicated.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC-DRAWING:
(
.), JEFF DANZIGER, New York PHOTO: RANDALL
KENNEDY
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: June 12, 1997
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Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
June 23, 1997, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; National Desk
LENGTH: 1529 words
HEADLINE: At N.A.A.C.P., Talk of a Shift On Integration
BYLINE: By STEVEN A. HOLMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 22
BODY:
Facing continued white resistance to busing to achieve school desegregation,
an increasingly conservative judiciary and now criticism from inside and outside
its ranks, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is
rethinking one of its fundamental principles: advocacy of public school
integration.
The N.A.A.C.P. has always supported school integration as a way to improve
educational opportunities for black students, but other black leaders have begun
voicing doubts about that goal. They say the organization should focus more
heavily on seeking the improvement of majority-black schools.
A change in the 88-year-old organization's position on school integration,
should it occur, would come after years of criticism of the N.A.A.C.P. as being
hidebound and lacking in appeal for younger blacks. Debating such a radical move
would allow the organization to be seen as being more attuned to new thinking in
civil rights.
Officials of the organization have been in a quandary in recent years about
members who oppose its traditional support for racially mixed schools, even
ousting local chapter directors who expressed different views. Opposition to the
N.A.A.C.P. policy has been growing at the same time that segregation in public
schools has been on the rise.
Other dissenting voices have added pressure. More black parents are
complaining that under school integration plans, it is their children who are
most likely to be the ones bused out of their neighborhoods. And some black
self-help advocates, like Justice Clarence Thomas and Louis Farrakhan, head of
the Nation of Islam, have argued that it is demeaning to suggest that black
students can achieve a quality education only in largely white schools.
At its national convention next month in Pittsburgh, the N.A.A.C.P. is
expected to have a formal debate on its school-integration policy for the first
time in more than a decade.
Myrlie Evers-Williams, the chairwoman of the N.A.A.C.P., said she not only
expected the delegates to debate the merits of continuing to promote integration
in public schools but also expected them to consider modifying the group's
position through a resolution. But her personal position is still in support of
integrated schools.
PAGE
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The New York Times, June 23, 1997
"The N.A.A.C.P. has always believed in integration of the public schools,"
Ms. Evers-Williams said. "But a debate has been raging as to whether that's
still the position we should take."
Whether the delegates decide to alter their backing of integration efforts,
including busing, or simply vote to study the issue, Ms. Evers-Williams said the
N.A.A.C.P. board would also take up the issue either at the convention or at its
next board meeting in October.
Even the suggestion of a shift in position could further erode support for a
policy that seems to be increasingly falling out of favor among blacks.
Michael Meyers, head of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, a centrist group
that still supports integration, interpreted Ms. Evers-Williams's statements as
a tacit approval of some change in direction.
"She is now sending a very clear and strong signal that she is ready to let
their policy go by the wayside, II Mr. Meyers said.
The rethinking of its stance on integration comes at a time when the
N.A.A.C.P. is struggling to find its voice again after several years of internal
discord that led to the dismissal of its former executive director Benjamin F.
Chavis Jr., and the replacement with Ms. Evers-Williams of its chairman, William
F. Gibson. The group has also had to pay off a $3.2 million debt that had
hamstrung its legal and advocacy work.
Last week Ms. Evers-Williams brought together a multiracial panel of experts
to advise her and other N.A.A.C.P. leaders on issues and strategies the
organization might pursue.
"For the last two years, we have been focused on the survival of the
N.A.A.C.P., Ms. Evers-Williams said. "We're trying to make the organization
strong so that we can turn to an action plan."
Efforts to reduce school busing are winning some black support. Earlier this
year, the Board of Education in Guilford County, N.C., which includes
Greensboro, voted to redraw its district lines to minimize its large-scale
busing program and preserve neighborhood schools. Among the groups advocating
the end of large-scale busing in the county was a group of black ministers
called the Pulpit Forum.
"Our biggest concern now is whether our schools will be equal," said Amos
Quick, a black member of the 60-member citizens committee that will redraw the
school boundaries, writing in The Greensboro News & Record last month. "Separate
but truly equal would not be so bad."
In some ways, a shift in the N.A.A.C.P.'s policy would have more symbolic
meaning than real impact. Under what was essentially a peace treaty between two
groups that are often in competition, the N.A.A.C.P. generally filed school
desegregation suits in the North in the 1960's and 1970's, while the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, once part of the N.A.A.C.P., brought such suits in
the South.
But the Supreme Court's 1974 decision in Milliken V. Bradley made it more
difficult and more expensive to win desegregation suits that resulted in.
PAGE
7
The New York Times, June 23, 1997
busing between increasingly black inner-city districts and white suburbs, the
general trend in northern metropolitan areas. With the increased costs of the
lawsuits and the N.A.A.C.P.'s continued financial woes, the group has virtually
stopped involving itself at the national level in school desegregation cases.
"The N.A.A.C.P. is a large organization, and there are many local chapters
who are still fighting the resegregation of schools that is going on," said Gary
Orfield, a professor of education and social policy at Harvard. "But the
national N.A.A.C.P. office has not been a major actor in this area for years."
Still, the symbolism of an N.A.A.C.P. retreat from its unstinting support of
school integration would have significance. The Justice Department monitors more
than 400 school desegregation programs -- some court-ordered, some voluntary
and some observers say it would become more difficult to defend those programs,
especially the so-called metropolitan plans, which involve busing between cities
and suburbs -- from attack.
"If the N.A.A.C.P. is saying that separate is no longer unequal," Mr. Meyers
said, "that functionally reverses Brown V. Board of Education. If the
N.A.A.C.P. is pulling back, then they are sending a strong signal to the courts
and making it extremely difficult for there to be metropolitan remedies for
segregation."
Support for school integration has been a defining principle of the
N.A.A.C.P. almost since its inception. Indeed, it was litigation carried out by
Thurgood Marshall, the late Supreme Court Justice who once headed the group's
legal department, that eventually led to the landmark Brown V. Board of
Education of Topeka, Kan., decision in 1954. That decision outlawed legal
segregation and overturned the doctrine set forth in the 1896 Plessy V. Ferguson
case, in which the Court said that separate but equal treatment of blacks and
whites did not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Constitution.
But in recent years, there has been growing disillusionment with busing and
other efforts to achieve integration. Julian Bond, an N.A.A.C.P. board member
who said he would oppose diminishing support for integrated schools, still
empathized with those who are frustrated. "Generally among black Americans, Mr.
Bond said, "there is a feeling that this has come to naught, that so much energy
has been put into it without commensurate results and that white America has
been SO resistant that you're butting your head against the wall. I think it's a
wrong attitude, but it's an understandable attitude."
The debate over integration has roiled the N.A.A.C.P. itself. Last year, the
N.A.A.C.P. board dismissed Robert H. Robinson as president of its Bergen County
branch in New Jersey for expressing the view that getting quality schools in
black neighborhoods was more important than seeking integration. In October
1995, the group also ousted Kenneth W. Jenkins, president of the Yonkers branch,
after he questioned the wisdom of the continued use of busing to achieve
integration.
That type of ferment within the black community is clearly influencing the
N.A.A.C.P. to review its position, several board members said.
"When you listen to the views of the community and listen to parents, they
are telling us that things are not right," said Sandra McGary, chairwoman of the
N.A.A.C.P. board's education committee.
PAGE
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The New York Times, June 23, 1997
Still, some board members say they fear that a less stalwart position would
coincide with a worrisome trend of more segregation.
A report issued last month by researchers from Harvard and Indiana
Universities found that racial segregation in the public schools had been
increasing since 1980, especially as more white families had moved out of inner
cities and into the suburbs and as Federal courts had stopped ordering
integration plans that linked cities and suburbs.
The report's authors warned against giving in to that trend.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: June 23, 1997
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12TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1997 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
June 15, 1997, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 18; National Desk
LENGTH: 1290 words
HEADLINE: NEWS ANALYSIS;
CLINTON'S SPEECH CONFIRMS LEFTWARD SHIFT ON RACE ISSUES;
POLITICS: EARLY INITIATIVES RELYING ON INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY HAVE YIELDED TO
MORE LIBERAL APPROACH.
BYLINE: RONALD BROWNSTEIN, TIMES POLITICAL WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
With his long-awaited speech on race relations Saturday, President Clinton
continued an odyssey toward convention on the most incendiary issue in American
politics.
Though Clinton has always spoken with great passion about the need for racial
healing, at different points in his career he has prescribed different methods
for achieving it.
In his initial 1992 campaign--and at various points in his
presidency--Clinton has offered a vision of racial reconciliation that departed
from liberal conventions by emphasizing mutual responsibility among whites and
minorities alike. But more often in the past few years--and again
Saturday--Clinton has presented a much more traditionally liberal analysis that
defended affirmative action, praised diversity and emphasized the history of
discrimination against minorities.
"There has been a great difference between his campaign mode and his
governing mode on this," said Fred Siegel, a historian at Cooper Union, a New
York City college.
Beneath the shifting nuance of Clinton's message is a larger question about
the best path to easing racial tensions and broadening opportunities for
minorities. While African American leaders like Jesse Jackson believe that the
key is new, racially targeted government programs to attack poverty and
discrimination, centrist Democratic thinkers like Siegel believe that a more
promising approach is Clinton's 1992 formula, which stressed reconciliation
around the idea of shared values and race-neutral programs that link opportunity
with responsibility.
PAGE
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Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1997
"We are far from a colorblind society, said Will Marshall, president of the
centrist Progressive Policy Institute, "but the country believes the problem is
less and less a problem of discrimination and more and more one of poor people
in minority communities lacking the opportunity to join the burgeoning black
middle class. II
At the moment, Clinton appears to be adrift between these contending visions,
offering neither a clear alternative to the traditional civil rights agenda nor
specific initiatives for advancing it.
Since the first days of his 1992 campaign, Clinton has repeatedly condemned
racism, insisting that the nation could not move forward without racial and
ethnic reconciliation. But, especially in that first presidential campaign, he
linked that reconciliation to demanding greater "personal responsibility" among
the poor--most notably by requiring work from welfare recipients--and carefully
suggested that discrimination could not explain all the problems confronting
minorities.
*
In effect, Clinton sought to bridge the racial and ideological divisions over
race relations by arguing that the nation could come together around a vision
that provided equal opportunity for, but demanded equal responsibility from, all
Americans.
In the 1992 campaign and beyond, that synthesis carried Clinton into
unusually candid discussions of racial issues. On successive days in March 1992,
he made dramatic back-to-back appeals for racial harmony in Macomb County--a
Detroit suburb symbolic to many of white flight--and an inner-city black church
in Detroit.
In Macomb, he told members of an almost all-white audience that as president,
he would work to "give you your values back" but in return would demand that
they "give up some of the prejudices of the 1980s
" The next day, at the
black church, he said government efforts to help the needy would not work
without greater initiative in poor communities. "I cannot do for you what you
will not do for yourselves,' he said.
Even more dramatically--and controversially--later that spring Clinton
condemned a black rap singer, Sister Souljah, who had been quoted after the Los
Angeles riots suggesting that African Americans should commit violence not
against other minorities, but rather whites. Critics accused Clinton of
exploiting racial animosities, but supporters like Marshall believed that
Clinton was sending a powerful message that he intended to hold all races to
common standards.
Clinton was acutely aware that all of this represented a stark departure from
the prevailing liberal discussion about race, which focused almost entirely on
lingering problems of discrimination, said Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton's 1992
campaign pollster.
"What he was saying was there are values that unite black and white, and they
the races were being divided by those who want to take advantage. He was
PAGE
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Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1997
saying the theme of personal responsibility provided the basis for the people in
Macomb to reach out to Detroit and vice versa, Greenberg said.
As president, Clinton has returned to this vision in some of his most
powerful speeches--including his November 1993 address in the Memphis, Tenn.
pulpit where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon, and his
impassioned remarks on the day of the "Million Man March" in October 1995.
In the Memphis speech, Clinton emphasized the progress against discrimination
and said King would have been horrified to see "13-year-old boys with automatic
weapons" and "children" bearing children. In Texas, on the day of Louis
Farrakhan's sprawling separatist oratory at the Capitol, Clinton pointedly
declared that whites and blacks alike had to "clean their house
of
racism. "
Little of that astringent language was evident in Clinton's speech on
Saturday. His discussion of responsibility was cursory, muted and diffuse; he
spent considerably more time emphasizing traditional liberal priorities like the
defense of affirmative action and diversity.
That fit his recent rhetorical pattern. In his 1996 campaign he mostly
delivered broad, soft-edged appeals for interracial tolerance. As he did
Saturday, Clinton in the 1995 speech in which he called for the continuation of
affirmative action programs emphasized the "persistence of
bigotry."
Clinton's record on race-related issues shows the same division. Many of
Clinton's key domestic policies have been infused with themes of individual
initiative and responsibility. Over the objections of civil rights leaders, he
signed anti-crime legislation that balanced funding for prevention programs with
tough new punishment measures, and welfare reform legislation that required work
and imposed a time limit on government assistance. His urban agenda is based
less on direct government spending than on the promotion of development with
increased access to private investment.
But Clinton has disappointed centrist Democrats by refusing to consider
alternatives to affirmative action that might be less racially divisive (like
assistance based on economic class), though Clinton on Saturday fleetingly
suggested that he would be receptive if anyone showed him a viable alternative.
Exactly why Clinton has given greater emphasis recently to conventional
liberal arguments on race isn't clear. But some close observers speculate that
the push by some Republicans to eliminate all affirmative action programs has
compelled him to intensify his defense of them. Conversely, Siegel suggests
Clinton's renewed focus on race may also represent an effort to soothe minority
leaders angry over the welfare reform and balanced-budget agreements.
With these divergent strains of thought entwining through Clinton's record,
even close observers can't predict with certainty whether his racial initiative
will produce new directions or slide into the old grooves that have divided left
from right, and black from white, on the issue.
PAGE 5
Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1997
"He is right to think there is work to be done in reconciliation, and he as
president can do it, Greenberg said. "But the tendency is to come back to it in
more traditional terms rather than the terms he introduced in 1992."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Clinton takes in ceremony with UC San Diego associated
students President Coleen Sabatini. PHOTOGRAPHER: GINA FERAZZI / Los Angeles
Times
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: June 15, 1997