The American Scene

Compulsory integration weighed and found wanting

David Warren Ryder

Almost two decades have passed since the socalled Warren Decision of the Supreme Court commanding desegregation of the public schools; and, considering the enormous amount of experience that has accumulated respecting the results of it, we now have the right and the duty to assess the gains or losses, the merits or demerits, indeed the whole gamut of consequences of eighteen years of attempted compulsory integration of our public schools.

It may be argued that eighteen years, being only a brief period in the nation's life, is not long enough to permit of a valid test. In this instance, however, time alone is much less a proper criterion than is what has occurred throughout the nation as direct and indirect consequences of this unprecedented decision. In the light of this, eighteen years is long enough to appraise the results of a quixotic social experiment to which we were peremptorily committed by the arbitrary action of nine men; nine highly placed but rather ordinary men, who, ignoring all the longestablished guidelines and precedents, and admittedly basing their action upon ideological and sociological rather than legal grounds, read into the US Constitution meanings that no one theretofore had discovered in the 165 years since its ratification.

Proof of this is that, in explaining and defending their decision, they cited the mere opinions of the avowed Socialist writer, Gunnar Myrdal, an alien, as expressed in his book, An American Dilemma. Among such opinions were: 1. that the American Constitution "is in many respects impractical and ill-suited for modern conditions "; 2, tnat the Constitutional Convention of 1787 " was nearly a plot against the common people "; 3, that in' the conflict between liberty and equality in the United States, " equality is slowly winning," and that 4, "the last two or three decades have seen a veritable revolution in scientific thought on the racial characteristics of the Negro. By inventing and applying ingenious specialised research methods, the popular race dogma [that races are not by

nature equal in their capacity for culture] is being victoriously pursued into every corner and effectively exposed as fallacious or at least unsubstantiated [so that] it is now difficult for even popular writers to express other views than the ones of racial equalitarianism and still retain intellectual respect."

Justifying its action by such fanciful sociological theories, a court of nine men, by one sudden edict, foisted upon the American people a concept and way of life of which the most careful scrutiny of the Constitution reveals not even an intimation. It would not have been at all difficult for the Warren Court to have ascertained that "the revolution in scientific thought " which Myrdal alleged had occurred was not scientific, and that the "ingenious specialised research methods" which he claimed had been 'invented ' were of dubious validity. True, they may have been ' invented '; and they were, in a certain narrowly clever way ' ingenious.' But they were not genuine objective scientific research; and this the Court could easily have discovered. What Myrdal had in mind, and what his assertions reflected and were based upon, were the emotion-induced conclusions of a certain liberal professor of German ancestry, Franz Boas, who was a militant egalitarian. In books as well as articles in various magazines, Boas had promulgated as scientific fact his opinion that there were no basic differences among the various races; that what might appear as such were superficial things attributable entirely to environmental influences.

This opinion, avidly seized upon as im mensely self-satisfying by a small clique of other ritualistic egalitarians — most of them of Boas's own racial heritage — was then dis seminated as established truth; and disseminated so widely — through a spate of books, pamphlets, magazine articles etc — that, despite the lack of any truly scientific sanction, it became widely accepted in liberal circles as gospel. Actually, this was merely a kind of propaganda tour de force, and might . have accomplished no more than another mere clever 'feat of strength ' had not tha been averted by extraordinary circumstances which, although largely extraneous, served to

create a milieu unfavourable to the questiofl. ing of the Boas propaganda. The general' hostile reaction to Hitler's unspeakable bar barities and to his preposterous claim of Ger manic racial supremacy, plus America's in' volvement in the second world war and it5, long aftermath, engendered an intellectua' climate amid which it was unpopular, almost, dangerous, to dispute the Boas dogma that ah races were equal and heredity counted for nothing. Acceptance of this dogma marked a de' cided break with the position of the rest of Christendom. Of this, Dr Boris Sokoloff, 3 scientist of world repute, has written (The Permissive Society; Arlington House, 1971): Among all the countries of the world, only the United States goes to the extreme in minimising tht role of hereditary factors, and grossly exaggeratini the impact of environmental forces on man's in. telligence and personality. And yet this country hal produced many thousands of men — born ill, gloomy, hopeless poverty and unable to obtain till education which more privileged citizens have re; ceived — who achieved greatness. We do not nee' to go further than to cite the cases of two presi" dents, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Their poverty was incredible, infinitely more deve tating than what we now call poverty. And yet, spite of the most discouraging environmental coil' ditions, they reached the highest places in this country. Both men were of extraordinary ill' telligence — a product of their heredity.

There was a considerable number of men or indisputable scientific credentials and attainments who agreed with what Dr Sokoloff states, and disagreed wholly with the Boas dogma; but they either were so circurn' stanced (holding professorships in univer. sities where the authorities were militantlY egalitarian) that they dared not speak out at the time; or, if they were in position to do so. were denied any vehicle for the public e$. pression of their views. Unfortunately, this IS still the case today. Whenever and wherever Dr William Shockley, Nobel laureate physic.

ist of Stanford University, has attempted pub' lic utterance of his views or this subject he has been shouted down by black and white hecklers from the so-called Students for Democratic Society .or other radical groups.; and the same applies to Dr Jensen of the Ur1. versity of California and other scientists who dissent from the environment-is-everything

This was the mise-en-scene, and this was the prevalently egalitarian climate in which, the Warren Court considered the case 0' 'Brown versus the Board of Education' (the integration case). In view of this, and of the ideology and calibre of the men who constituted the Court, it is hardly surprising that it rendered the Warren Decision or that Con' gress, affected by the same climate, rushed te enact complementary legislation.

Some of the most penetrating criticism 0, the Warren Court's decisions (in this case an° others of the period) comes from the Ya_,Ie Law School's legal historian, Alexander. rif; Bickel, who writes (The Supreme Court ari the Idea of Progress): " W arren's Court strove to bring about the 'Egalitarian Society,' noring the heavy price [that] has to be pai° for these . . . services to liberalism." TO achieve its egalitarian ends, Bickel states, thiS Court played fast and loose with historY: superimposed its values on the democratic processes; tolerated injustices to individuals as a necessary by-product of its efforts to rewrite the law, and ignored earlier and wise restraints on judicial policy-making. The, Court's objective having been, as Bicke states, the 'Egalitarian Society,' it evidentlY, believed that the end justified the means, an" paid no heed to the Constitution's limitations of the functions of the Court.

The Warren Court was not, in fact, acting the role bequeathed it by the Constitution that of interpreting and expounding the Co

altution — such as had been the case during the previous 160 years of its existence; it was 10%iv engaged in Constitution making — sudenlY seizing upon a matter that was being tkliudicated by the country's varied and inr.cate organic mechanisms and subjecting it ta the rigid imperatives of a judge-defined

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-Preme law.' It took a matter about which hard consensus did not exist and treated it if such a consensus did exist, and comrnanded us to accord mere judge-endorsed zPhlicies the same dignity and support we ;cord policies that have passed the muster

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,fie Constitution's amendment procedures, te8efore this decision withdrew the intion problem from the organic processes o M evolution, the country's practices, by and tirge, had kept abreast of the country's attudes; and thus the progress that had been thecle towards improving race relations was )de in depth, progress bound to endure tilecause it was rooted in the consent and attiollde of those directly concerned. Before the esegregation decision, our society could rei)ond relevantly to the challenge that chansitg times produced; it could develop a living on the race issue because the law was 0:tuned to the lives of the people. After the IliNision, the people — blacks and whites 'he — were required to torture their lives the straitjacket of ideology; and, by 'eating dissimilars as similars, diversity was air attempted to be expunged in favour of a 1)erficial and artificial uniformity. Before le r decision the country had approached the 'ee issue as part of a multi-dimensional Prns. consisting not only of the matter of ort-ving the Negro his due, but also the matters Preserving the integrity of community life, lair Maintaining the nation's federal political .ructures, of improving its schools, of main„,41.fling the public order, of keeping the '"untry's econdmic system flourishing, and it) forth. After the decision, all related probehrns and objectives became subordinated to e goal of satisfying the Negroes' claims.

, Concerning the ' claims ' the Negroes were couraged by white politicians to make, Ar

ur Krock former Washington Bureau chief tthe New York Times (in his Memoirs) has comment: trh°liticians in Congress (and other ardent ‘4211Pi0n5 of the Supreme Court decision that foree racial segregation in the public schools) were brrea_dY engaged in irresponsible, vote-seeking, riotolng assurances to the Negro minority that a ;11Y amalgamated American society,was on the 4ge of attainment. Only when these assurances 1,4 re fully demonstrated to be cruel hoaxes on the vier Population (in 1966-1967) did the surge of

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ent Negro civil disobedience appear. Non-violie, as were the marchers under the leadership of inr9r1 Luther King, Jr, they were invariably and ea vitably provocations of violence by criminal, lt,,Irauding Negro juveniles urged on by demagogic tators of their race, some of them outspoken "archists . . ti ReVerting to the question of whether the filei?e elapsed since the Warren Decision is sufr:ent to permit of a valid appraisal of its e:hults, it seems pertinent to suggest that wanting; that this attempt to change (i'lr,Isiderably less than eighteen years was reLln und 4,1r,_ed to demonstrate, overwhelmingly, that fouibition was weighed in the balance and

by legislative fiat — including a Con stitutional Amendment and a welter of state ' enforcement' laws — the deeply imbedded mores, beliefs, attitudes, habits and way of life of the American people was, besides being a monstrous failure, a ghastly tragedy. And while it may be argued that "one swallow does not make a summer," that can be countered by citing the other old adage that a single straw will show the direction of the wind.

Straws we have had in plenty with respect to the consequences of making compulsory integration, rather than education, the primary objective of our public schools system. To say that as a result the nation's schools — especially those in our large cities — are today a mess, might be the understatement of our time. To characterise them, as they now exist, primarily as educational institutions in the long-accepted meaning of that term, comes close to downright mendacity. When — covertly if not overtly — we established integration, instead of education, as the primary purpose of our public schools; when, however much we tried to cover up or disguise this with sugar-coated weasel words and double-talk, we subordinated the disciplines and processes of education to race mixing and 'racial balance,' we sowed the wind. Now, all over the nation —in the north, east and west as well as the south — we are reaping the whirlwind.

In the New York Times magazine of May 2, 1965, when compulsory integration had been ' in force' for eleven years, Martin Mayer, a discerning student of public schools and American education, wrote:

Public confidence in the [New York City] schools is fearfully low and dropping. White children are leaving the city schools at the rate of 40,000 a year . . . Normal parents of any colour need not be racist to refuse to send their children into classes where the tone is set by the low expectations the schools have derived from their experience with ' minority groups.' . . . Indeed, it is difficult to fathom the thought processes of people who insist that there will be gains in the racial attitudes of whites or in the self-image of Negroes from daily experiences which visibly proclaim that dark-skinned children are ' dumber ' than pale-skinned children. Not long ago many of us thought that a large share of the Negro failure was itself the product of segregation, but almost nobody whose opinion is worth considering believes it today.

From what can be ascertained, the situation in the New York City schools — as in other large cities throughout the nation — has considerably worsened since Mr. Mayer's article appeared.

Insulated from reality in their ideological ivory tower, the members of the Warren Court believed that the forced indiscriminate mixing of Negroes and whites in the public schools would somehow make dissimilars similar: would somehow " equalise " and " elevate " the black pupils and, at the same time, in some mysterious way benefit the whites. Neither of these naively hoped for results has occurred. Instead, the average black pupils, finding themselves "in over their heads," finding that they could not measure up to the educational standards earlier established for the average white pupils, became first puzzled, then frustrated, then antagonistic and belligerent to the point of seriously disrupting classroom educational activity. In vain attempts to solve this problem, the standards were lowered.

Although painstakingly disguised by a mass of educationist gimmickry and gobbledygook, the modus operandi of public school officials with the NAACP and the Federal courts on their backs has consisted in lowering the educational standards to the point where the average black pupil can keep up.

Quite inevitably this has caused the white pupils to be bored and frustrated to the extent that they, also, have become restless and, in some instances, rebellious. In consequence, the atmosphere of the average classroom — especially in big-city schools — is so charged with hostility, active or latent, as to create veritable 'armed camps' of blacks versus whites; with the teacher forced to become an unwilling, frightened and, too frequently, an unsuccessful arbiter. In such circumstances, learning — for either white or black — is, if not impossible, reduced to the lowest common denominator. The teacher, compelled to assume the role of classroom policeman, is incapable of really teaching, and the pupils — at best ill at ease and restless and at worst rebellious — are in no mood to learn. And what has occurred in the elementary schools has also occurred in the high schools and colleges.

It can also be pointed out that in grammar and high schools the equivalent of 'open enrollment' prevails, in that education standards have been so lowered as to allow a large and steadily increasing number of unqualified pupils to be passed to the next higher grade when they are not entitled to promotion. This goes on through both gram mar and high schools, with the result that, to quote a leading article in the San Francisco Examiner, "time and effort required for quality teaching is devoted to college undergraduates who are hardly able to read and write." That this is a deplorable situation needs no emphasis.

A long-time Harvard professor, the late George Santayana, wrote:

There are two ways of making a people impotent. One is to withhold from them that to which they are entitled through having earned it. The other is to grant them that to which they are not entitled when they have not earned it. [Italics supplied]

The results of attempted compulsory integration support San tayana's trenchant statement. The efforts to ' compensate' for ' rights ' allegedly wrongfully withheld by establishing double standards, and bestowing statuses and privileges that have not been earned, have proved not only unsuccessful but perniciously evil. In fanatical attempts to ' square the circle ', to make dissimilars similar, the compulsory-integration Establishment — manned and operated by egalitarian liberals both black and white and employing euphemism, legerdemain and gobbledygook — has resorted to the double standard: one for whites and the other — a ' flexible ' one — for blacks.

Prohibition, which was characterised as " an experiment noble in,purpose " by President Hoover, was supposed to rid the country of alcoholism, crime and miscellaneous other evils; and the Klan, as extensively revived after the first world war, had as its widely proclaimed objective the elimination of political bosses and the eradication of political corruption in high places and low. Both, it is needless to remind, turned into hideous monsters and were completely discredited.

Compulsory instant integration — our latest pursuit of fata morgana — bids fair 1 t

suffer the same fate; although it may die,l more lingering death because of the vest interest that some very powerful organis tions have in its perpetuation. Attempts to fect it have become, literally, a way of life a means of existence — for the high-salari officials and attorneys of the NAACP a other presently puissant groups; and they did the satraps of the Anti-Saloon League re specting Prohibition, may be expected to con tinue fighting furiously for its survival. Fuji ting the matter bluntly, they have a go': thing going for themselves and will not gi this up without a bitter struggle. Neve(' theless, short of a miracle, the ultimate de' mise, or withering away, of compulsory tegration is inevitable because it is base; upon the fallacious premise that deep-root(' social and cultural beliefs, standards, attitg, des and customs can be extirpated — and fering human capacities equalised — by lee lative and judicial fiat.

One of the most powerful and pervadinl

incitements to the revival of racial animosa2 is the bussing of children out of their neig bourhood schools. Instigated by the NAM,' through court actions demanding so-call racial balance, bussing is now the ghost Oa turns up at every political banquet, the siina_, vited guest who refuses to go away. The, was no requirement of bussing in the origin/ Warren Decision; and its prevalence todt1 validates the old saying that one step in th. wrong direction leads to taking many morel' the same direction. Discovering that undelt compulsory integration many black schoo were becoming blacker and white sche whiter, the legal arm of the NAACP has Ca. joled Federal judges into decreeing that, 15 cause the wholesale race mixing naiVely pected to accrue from the Warren Decisial; had not occurred, black and white childreo must now be torn out of their neighbourho schools and transported — in some instancv, many miles and requiring as much as tl hours a day — to provide what is euphemiSV cally called " racial balance "; the content'Of being that this racial balance will sornehn.,° (perhaps by osmosis?) increase the learainl capacity of Black pupils.

History has attested that there are sofil, unwritten laws so powerful and perdUr11! that they prevail over written ones. Proht1).1r tion, because it contravened such an uni ten law, could not be enforced despite being a part of the Constitution, and the sail will prove true of those laws and On, decisions intended to confer upon the Ner carte blanche, a status which he has not earned. It also seems justifiable to pred that — sooner than may now seem likelY4/ the majority of Negroes will realise, as maw of them do already, that, like all previous air tempts to legislate utopia, compulsory tegration was a sad and costly mistake. TP,, prediction is not based on mere idle specul; tion. The National Black Convention held Gary, Indiana, in March, 1972, came against "bussing for integration," and, a" cording to the press, adopted a resolutio stating: " We condemn racial integration,t schools as a bankrupt, suicidal method of (1,, segregating schools, based on the false notiu.; that Black children are unable to learn u111.5 they are in the same setting as White chrA ren. As an alternative to bussing Black chili' ren to achieve racial balance, we deals quality education in the Black community: the controlling of our school districts an,u, guarantee of an equal share of the money.

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It is my thesis that attempted compu100' integration — judged by its results over t past eighteen years — is not for the great, good of the greatest number of all our pee and that the majority of American Negro now realising that its attempted enforcerrle has hindered and harmed them far more it has helped, actually do not want it.