Ideals and Basic Law:
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
Ideals and Basic Law By Reinhold Niebuhr THE SPORADIC STRIKES against non-segregated schools are continuing, but with less and less effect—so that one may hopefully expect the adoption of new and...
...The leaders of Southern opinion have not counseled or encouraged defiance...
...But the inequality between Negro and white members of the community was more stubborn than the other inequalities which we have been so successful in mitigating...
...At any rate, the way is open for continued progress...
...Nevertheless, the decision was a hazardous one...
...It was supported by two powerful factors in the mores of the community: (1) the force of race prejudice, which operated with particular virulence, and (2) the force of historical inertia...
...Undoubtedly, there will be pockets of rebellion...
...As yet, there is no clear indication of how our nation will react to the new standard...
...More justice must be defined as more equal justice...
...The Court justified its expediency by a series of historic decisions in which it used the doctrine to "inch" the standards of recalcitrant communities closer to the ideal of equality...
...But it is easy to see the tremendous support which the ideal of liberty gets by being written into our basic law, though it is only fair to point out that the unwritten constitution of Great Britain serves the same purpose...
...There must have been some speculation and apprehension in the Court about the capacity of a democratic community to follow its logic...
...Ideals and Basic Law By Reinhold Niebuhr THE SPORADIC STRIKES against non-segregated schools are continuing, but with less and less effect—so that one may hopefully expect the adoption of new and democratic social standards in education, standards considerably in advance of the mores of many of our communities...
...The Negro had once been a slave among us, and no Emancipation Proclamation can undo in a decade, or even a lifetime, what the traditions of slavery worked upon the mind of a culture...
...These two ideals would seem to be equal, but they are not at all so in their relations to the mores of a community...
...But the first test has been met with tolerable success...
...The process was so successful, in fact, that many a rigorous democratic idealist would have been prepared to support the Court had it stuck to the doctrine in the hope that time would continue to improve the situation...
...The ability of the Court to draw the logical conclusions from the premises of democratic justice prevented the cynicism in the minority which would have followed a decision that tried to clothe expediency with logic...
...Of course, civil liberties are constantly endangered and must be constantly defended...
...If this should occur as a result of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, it would be a remarkable instance of the creative effect of a basic law...
...They are endangered whenever some political fanaticism or impulse to communal conformism seeks to limit individual rights...
...The children have accepted the new standards with good grace when not unduly influenced by die-hard adults...
...The moral and political ideals embodied in the Constitution are the basic ideals of democracy: liberty and equality...
...Equality is a transcendent ideal of justice...
...One assumes that the Court, knowing the limits of law in establishing standards, did not want to challenge the mores of the community to the point of rebellion...
...It is obvious that the law was powerless of itself to lift the mores of the community and to overcome the inequality inherent in segregation...
...They establish a sphere of meaning which cannot be invaded by the state or the community...
...The gradual triumph in democracy over these inequalities has been possible not so much by using the force of law as by keeping the society free and open, so that, in the free play of all political and economic powers, the weight of the political power of the many served to equalize the inequalities of privilege which the economic process, if left alone, tended to develop...
...Therefore, it was probably wise that at the turn of the century the Supreme Court invented the doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities for whites and Negroes...
...They define the character of a true democracy in contrast to all forms of authoritarianism...
...Thus, we had the "American dilemma" as Gunnar Myrdal defined it—the dilemma of a flat contradiction between our practices and our professed and legally sanctioned ideals...
...The Court responded with a decision which delved into educational psychology, which avowed that segregated education made for inequality even if facilities were equal...
...The ideal of liberty, as embodied in basic law, limits the agencies of government so that they cannot infringe on the basic rights of the individual...
...Yet, every society generates many inequalities through its differentiations of function and power...
...This equality, particularly in education, in turn served to break down the absolute walls of separation...
...And when the future is open there is less danger of the majority suffering from a bad conscience for its involvement in injustice and of the minority generating resentments...
...The ideal of equality is rather more difficult to secure or to encourage by law than the ideal of liberty...
...This decision may well have been one of the most historic triumphs of justice in our century...
...But the doctrine was properly challenged, and particularly in the field of education...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 44
