Separatism Repackaged

...on the other, school district lines are to be redrawn at the direction of the Federal government and local zoning and housing regulations are to be thrown out, presumably by a Federal agency or court...

...We must realize that a local planning board or zoning agency is no less susceptible to the pressures of special interests than a West Virginia community would be to a strip-mining firm...

...But it can just as easily be applied to thwart the legitimate aspirations of blacks as to encourage their progress...

...This is not surprising, since the approach was conceived by liberals and sold as a way of giving black people some say over their destinies...

...Rather, it would appear that few of them really understand what the notion signifies as a strategy for social change when carried to its logical conclusion...

...Despite its shortcomings, the Federal government is recognized as the only institution with the strength and expertise to develop and implement a program to salvage the environment...

...For inherent in the concept is the surrender of the suburbs to white domination...

...Separatism, no matter what form it takes or how slickly it is packaged, has always worked to the detriment of the black man...

...If we abandon the liberal ideal of peaceful social change through government action, and revert back to community control, local autonomy, states' rights or whatever, we will do incalculable damage to the movement to create a society free of the stigma of racial inequality...

...Environmentalists well understand the destructive ecological consequences of government fragmentation...

...Indeed, it is the spiritual descendant of states' rights, the doctrine so often invoked to deny blacks their basic rights as citizens...

...Only the Federal government has the resources, the planning facilities and the broad legislative powers to cope successfully with these ills...

...Accordingly, community control would be the exclusive province of the poor, while middle class and affluent neighborhoods would be subject to decisions handed down from some "distant" agency in a state capital or Washington...

...It has become fashionable for the Left to question the ability of the Federal government to initiate social progress, but in fact virtually every major social or economic reform in the country was initiated by Congress and the President...

...The liberal supporters of community control, lacking such clearsightedness, are embroiled in contradictions...

...The struggle for racial integration has been much more complex and painful than anyone in the civil rights movement foresaw...

...It derives not from liberal Bayard Rustin, a frequent contributor, is Executive Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute...

...Those who support community control because they believe it will give minorities a measure of self-government, a "piece of the action," see only half the picture...

...Similarly, if community control becomes imbedded as a principle around which public policy is formulated, we shall soon discover that the progress made at a cost of no little suffering and sacrifice during the civil rights era has been blunted or blocked altogether...

...Conservatives, who see it as a means of forever laying to rest the social engineering theories developed and popularized during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, have a more realistic understanding of its consequences: They realize that community control, simply stated, is the right of any community-be it Harlem or Riverdale-to determine housing, land use, education, and law enforcement policies unfettered from the control of city hall, state government, or Washington...

...If the Federal government or the courts had accepted the Southern states' rights argument, they would have prevented any substantive Negro advancement not only in the past but for years to come...

...theory but from our heritage of conservatism...

...We must look to the federal government to develop the strategies and implement the programs for the peaceful racial integration of our society...

...It must be conceded that some responsible black leaders see community control as one means of taking over the institutions traditionally used by the larger society to exploit the ghetto and its inhabitants...

...But the nature of the problems confronting us, and the political difficulties in implementing their solutions, preclude the complete local autonomy that the most ardent proponents of community control are calling for...

...Yet these very same proponents of community control are calling for assaults on school segregation that entail overriding the present system of school district boundaries, and they propose that communities be forced-despite what their zoning laws might say-to accept a housing quota for low- and moderate-income families in order to break up segregated residential housing patterns...

...What progress we have made -and it is not insignificant-has been in large measure due to the legislative, administrative, judicial and enforcement initiatives of the Federal government, initiatives often opposed by states and local communities...

...Right now, for example, the most vigorous opponents of the controversial scatter-site housing project in Forest Hills justify their position on the grounds that they have the right to control their own neighborhood...

...Here we have the essence of the contradictions blurring the liberal's image of community control: On the one hand, there is to be decentralization and freedom from bureaucracy...

...Here again, states and localities lack the financial resources to provide compensatory programs to a community struggling with school desegregation, or to design a public housing complex that will enhance the surrounding neighborhood...

...Stripped of the rhetoric that so often camouflages its true significance, community control emerges as a concept incompatible with a political program committed to social and racial justice...

...It was at the insistence of liberal Democrats, for instance, that such Federal efforts as the war on poverty, Head Start, Model Cities, and day care centers included provisions requiring the "maximum feasible participation" of those affected by a program...

...One of the most important challenges facing us today is making the integration of public schools and the suburbs acceptable, or even desirable, to communities...

...I do not believe that liberals who profess support for community control actually accept such a philosophy...

...They certainly should have this power...

...This does not mean that individual communities should not be delegated advisory roles in the formulation and administration of public policy...

...They know that state and municipal officials are too vulnerable to the pressures of special interests-loggers, strip miners, utility companies, the billboard lobby-to be entrusted with land use decisions...

...Blacks, in other words, will have the ghetto, with its drug addiction, soaring crime rate, high unemployment, and deplorable housing...

...And it is time we began to think of our cities in the same way...

...Whites will keep the suburbs, where job opportunities are expanding, the air is unpolluted, housing is decent, and schools provide superior education...

...Thinking Aloud SEPARATISM REPACKAGED BY BAYARD RUSTIN In the few short years since it was conceived as a theory of social and racial progress, community control has become an ingrained component of American political dogma for both liberals and conservatives...

...Liberals view it as a strategy enabling the poor and minorities to affect their common destinies...

...At the moment, we are confronted by seemingly insoluble socioeconomic problems-Including housing, medical care and unemployment, to name only three-that are beyond the remedial capacity of states or municipalities...