COLOR-CONSCIOUS, COLOR-BLIND

...Consolidating attendance zones...

...This radical proposal visualized taking pupils by bus to outlying areas at public expense and recognized that significant state and Federal support would be needed to work out the coordinated metropolitan activity contemplated...

...Numerous definitions of the educational park are possible but in general they contemplate a large, campus-like complex of relatively small or moderately sized school units, designed to serve an extensive geographic area having a population diversified socially, economically, racially, and otherwise...

...The chief legal objection has been the claim that the Constitution is color-blind and bars public authorities from taking race into account for any purpose...

...But the Gary and Kansas City cases do not tell the whole story...

...Typically, most pupils resided in both a Negro and a white school zone but were permitted to attend only the school of their race for that zone...

...Those who doubt this would do well to compare the conventional wisdom of 1955 with that of 1960, then compare that of 1965 with both those earlier years...

...Having won the concession on faculty desegregation, much of the white South cannily guessed that the Administration had no intentions of holding back significant amounts of Federal school aids, and in the fall of 1965 managed to debase the standards which the Commissioner of Education had announced earlier must be met to comply with the nondiscriminatory requirements of Title VI...

...And just as pupils were assigned to school by race, so were teachers and staff personnel...

...Partly this is because seg: sgated housing patterns produce seg: :gated neighborhood schools...

...Again, the neighborhood concept is more frequently applied at the elementary than at the secondary level...

...Reduction of racial imbalances in schools suggests such previously noted changes as rezoning or abandonment of particular schools, creation of educational parks, and even the organization of schools on a metropolitan scale...

...Today, a "color-blind" school system which keeps no racial records lacks the very information needed to determine whether discrimination is practiced in its name...

...And problems long-ignored must now be faced...

...For most Negro Americans at this moment a claim of color-blindness is the equivalent of saying the school system is indifferent to protests over the public schools...

...many of the better qualified teachers refuse to accept assignments to them...

...the schools tend to be older and frequently overcrowded...

...With more adequate backing from the White House, and far more effective enforcement machinery than is now available, the Office of Education could play a vital role in changing the picture of racial imbalance in the North and West...

...The 1965 legislation, however, did not authorize funds for school construction, although a strong case could be made for such assistance in light of burgeoning enrollments and the unequal distribution of the nation's wealth...

...At least temporary reduction of racial imbalance can be achieved here and there by rezoning individual schools located near the boundaries which separate racial areas...

...Nowhere in the country should school authorities feel that protests over racial imbalances in their schools will end by announcing that the system follows a policy of color-blindness...

...There are, however, countless situations in which color-consciousness is essential for the elimination of invidious discrimination...

...The President's State of the Union address of January 12, 1966, carried the suggestion that the Administration is ready to experiment in creating model cities by rebuilding the central areas of several cities...

...Some courts put the thought another way by stating that the Constitution forbids discrimination but does not require integration...

...Anyone using them should be prepared to justify his purpose in terms of alternatives and ultimate objectives...

...Early in the program the white South was assured it need do nothing for the first year about the crucial question of faculty desegregation, a step which must be taken to produce a significant change in the South's pattern of racially separate schools...

...The so-called "neighborhood" school is "nder fire...

...Today, Negro groups, white groups, even state and sometimes Federal officials scrutinize every local school board policy and administrative action for their racial implications...

...Gary, Indiana, and Kansas City, Kansas, won widely-publicized cases in the lower courts by arguing successfully that school authorities have no constitutional duty to mitigate the effects of segregation found to result from residential patterns rather than from school board policies or other official school action...

...Even now the national commitment to eradicate poverty represents an important step toward the installation of compensatory machinery designed to narrow the effects of these environmental differences...

...Much will depend upon the quality of the educational park itself and the prestige which attaches to it...

...and where academically weak pupils seek transfers they frequently find themselves unable to receive remedial attention after the regular school day because the school buses leave too soon...

...Educational parks and cooperative metropolitan participation in the education problems of the core, such as proposed to Hartford, will be prominent among the proposals likely to receive serious consideration...

...Today, Cleveland, Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, St...

...High schools tend to be larger units, partly because more varied educational programs are offered and partly because there is less concern over having pupils of that age group travel greater distances to school...

...tion is on the scene or not, local school authorities cannot safely assume a posture of color-blindness and an indifference to complaints about segregation—de facto or de jure—in their schools...

...Indeed, efforts to reduce racial imbalance by rezoning schools to serve adjoining Negro and white areas frequently afford only temporary palliatives and often appear to speed the process of white exodus...

...As an alternative to the small and isolated neighborhood school has come the suggestion of the so-called "educational park...

...Congress provided no special funds for enforcing the provision, and enforcement costs have been bootlegged from the substantive programs administered by the Office of Education, to the dismay of career bureaucrats in the Office and of school authorities at state and local levels who anxiously await every Federal handout...

...Countless decisions thereafter in the lower Federal courts spoke of the duty to reorganize the South's schools "without regard to race," a concept which was color-blind...

...When pressed, however, few white Southerners wanted the Office of Education to insist on the additional steps which would be necessary to eliminate racial imbalances of the sort evident in the North and West...

...We can no longer afford poorer schools in rural than in urban areas, or poorer schools in core cities than in suburbs, or poorer schools in Mississippi than in California...

...Comprehensive educational services would be provided at primary and secondary levels, making possible a wide range of special instruction and course offerings...

...Put another way, it appears at the moment that the Constitution permits—but does not require —color-conscious corrective action by school authorities...

...The short answer is that manipulation of small school units has failed in larger urban areas to come to terms with demands for integrated schools or to provide adequate answers to many of the educational problems to which the current attack on poverty is addressed...

...In the first year of the Title VI operation the Office of Education has given priority to school segregation problems in the South...

...California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York are among the states which, by statute or judicial decision, require affirmative action by school officials to mitigate the effects of de facto segregation...

...The Southern states traditionally employed a special variant of the neighborhood schools...

...Partly i is because many schools in Negro neignborhoods are poor...

...But public education, important as it is, cannot be expected to carry alone the burdens of creating the conditions for what will someday be a color-blind society...

...But today no decision—however benevolent—will be acceptable unless Negroes are significantly involved in making it...

...Commissioner of Education Francis Kepple during 1964-65 in establishing standards in public schools for compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...

...Commission on Civil Rights to "develop a firm foundation of facts on which local and state governments can build a school system that is color-blind...

...Another sanction, potentially more dra-conic than judicial action, is embedded in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which calls for termination of funds for Federally-aided programs found to involve racial discrimination...

...The suggestion is not as radical as might first appear...

...Many teachers may view this as a gain but parents may resent transporting a child across town to attend a classmate's birthday party...

...In modern context, the neighborhood school is chiefly an urban affair...

...Within the Negro community it has been repeatedly insisted that segregated schools are inherently unequal...

...These color-conscious actions have not gone unchallenged...

...Specifically, the Harvard report suggested that each community in the area accommodate two pupils from Hartford's poverty areas in each of its elementary and secondary classrooms...

...In 1948, Princeton, New Jersey, developed a plan for pairing adjoining schools, thereby doubling the attendance area and reassigning to one school all the lower grade classes and all upper grade classes to the other...

...the use of racial distinctions at any time should be subject to the most careful scrutiny...

...Too, the educational park will create distinctive new problems of its own...

...Without doubt ¦—if the proposal becomes a reality and is adequately financed—the cities picked to receive Federal aid will be selected from those which come up with effective-looking proposals for correcting racial imbalance in public schools...

...The programs just discussed represent rewards for affirmative action...

...And as long as this belief persists, both Negroes and whites will assume that Negroes and other minorities are getting less than an equal opportunity when made to attend largely segregated schools...

...It is difficult to condone any system of education having some schools in which teachers dislike or even refuse to work, or schools regarded with contempt by the pupils for whom they are intended, and by their parents...

...Even where schools are organized on "neighborhood" terms, there is little general agreement on what constitutes a neighborhood for school purposes...

...Uniformly, efforts to reduce racial imbalance in schools have been sustained...

...There has been much militant protest against decisions to enlarge "neighborhood" schools in Negro areas or to replace them with new facilities on the same site...

...For a community faced with these conditions, the neighborhood school may be a far less attractive alternative than an educational park drawing its pupils from an extensive geographic area to assure a heterogenous mix...

...The child of a college graduate has a greater probability of attending college than the child of a blue-collar worker in Detroit or than a child born in a mining town in Appalachia or in a slum dwelling in Harlem...

...There are no precise limits on either choice...

...Other problems will grow out of the sheer bigness of the parks...

...Without question the decision to omit school construction aids from the 1965 legislation was influenced by awareness that safeguards were not at hand to assure the funds would be used to mitigate racial imbalance instead of increasing or perpetuating it...

...Further help is promised by the President's recent suggestion for comprehensive rebuilding of several core cities as experimental models...

...With an enrollment of well above 4,000 each hall (or school) has a thousand or more pupils, and a separate principal and counseling staff...

...Judicial actions may be initiated by private parties or, in some instances, by the United States on behalf of individual persons...

...substitute teachers are more reluctant to serve...

...The argument goes thus: First, school districts are creatures of the state...

...Whether the Office of Education will give Title VI a dynamic character in the immediate future is a real question...

...For three centuries whites have made most of the decisions that significantly affected the lives of Negro Americans...

...More unyielding problems arise, however, where the areas of racial concentration are large and school buildings, comparatively, are small...

...Drawing distinctions based on race runs counter to the grain of traditional liberal philosophy, and certainly G. W. FOSTER JR., professor of law at the University of Wisconsin, served as a consultant to U.S...

...The Evanston (Illinois) Township High School, while hardly a part of an educational park, provides an interesting illustration of one way to administer a well-balanced mixture of population elements: ETHS, long acknowledged to be one of the nation's best high schools, is administratively four semi-autonomous schools on the same site...

...When criticism comes—and these days it comes frequently—the system must either gather the needed information or brush away complaints without having facts adequate to make an informed judgment...

...The Supreme Court of the United States has thus far refused to review either cases of the Gary type, holding there is no constitutional duty to correct racial imbalance, or cases where states on their own initiative have required racially-conscious steps to correct imbalance...

...Even striking the most perfect racial balance possible, every elementary classroom in these school systems would have Negro majorities and thus—in some views —be segregated...

...Prevailing views continue to change significantly and it is wise to avoid thinking in absolute terms about permissible limits...

...The legislative history of Title VI suggests that Congress primarily intended the provision to induce changes in discriminatory patterns rather than produce a withholding of funds as punishment for discrimination...

...This higher probability is not commanded by any combination of genes but by radical differences in environmental conditions...

...Milwaukee and some other communities bus pupils as classroom units, barring them from mingling with children at the receiving school on the grounds that the assignment is only temporary...

...But equality of educational opportunity is not measured exclusively in terms of per capita expenditures for schools...

...And as communities gradually demonstrate workable methods for reducing racial imbalances, direct aids for school construction will, almost certainly become available...

...White minorities in Negro neighborhoods have often used them as a means of escape for their children, leaving the sending school more segregated than ever...

...The choice, therefore, is a political one...

...He has also served as a consultant on school segregation problems to the U.S...

...By making it possible to blend the population elements of a large area, the educational park should also ease the problem created by the reluctance of teachers to accept assignments to schools having high concentrations of disadvantaged pupils...

...In rural sectors, where populations are more dispersed, most children are "bused" at public expense and the neighborhood concept has little significance...

...The same school system may have both large and small elementary schools...

...And nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the field of public education...

...Attainment of that end calls for all manner of interim usage of distinctions based on race, particularly in such crucial areas as employment and housing...

...the practice invariably triggers a roar of protest from the Negro community which insists it is merely a scheme to perpetuate segregation...

...The administration of Title VI is complicated by other factors as well...

...Commission on Civil Rights and to various school systems...

...Similar race-conscious attention is owing such matters as the assignment of teachers, the content of teaching materials, and even the preparation of teachers to handle particular kinds of race-related problems...

...Racial balance in the schools is also affected by decisions made in locating additional classroom facilities or replacing old ones...

...Among them are these: Rezoning...

...and unmanned classrooms filled with pupils are frequent phenomena in ghetto schools...

...There was much resentment in the South at being thus singled out...

...Protest demonstrations, court actions, and even pressure from state and Federal government can all lead the way to the changes which—inexorably—are coming, for major racial imbalances in our public schools will disappear, and in many instances the "neighborhood" school will disappear with them...

...Too, there are serious questions concerning White House support for Title VI: The President must strike a delicate balance which at once produces constructive improvement in civil rights and does not withhold any significant quantity of Federal school aids that are everywhere so desperately needed...

...It is conceivable that the neighborhood school is headed in the same direction...

...Again, educational parks can reduce racial imbalance only within limits fixed by the racial characteristics of the school system as a whole...

...There are sanctions on the scene, too, which may follow from inaction or indifference to protests against racial imbalance in the schools...

...Transfers to relieve congestion sometimes produce special educational problems as well: Sending schools tend to lose some of their strongest students in the process and the loss is one they can ill afford, given the need for the kind of pace-setting which gifted children can provide...

...Equality of educational opportunity has racial overtones as well...

...Fashioning effective remedies for relieving racial imbalances in schools has proven difficult for many communities...

...The year 1965 saw the enactment of the first program of general Federal financial aids to elementary and secondary education in the nation's history...

...In many instances these transfer devices have contributed little to school integration...

...But limitations on currently available resources are no answer to a community's failure today to do everything it can with what it has to reduce racial imbalances in its schools and promote equality of educational opportunity...

...Congress did not define the word "discrimination" in enacting Title VI and persuasive reasons can be given for having the Commissioner of Education take the initiative in defining discrimination in light of his developing experience in dealing with segregated schools...

...Since 1960 some of the most populous states in the country have imposed legal duties on school officials to take color-conscious steps to correct racial imbalances and otherwise mitigate the effects of de facto segregation...

...There has been a celebrated desegregation case in New Rochelle, New York...

...In this view, de facto segregation was the innocent result of assigning pupils by geographic attendance areas in communities where residential segregation was widespread...

...These ideas derived from the Southern cases reinforced the notion that what the North and West referred to as de facto segregation was legitimate...

...Asserting that their schools were organized without regard to race, these school systems disclaimed responsibility for any segregation which was produced by such a color-blind process...

...The seeming anomaly of having to resort to color-conscious actions to achieve a world in which color is irrelevant should serve as a constant reminder that the use of racial distinctions should never be placed above suspicion...

...Hopefully, the Commission is going to report that first all kinds of color-conscious steps will have to be taken before the President's ultimate objective of a color-blind school system can be achieved...

...All sorts of color-conscious actions will be called for...

...Frequently the schools in Negro neighborhoods are seriously overcrowded and surplus classrooms exist in older white neighborhoods of a community...

...Nor, unless Negroes have been involved and given a chance to share responsibility for the decision, can a school board safely assume that any benign, race-conscious steps will be well received...

...It is a real question in many communities today whether any amount of money or effort can create the public confidence essential to effective operation of some neighborhood schools...

...Louis, and Washington are among the cities in which Negroes constitute more than half of the total public school enrollment...

...Distinctions based on race have long been suspect and those who would employ them carry the burden of justifying the use intended...

...Second, if states can be compelled to redistrict their legislative bodies to enforce the principle of one man, one vote, they can also be made to erase school district lines which effectively perpetuate segregated schools...

...Any community is far better off when it realistically recognizes, first, that racial concentrations in schools cause problems and, second, acknowledges the responsibility for working out solutions which tolerably accommodate the conflicting interests involved...

...In other instances, neighborhood populations remain stable over extended periods of time, making it possible for integrated schools to serve them through such periods...

...It will impose great new transportation demands on cities already crippled by present burdens...

...Indeed, earlier, more restricted programs had provided construction funds where military bases or other Federal activities caused school populations to mushroom...

...When the legislative programs and judicial developments of recent years are collectively considered, an unmistakable trend appears: We are fast moving toward a national commitment to provide equal educational opportunity for all...

...But in the context of racially-conscious efforts to reduce or eliminate segregation, lower appellate courts have systematically rejected the color-blindness argument...

...The Little Red School House—once the cherished symbol of American education—has all but joined the Dodo bird in extinction...

...Too, in the area of vocational education many school systems work in close partnership with trade unions that practice racial discrimination and the schools are surely chargeable with responsibility for tolerating discriminatory qualifications for receiving vocational training...

...But whether the Office of Educa...

...Considerable Federal financial help is presently available for those who make imaginative use of the new education and anti-poverty programs...

...Attendance zone lines may be drawn around each school with an eye primarily to traffic hazards and the proximity of the child's residence to the school...

...Here, if the same buildings are to be used, choices are rather limited...

...Often the boundaries separating Negro and white neighborhoods are unstable, with Negroes moving block by block into formerly white neighborhoods while whites flee to the suburbs or other sections of the community, or place their children in private schools...

...The Princeton Plan has been widely used to reduce racial imbalance, sometimes with as many as three schools consolidated into a single attendance zone...

...But demonstrations, judicial proceedings, or pressures from outside the community all represent hard ways of doing the job...

...Entering pupils are assigned at random among the four schools but in such a manner that the percentage of Negroes is the same, thirteen to fourteen per cent in each hall...

...Throughout the country the belief is widespread that educational opportunities are inferior for those who attend schools having high concentrations of racial minorities...

...But given existing problems and present knowledge, overtly racial stratagems, even racial quotas—something long-viewed with the gravest doubts and skepticism—may be indispensable short-run tools, simply because no better alternatives yet exist for eradicating barriers to a colorblind society...

...In the early 1960's the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People launched a sustained drive against racial concentrations in the public schools of the North and West...

...And today an increasing number of community services are provided on metropolitan rather than community terms...

...The process of blending the community's population components and distributing them among the various school units in the educational park will mean that few if any of a child's neighborhood companions will be in the same classroom...

...Consolidation of small and inefficient school districts has been part of an historic process in rural areas of the nation for decades...

...In other instances, zone lines appear to parallel the boundaries which separate socio-economic, ethnic, or religious neighborhoods of the community...

...If a child is to avoid being lost in a cold, impersonal world, the school units within the park will have to be small and relatively autonomous...

...It is quite evident that the costs of providing equality of educational opportunity cannot be borne by the traditional state aids and local tax resources of the communities in which the victims of poverty and discrimination currently reside...

...But the park will not succeed—for teachers or pupils—unless the enterprise develops in a spirit of attempting to provide the best in education and experience the community can offer...

...To relieve congestion, many systems have either permitted or required pupils to transfer to less crowded schools, with transportation provided at public expense when considerable distances are involved...

...In 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the South's dual system of schools unconstitutional...

...Yet with all the difficulties conceded, workable solutions have been found for a variety of problems...

...A court action recently commenced against the New York City schools attacks as discriminatory the systematic failure to provide a sufficient supply of competent teachers for schools in Negro neighborhoods...

...Separate sets of schools were provided for Negroes and whites and there were two sets of school zone maps, one for Negroes, the other for whites...

...Transfer Plans...

...Nor is the need for color-consciousness confined to education: In employment, in housing, in public accommodations, indeed, in the whole range of societal relations, surveillance against possible discrimination calls for continuing knowledge of racial facts...

...a court victory for the Negroes here would significantly expand Federal intervention into urban school systems of the North and West...

...In the first year of its operation— the school year of 1965-1966—Title VI has produced no miracles in abating school segregation...

...The pervasive character of residential segregation results in neighborhoods which are largely Negro or largely white...

...For the immediate future, school systems in the North and West may expect investigators from the Office of Education to prowl around checking out complaints which may—or may not—be pushed toward administrative proceedings that could lead to cutting off Federal financial aids...

...Some civil rights leaders, eyeing the rise of Negro populations in the core cities and the expanding white populations of the suburbs which surround them, are seriously considering efforts to break down the walls which isolate the suburban schools from those of the city...

...In some smaller communities it has been possible to close the predominantly Negro schools and redistribute their pupils more or less uniformly among the other schools in the community...

...Without question there can be found in the school systems of the North and West practices which violate norms that have been laid down in court cases dealing with Southern problems...

...In the spring of 1965 the Harvard Graduate School of Education produced for the Board of Education of Hartford, Connecticut, a comprehensive report which recommended that the communities of the Hartford metropolitan area be asked to cooperate in that city's educational problems growing out of racial concentrations and poverty...