Civil Rights and Social Science Data

Frank Reissman and S.M. Miller , 'Social Change Versus the Psychiatric World View', American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (Vol. 34, No. 1, January 1964), p. 30.

National Association of Intergroup Relations Officials (NAIRO) , Public School Segregation and Integration in the North (November 1963). NAIRO is the professional organization of personnel in public and private race-relations agencies and civil rights commissions.

See, for example, A. Boskoff, The Sociology of Urban Regions (Appleton-Century, 1962), p. 119.

Nairo, op. cit. , p. 34, quoting David and Pearl Ausubel, in Education in Depressed Areas, ed. A. H. Passow (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1963), pp. 109-41.

See Herbert Gans , The Urban Villagers ( New York, Free Press, 1962), pp. 308-11.

[The relationship between social policy and concept definition is stressed in Michael Banton, 'The Concept of Racism', in Race and Racialism, ed. S. D. Zubaida (London , Tavistock, 1970).]

NAIRO, op. cit., p. 76.

W. Maslow and R. Cohen , School Segregation, Northern Style (Public Affairs Pamphlet #316, 1961).

[See Martin Mayer, 'The Good Slum Schools', Harpers, 1961, which quotes the programmes' director as to costs: 'Twenty-five cents a day, three cents a class period' (p. 50). Mayer described the impact as so 'strong and real' that 'Higher Horizons does and will break up children's homes' as a consequence of the social mobility thus engendered (p. 51). See my 'Afterthoughts' for later evaluation of the Higher Horizons programme.]

Gerald Lesser et al. , 'Some Effects of Segregation and Desegregation in the Schools', Integrated Education (Vol. II, No. 3, June-July 1964), pp. 21-2.

Ibid., p. 22. [These reported 'improvements' in academic performance were probably the result of computing average scores of temporarily mixed class rooms since the seriously substandard achievement of Washington's black pupils became a matter for serious concern soon after this paper was written and has remained so.]

Ibid.

NAIRO, op. cit., p. 72.

N. Levine and W. Maslow , 'An Integration Program', Integrated Education (Vol. II, No. 1, February-March 1964), p. 39.

Warren Haggstrom , 'Segregation, Desegregation and Negro Personality', Integrated Education (Vol. I, No. 5, October-November 1963), p. 22.

M. Tumin , 'The Process of Integration', Integrating the Urban School, eds. G. Klopf and I. Laster, (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1963 ), pp. 19-21. Class size well over thirty is common in most large cities.

W.P. Moore , 'Why Difficult Schools?', Integrated Education (Vol. I, No. 3, June 1963), p. 41.

Kenneth Clark , 'Clash of Cultures in the Classroom', Integrated Education (Vol. I, No. 4, August 1963), pp. 11-12.

Ibid., p. 14.

Alan B. Wilson, 'Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys', American Sociological Review (Vol. 24, No. 6, December 1959).

Ibid., pp. 843-4.

Kenneth Clark and Mamie Clark , 'Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children', in Readings in Social Psychology , eds. G. Swanson, T. Newcomb and E. L. Hartley ( New York , Holt, 1952).

Robert Perloff , 'Problems of Method and Ethics in Interracial Research', American Behavioural Scientist (Vol. 7, No. 7, March 1964), p. 9.

Chester Rapkin and William Grigsby , The Demand for Housing in Racially Mixed Areas (Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press, 1960), pp. 102-3.

[The present matter-of-fact acceptance of this relationship is a most welcome contrast to the earlier coy evasiveness.]

Of June 1963, defining imbalanced schools, provisionally, as those where 'enrolment is largely (over 50%) from a minority group of homogeneous ethnic origin' [To date, the definition has been applied in that state only to instances where the 'minority-group' is Negro.]

M. Weinberg , 'School Integration—or Else', Commonweal (17 April 1964), p. 106. [As will be noted in later discussion this contention has since been upheld by some important court decisions.]

Martin Deutsch , 'Dimensions of the School's Role in the Problems of Integration', Klopf and Laster, op. cit. p. 43.

NAIRO Report, p. 69.

Kenneth Clark , 'Desegregation and the Role of the Social Sciences', Teachers College Record (Vol. 62, October 1960), p. 17.

Tumin, op. cit., p. 16.

Eleanor P. Wolf, 'Research Data in Decision-Making', Social Problems (Vol. 6, No. 4, Spring 1959), pp. 362-6;

see also S.J. Fauman and Harry Sharp , 'Presenting the Results of Social Research to the Public', Public Opinion Quarterly (Vol. 22, No. 2, 1958), pp. 107-15.

Perloff, op. cit., p. 9.

William Petersen , 'The Scientific Basis of Our Immigration Policy', Commentary (July 1955), p. 86.

See, for example, Anthony Downs , 'Racism in America' , Urban Problems and Prospects ( Chicago, Markham, 1970), who defines racism as 'any attitude, or institutional structure which subordinates a person or group because of ... color' regardless of cause or intent; for example, the decentralization of economic enterprises, which results in existing black neighbourhoods being physically distant from job opportunities: 'this is clearly racism or institutional subordination'. (p. 83).

Howard Schuman , 'Sociological Racism', Transaction (Vol. 7, No. 2, December 1969), pp. 44-8.

The Editor noted (February 1970, p. 63) that the title was not of Schuman's choosing. But Schuman's analysis of data implies that unless the respondent can (1) offer a sociological explanation for observed black-white group differences and (2) accept his 'past or present responsibility for prejudice and discrimination and general inequalities in opportunities' the fact that he is not racist 'in the more technical sense' is a distinction without much of a difference (p. 48). For another example of the debasement of terminology see the article on Head Start programmes by Stephen S. Baratz and Joan C. Baratz, 'Early Childhood Intervention: The Social Science Base of Institutional Racism' , Harvard Education Review (Vol. 40, No. 1, February 1970), pp. 29-50.

See Nathan Glazer , 'A Breakdown in Civil Rights Enforcement?' , Public Interest (Vol. 23, Spring 1971) in which he notes that the 1970 Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 'abandons as a measure of success ... the elimination of discrimination' and substitutes the test of proportional representation of minority-groups at every level of employment of all types (p. 109).

B. Howard , 'Blacks and Professional Schools', Change (February 1972), pp. 13-16.

Paul Seabury , 'How HEW Enforces New Forms of Discrimination in the Name of Equal Opportunity', Commentary (Vol. 53, No. 2, February 1972), pp. 38-44. The author (a professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley) draws a comparison with the preferential quotas in education and government employment established for 'backward classes' in India (p. 41).

See L. Paul Metzger , 'American Sociology and Black Assimilation: Conflicting Perspectives', American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 76, No. 4, January 1971), pp. 627-47 for a valuable and provocative discussion of some of these issues. But I believe Metzger's analysis fails to maintain a clear distinction between the description of structural and cultural assimilation as processes and the values which support or demand these changes, i. e. assimilationism as an ideology.

S.M. Peck and David K. Cohen , 'The Social Context of De Facto School Segregation,' Western Reserve Law Review (Vol. 16, No. 3, May 1965), pp. 572-607. (The senior author is a sociologist.)

New York Times (2 September 1965) announced that the New York City's Board of Education study of its 'highly publicized effort' (Higher Horizons) revealed that it 'has had virtually no measurable effect' on achievement

See 'Project Head Start', in Chapter 6, by Katherine S. Bluegrass and Ruth Salter, in Robert P. O'Reilly, ed. Racial and Social Class Isolation in the Schools (New York , Praeger, 1970), pp. 262-9;

Ann Sherman , James S. Payne , William R. Carriker , 'Is Head Start Dying?', The Training School Bulletin (American Institute for Mental Studies, Vol. 68, August 1971), pp. 113-30,

including a comprehensive bibliography of other evaluative studies of the programme. See also Marshall S. Smith and Joan S. Bissell , 'Report Analysis: The Impact of Head Start', pp. 51-104 and V.G. Cicirelli , John W. Evans , and J. Scheller , 'A Reply to the Report Analysis', pp. 105-29 in Harvard Educational Review , (Vol. 40, No. 1, February 1970).

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools (Vol. 1, 1967), p. 138.

Thomas F. Pettigrew , 'The Negro and Education: Problems and Proposals: in Race and the Social Sciences , eds. Irvin Katz and Patricia Gurin (New York, Basic Books, 1969), p. 85.

But see contrasting evaluations of the More Effective Schools Program (MES) in The Urban Review (Vol. 2, 6 May 1968, Special Supplement), and the guarded appraisal by George Weber, Inner-City Children Can Be Taught to Read: Four Successful Schools (Council for Basic Education, 1971).

James S. Coleman , E.Q. Campbell, et al. , Equality of Educational Opportunity (U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1966).

James S. Coleman , 'Towards Open Schools', The Public Interest (Vol. 6, Fall, 1967), p. 22. Gross racial discrimination in educational resource-allocation was the dominant theme of earlier civil rights efforts and there was enough such evidence to make the hypothesis that substandard achievement could be thus explained appear both plausible and sufficient. It should be borne in mind that those grossly deprived pupils, largely in the South, are the grandparents or parents of black pupils in urban schools today.

The presumed relationship between low achievement and resource-allocation was the major theme of earlier works such as Patricia C. Sexton, Education and Income ( New York, Viking, 1961).

Samuel Bowles and H. Levin , 'The Determinants of Scholastic Achievement', Journal of Human Resources (Vol. 3, No. 3, 1968),

suggests that Coleman Report methodology tends to minimize the impact of some school resources. For one of many other discussions see the 'Review-Symposium' by William Sewell, Leonard Marascuilo and Howard Pfautz in American Sociological Review (Vol. 32, No. 3, June 1967), pp. 475-83.

See, for example, Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 60.

Detroit News (1 February 1972), p. 5B. In 1966 as astute a writer as Christopher Jencks wrote that 'if Litton Industries can run a Job Corps camp it can surely run a school', p. 27, in 'Is the Public School Obsolete?', Public Interest (No. 2, Winter 1966).

The success of private enterprise in both these efforts now appears quite doubtful. An evaluation done by Rand Corporation, however, reported some successes; Vol. 1, Case Studies in Educational Performance Contracting (1971).

Among the many contributors to basic research in intellectual development, with a special interest in the impact of social and economic disadvantage: Anne Anastasi , David Ausubel , Basil Bernstein , Benjamin Bloom , Martin Deutsch , Miriam Goldberg , Robert Hess , J. McVicker Hunt , Irwin Katz , Gerald Lesser , Phyllis Levenstein , Benjamin Passamanick , Virginia Shipman , Irving Sigel , and F. Strodbeck. See also Edward MacDill et al. , Strategies for Success in Compensatory Education: An Appraisal of Evaluation Research (Baltimore , John Hopkins University Press, 1967).

See 'Serrano V. Priest: Implications for Educational Equality', Supreme Court of the State of California, with commentary by William N. Greenbaum, Harvard Educational Review (Vol. 41, No. 4, November 1971), pp. 501-34, especially p. 532.

See also the work by John E. Coons, W. H. Clune and S. Sugarman, Private Wealth and Public Education (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1970).

Coons, op. cit., p. 30.

James S. Coleman, op. cit. , 1967, p. 23. Yet the New York Times (22 April 1970) quotes Coleman as testifying before the Senate's Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity that 'racially integrated schooling aided ghetto pupils while costly compensatory education programs ... did not', and that his study showed that 'the average Negro student who was shifted from a segregated to an integrated school would narrow the gap in achievement between himself and the average white student by 20 to 25 per cent'.

See Glen Cain and H.W. Watts , 'Problems in Making Policy Inferences from the Coleman Report', American Sociological Review (Vol. 35, No. 2, April 1970), p. 240, also Pettigrew, op. cit., pp. 64-5.

Alan B. Wilson , The Consequences of Segregation: Academic Achievement in a Northern Community (Berkeley, Glendessary Press, 1969), pp. 63-5.

See Wilson, op. cit. , 1959, for evidence of depressing effects of a low-achieving majority upon a minority of middle-class students. For discussion of racial-mix impact, independent of class, see Pettigrew, op. cit., pp. 66-72,

especially p. 72; Edmund Gordon's Essay Review (of Meyer Weinberg's Desegregation Research: An Appraisal Second Edition, Phi. Delta Kappa, 1970 ) in Children (Vol. 18, No. 3, May-June 1971), pp. 109-10.

An excellent comprehensive evaluation of a large number of studies is Nancy St. John, 'Desegregation and Minority Group Performance', Review of Educational Research (Vol. 40, No. 1, February 1970), pp. 11-133.

Her general finding is that existing evidence to show the impact of ethnic mixture upon scholastic achievement is 'inconclusive' (p. 128).

Robert Dentler , 'Barriers to Northern School Desegregation' , in The Negro American, eds. Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark (Boston, Mass., Beacon Edition, 1967), p. 473.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 193.

Robert P. O'Reilly, ed., Racial and Social Class Isolation in the Schools (New York, Praeger , 1970), pp. 138-9. See also the summaries, pp. 205-9 and pp. 254-8.

Ibid., p. 307.

See Stephen K. Bailey , Disruption in Urban Public Secondary Schools (National Association of Secondary School Principals , 1970);

O'Reilly, op. cit., pp. 253-4,

M.A. Chesler , S. Wittes , and N. Radin , 'What Happens When Northern Schools Desegregate', American Education (Vol. 4, 1968), pp. 2-4.

Herbert Gans disputes the claim that interracial contacts between children produce more favourable racial attitudes in People and Plans ( New York, Basic Books, 1969),

'The Balanced Community: Homogeneity or Heterogeneity', pp. 170-1.

See also Charles Stember , 'Evaluating the Effects of the Integrated Classroom', Urban Review (Vol. 2, 7 June 1968), and his letter in the Urban Review (Vol. 3, No. 3, January 1969).

For a comprehensive review of the effects of inter-ethnic contact see Yehuda Amir , 'The Contact Hypothesis in Ethnic Relations', Psychological Bulletin (Vol. 71, No. 5, 1969),

and Robin Williams, et al. , Strangers Next Door (Englewood Cliffs , Prentice-Hall, 1964), Chap. 7.

National survey data show the steady growth of more enlightened racial attitudes in the U.S.—see Paul Sheatsley, 'White Attitudes Toward the Negro', Parsons and Clark, op. cit. But from Richard La Piere, 'Attitudes vs Actions', Social Forces (Vol. 13), in 1934 the significance of these statements for other behaviour has been the subject of controversy.

See Herbert Blumer , 'Attitudes and the Social Act', Social Problems (Vol. 3, No. 2, October 1955)

and Arnold Rose , 'Intergroup Relations vs Prejudice', Social Problems (Vol. 4, No. 2, October 1956).

For more recent discussions see Irwin Deutscher , 'Words and Deeds', Social Problems (Vol. 13, Winter 1966) and

Eleanor P. Wolf and Charles N. Lebeaux , Change and Renewal in an Urban Community (New York, Praeger, 1969). 'The Bagley Area'.

See, for example, the works of Edgar Friedenberg , Jonathon Kozo l , John Holt , Herbert Kohl , Ronald Gross , Paul Goodman , and Ivan Illich. A much more moderate exposition of the overall failure of American Education is Charles Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom ( New York, Random House, 1970).

Lee Rainwater , for example, has suggested that since serious programmes of compensatory education cost at least five hundred dollars per child, the addition of two thousand dollars to the annual income of a poor household with four children might prove a more effective strategy. See 'The Lessons of Pruitt-Igoe', The Public Interest (Vol. 8, Summer 1967).

Morris Janowitz has directed attention to changing the institutional structure of inner city schools in his Institution Building in Urban Education ( Chicago, Sage, 1969 ), especially pp. 108-11.

See Alan B. Altshuler , Community Control ( New York, Pegasus, 1970),

for an inclusive study by a political scientist. The movement's rejection of 'sociological' explanations for substandard educational performance is discussed in Eleanor P. Wolf, 'Community Control of Schools as Ideology and Social Mechanism', in Planned Social Intervention , eds. L. A. Zurcher and C. Bonjean, (San Francisco, Chandler, 1970).

For more sympathetic views see Nathan Glazer , 'For White and Black, Community Control is the Issue', New York Times Magazine (27 April , 1969), and especially the work of Marilyn Gittell, e.g. Participants and Participation (New York, Praeger, 1967).

A recent view of scholastic achievement in some New York City schools declares the approach to be a failure: Diane Ravitch, 'Community Control Revisted' , Commentary (Vol. 53, No. 2, February 1972).

Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson , Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968).

This has been a persistent theme; see footnotes numbers 18 and 19 above and Wolf, op. cit., 1970, pp. 173-7.

For a discussion of some theoretical issues involved in this perspective, see Charles Valentine , 'Deficit, Difference and Bicultural Models of Afro-American Behavior', Harvard Educational Review (Vol. 41, No. 2, May 1971), especially pp. 139-41.

Annie Stein , 'Strategies For Failure', Harvard Educational Review (Vol. 41, No. 2, May 1971), especially pp. 159-60 and 203.

U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Rorcald Bradley et al v. (Governor) William G. Milliken et al. (27 September 1971), Stephen J. Roth, U.S. District Judge. See also the San Francisco decision, David Johnson et al v. San Francisco Unified School District (28 April 1971), Stanley A. Weigel, Judge of U.S. District Court for Northern District of California.

Roth, p. 9. My emphases.

For contrasting emphases by scholars see Karl Taeuber (stressing discrimination and showing minimal effects of economic ability, but not attempting to assess self-segregation) in 'The Effect of Income Redistribution on Racial Residential Segregation', Urban Affairs Quarterly (September 1968);

as contrasted with Raymond Zelder , 'Residential Desegregation, Can Nothing Be Accomplished?', Urban Affairs Quarterly (March 1970)

and his further analysis, 'Racial Segregation in Urban Housing Markets', Journal of Regional Science (Vol. 10, No. 1, 1970).

George and Eunice Grier , 'Obstacles, to Desegregation in America's Urban Areas', Race (Vol. VI, No. 1, July 1964 ),

see 'economic incapacity' as the 'central obstacle to black movement into suburban areas' (p. 16);

Anthony Pascal shows the importance of economic ability in The Economics of Housing Discrimination (Chicago, Rand, 1967);

Thomas Pettigrew et al. discuss the lack of interest among even middle-class Negroes in seeking integrated housing situations in The Middle-Income Negro Family Faces Urban Renewal (Brandeis University) 1964, especially pp. 94-5;

Anthony Downs stresses life-style (cultural dominance) rather than racial preferences in Housing Problems and Prospects (Chicago, Markham, 1970); especially pp. 34-7;

Eleanor P. Wolf and Charles N. Lebeaux stress own-group preferences in life-style and own-group social ties in 'Census Tract 515'; 'The Bagley Area' and 'Lafayette Park', op. cit (New York, Praeger, 1969 );

Philip Hauser states that 'It is clear that internal social and economic pressures would prompt Negroes to ... live in enclaves for some time to come even if there were no barriers to their movement.... The descendants of 19th Century immigrants, German, Irish and Scandinavian, not to mention 20th Century immigrants and their offspring still live in voluntary enclaves', in 'Demographic Factors in the Integration of the Negro', Parsons and Clark, eds. op. cit., p. 96.

Lester Singer , 'Ethnogenesis and Negro-Americans Today' , Social Research (Vol. 29, Winter 1962), pp. 422-32.

Roth, p. 22. My emphases.

See the special section in Arnerican Journal of Sociology (Vol. 76, No. 4, January 1971),

especially L. Paul Metzger , 'American Sociology and Black Assimilation', a valuable contribution which, however, fails to maintain a sufficiently clear distinction between cultural and structural assimilation as processes and assimilationism as an ideology

Milton Gordon , Assimilation in American Life (London, Oxford University Press, 1963), and

Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan , Beyond the Melting Pot ( Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press, 1963).

Nathan Kantrowitz , 'Ethnic and Racial Segregation in New York City Metropolitan Area: 1960', American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 74, No. 6, May 1969);

Edward O. Laumann , 'The Social Structure of Religious and Ethnoreligious Groups in a Metropolitan Community', American Sociological Review (Vol. 34, No. 2, April 1969 );

D.Y. Yuan , 'Voluntary Segregation: A Study of New York Chinatown', in Minority Responses, ed. M. Kurokawa ( New York , Random House, 1970), pp. 120-30.

Erich Rosenthal's 'Acculturation Without Assimilation?' American Journal of Sociology (Vol. LXVI, No. 3, November 1960), is one of many studies documenting continued self-segregation among Jewish-Americans.

See, to note a few, Metzger, op. cit.; Morris Gross, 'Learning Readiness in Two Jewish Groups', Center for Urban Education (1967).

See also Gerald Lesser , Gordon Fifer and Donald H. Clark , Mental Abilities of Children From Different Social Class and Cultural Groups, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (Vol. 30, No. 4, 1965).

For ethnic differences among Americans at similar class levels, see Minako Kurokawa, 'Childhood Accidents' in Kurokawa, op. cit., pp. 120-30 and Nathan Glazer, 'Paradoxes of Health Care', The Public Interest (Vol. 22, Winter 1971), especially pp. 74-5; Martin Katzman, 'Urban Racial Minorities and Immigrant Groups: Some Economic Comparisons', American Journal of Economics and Sociology (Vol. 30, No. 1, January 1971); M. Parenti, 'Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification', American Political Science Review (September 1967); D. Featherman, 'The Socioeconomic Achievement of White Religio-Ethnic Sub-groups', American Sociological Review (Vol. 36, No. 2). On the issue of the degree to which behavioural regularities among black Americans constitute a distinct 'subculture', see e.g. Ulf Hannerz, Soulside (New York, Columbia University Press, 1969); Robert Blauner, 'Black Culture: Myth or Reality?' in Peter Rose, ed., Americans From Africa (New York, Atherton, 1970); Charles Keil, Urban Blues (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966). For a critique of this emphasis see Bennett Berger, 'Black Culture' reprinted in his Looking for America (Englewood Cluffs, Prentice Hall, 1971).

New York Times, Gallup Poll Report (12 September 1971).

The conflict between school decentralization plans and racial mixture is the subject of William Grant's 'Community Control vs. Integration—The Case of Detroit', The Public Interest (Vol. 24, Summer 1971).