April 21, 1971
Page 11329
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, it is now over a decade and a half since the historic Supreme Court decision of Brown against Board of Education which ordered the elimination of State enforced separation of races in public schools. Since that decision, we have come a long way in eliminating segregation in our schools. But we have not come far enough.
There has been substantial progress in the South over the past few years in moving beyond a token level and toward the elimination of de jure segregation in school systems. This has been a sweeping social change for that part of the country, and because of that, it has been extraordinarily difficult. But this had to be done to eliminate segregation by law.
The South is moving meaningfully against school segregation by law. There remains the even greater problem in large metropolitan areas in the North and South which have large segregated communities which frequently consist of blacks living in the inner city surrounded by a ring of white suburbs. By and large, this segregation has not been caused by law. It is segregation caused by a variety of historical forces including residential patterns and the reactions and attitudes of private individuals.
School segregation in the North caused by circumstances, rather than by law, must be ended just as segregation by law must be ended. A democratic society whose major premise is the equality of man must give each individual an equal opportunity to achieve his potential in that society. In education, that must mean that each child has an opportunity to obtain a quality education and, when quality education requires it, an integrated education.
I believe our society and our Government must develop and enforce those programs which bring an end to segregation in the North as well as in the South. There can be no regional hypocrisy.
We have one such program before us today, and that is the emergency school aid and quality education act of 1971. This bill provides $1.5 billion between the date of its enactment and July 1, 1973 to deal with the problems arising out of minority group isolation in public schools due to de facto segregation. The major part of these funds are directed to programs that establish and maintain quality and integrated schools and that reduce and eliminate minority group school isolation.
This legislation is a major step forward in developing the kind of tools and momentum needed to end de facto racial segregation. It is the result of long and detailed study by the Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity and has involved the participation of experts on schools and social problems inside and outside the Government. I support this bill without reservation. The Senate should do nothing that would endanger the passage of this bill.
Of course, this bill offers only financial incentives to develop ways of overcoming racial isolation in schools. It does not offer a deadline. It offers a carrot, but no stick. This is not enough. We need legislation to provide integration in the North that contains a national commitment to end racial isolation by a certain date. Such legislation should be drawn so that it requires moves in the direction of wise and healthy plans for integration, and so that it does not further divide our people or drive children to private schools because of inflexible rules. It should have a deadline. And it must contain the flexibility to conform to the peculiarities of local needs.
Just as in the South, where court decisions in school desegregation cases have emphasized the need to fashion integration plans to local problems, so too in the North we must allow communities to use local variations to comply with federally established principles to end racial isolation in public schools.
Before the Senate now is an amendment offered by the Senator from Connecticut. It is the Urban Education Improvement Act of 1971 that was introduced earlier this year. It would require wide scale integration in metropolitan areas according to a single mechanical formula. Each school in a broad metropolitan area would be required to enroll in each school one-half of the percentage of minority group members that live in that metropolitan area. Thus, if the population of the metropolitan area is composed of 40 percent minority group students each school in that area would be required to enroll 20 percent minority group students.
There have been no hearings on this amendment nor has it received widespread attention from private and public experts. So it is difficult to predict exactly what effects this would have on our metropolitan areas. At the least, the amendment will not improve the quality of education of inner city schools, for funds provided are directed solely to the efforts toward integration. Yet even under this proposal, a large number of inner city students will have to continue to rely upon inner city schools for their education. Indeed, if an overwhelming percentage of minority group members lived in the inner city, about one-half of the minority children will still have to depend upon obsolete and ineffective school systems for their education.
Nor does this bill respect the wishes of many black inner city residents to shape the kind of education their children receive.
Another aspect of this bill which I find deeply troubling is the inevitable widespread one-way busing that would be required to fulfill its integration goals. The most obvious way to meet the requirements of this legislation would be to bus black children from the inner city into suburban schools. I do not think it wise to pass legislation such as this which will inevitably result in such heavy use of busing, as opposed to other techniques of integration such as magnet schools, educational parks and the construction of schools in-between segregated communities. There are more likely and useful ways to lessen racial isolation in our schools resulting from de facto segregation.
In spite of the serious difficulties which I have with the Ribicoff amendment, I believe it deserves support. Its passage by the Senate will still allow time for its amendment and improvement in the House of Representatives. It would represent a commitment by the U.S. Senate toward ending racial isolation in our school systems. Such a commitment is necessary if we are ever to solve the problem of racial isolation; such a commitment is necessary to demonstrate to the Nation that the Federal Government will apply principles of racial equality fairly throughout the entire Nation; and such a commitment is necessary if we are to retain the hope in black Americans that equal opportunity is still a goal of America.
In its historic report on racial division in our society, the Kerner Commission made these trenchant observations on education and racial isolation:
In an atmosphere of hostility between the community and the schools, education cannot flourish – new links must be built between the schools and the communities they serve – while each community should determine the appropriate desegregation technique we believe substantial Federal assistance should be provided.
The amendment which is before us today, represents an approach consistent with the Kerner Commission's wisdom.