DE FACTO SEGREGATION

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your report on my talk at Hillel House (CRIMSON, March 23) does not misrepresent what I said, but neither does it convey the central point of my remarks or the reasoning behind my objection to compulsory bussing as a solution to the difficult problem of de facto segregation in the public schools.

In general my talk was devoted to a critical examination and rebuttal of the argument that all efforts to impose equality by law require an invasion of personal liberty. This is an argument now frequently used by opponents of civil rights legislation and one that apparently carries considerable appeal for those who believe strongly in "freedom of choice" and the "right of property." I contended that in the American context liberty and equality stand for the same ideal of universal opportunity and that our current debate should therefore be addressed to the question of whether the new means proposed to realize this common ideal are appropriate and within the constitutional authority of our government. I then examined the major provisions of the proposed civil rights bill, arguing that all of them were justifiable.

With respect to de facto segregation in the schools, I first presented the argument of those opposed to the bussing of pupils in the following terms:

"Parents often choose a residence with the quality and accessibility of schools in mind. Would it not violate their personal freedom to compel them to send their children to schools distant from their homes? If it can work its will in this way, what is to prevent a government controlled by a racial minority from requiring that neighborhood housing and neighborhood schools both be regulated so as to maintain a fixed racial balance? Why not a religious or class or status balance? Why should suburban children not be bussed by state governments to schools in the central cities and slum children bussed out to suburban schools?"

My comment on this argument was:

"Where segregation of public facilities is not the result of a deliberate policy, required by law, it is not at all clear that the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing the 'equal protection of the laws' on which the Supreme Court relied in the Brown decision can possibly be violated. Moreover, the suggestion that students be bussed about the city or the metropolitan area against the wishes of their parents and despite a long-established tradition of neighborhood schooling, would not serve the cause of expanded opportunity as clearly as the other proposals. In effect it would deprive some white parents of the freedom to take advantage of their social mobility, a freedom not available to most Negro parents, and thereby tend to equalize coercions rather than equalize opportunity. The sum total of freedom would not be increased, or at any rate not so clearly as is the case in connection with housing, employment, and public accomodations."

More elaborate presentation of my remarks on "white Liberals" and black nationalists, as well as the use of the interstate commerce clause, would similarly have rendered them rather less blunt and opionated than they might appear from your report. But I will let those matters pass in the hope that you will find the space to print the last paragraph of the talk, so that your readers will not have the impression that it was devoted to criticism of the civil rights movements, with which I am whole-heartedly in sympathy:

"The right of privacy always needs defending, but the proposed civil rights legislation in no way encroaches on that right, properly defined. Nor is the possibility that a government may abuse a new power an argument for denying it a legitimate authority. It is an argument only for preventing the abuse of government power wherever it appears. If the large majority of open-minded and idealistic Americans, without whose acquiescence no filibustering minority can win more than a stay of execution, is to make a wise decision in the civil rights controversy, it must understand clearly what is at stake. What we are arguing about is whether we will use the power of the community to secure a fair chance in the competitive system in which we profess to believe for those who are deprived of it through no fault of their own. Until we remove the tyranny of the forced option from their lives, we cannot pretend that our system makes equal opportunity possible. Until then, both the words 'free' and 'equal,' instead of declaring what Herbert Croly once called 'the promise of American life,' will remain a mask for privilege." Sanford A. Lakoff   Assistant Professor of Government