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作者

Tomeka Davis

来源

CITY & COMMUNITY,Vol.18,Issue2,P.439-445

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

Georgia State University

摘要

I think it fair to characterize Nathan Glazer as a curious figure in the field. Curious in part because changing positions on controversial issues, especially regarding a topic as polarizing as civil rights policy, is rare. Polemic ideas tend not be easily warmed or converted. But Glazer did change his position on both affirmative action and school integration. In his famous 1972 Commentary Magazine piece entitled “Is Busing Necessary”, as well as Affirmative Discrimination, his book length foray into public policy on race written in 1975, Glazer attacked civil rights policy in various forms. In Affirmative Discrimination, Glazer argued that busing and affirmative action as well as other policies designed to ameliorate the inequalities created by centuries of racism and discrimination went too far. Glazer was critical of busing and school desegregation policies because, he argued, they distorted the premise of equal protection under the law. While integration suits brought to the courts on behalf of African Americans were often argued on this basis, Glazer noted that equal protection under the law for Blacks in the form of busing was a violation of equal protection for Whites and any other group for that matter that were forced to endure it. He notes: … the resulting increase in the freedom of black children—the freedom to attend the schools they wished—entailed a restriction on the freedom of others. In “freedom of choice”11 “Freedom of choice” is a reference to Green v. New Kent County, a 1968 Supreme Court case in which the New Kent County School Board tried to circumvent integration mandates laid out in Brown v. Board of Education II by allowing students the freedom to choose a school. The Board knew that no Whites would choose formerly all Black schools and that few Blacks would choose White schools. Thus, the intent of “freedom of choice” plans was to keep segregation intact., the freedom of White children was in no way limited. In geographical zoning to achieve integration, it was limited, but no more than that of black children. But in busing to distant schools, white children were in effect being conscripted to create an environment which, it had been decided, was required to provide equality of education opportunity for black children. It was perhaps one thing to do this when the whites in question were the grandchildren of those who had deprived black children of their freedom in the past. But when a district judge in San Francisco ruled that not only white children but Chinese children and Spanish‐speaking children must be conscripted to create an environment which, he believed, would provide equality of educational opportunity for black children, there was good reason for wondering whether “equal protection of the laws” was once again being violated, this time from the other side. (1972:14)