short essays

Journal of Negro Education

The Dilemma of Segregation Author(s): Alain Locke Source: The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 4, No. 3, The Courts and the Negro Separate School (Jul., 1935), pp. 406-411 Published by: Journal of Negro Education Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2291875 . Accessed: 13/04/2011 20:17

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CHAPTER VIII

The Dilemma of Segregation ALAIN LOCKE

There were two reasons justifying the separation of educational facilities for whites and Negroes during the first generation of Reconstruction. These were the facts of the Negro's rather unusual educational problem during that generation and the his- torical fact that these educational facilities in the South came to him through private and missionary enter- prise. In the second generation, these special provisions and auspices, in- itially favorable and necessary, be- came anachronisms and handicaps. The main problem of the present gen- eration, and for sometime back, has been to establish the sound and nor- mal principle that the education of the Negro is a public function and ob- ligation. Thus, no historical accept- ance of the division, even where there is considerable institutional provision for the Negro's education under pri- vate auspices, should be allowed to be- come an alibi, an extenuation or a sub- stitute for the public obligation. Per- sonally, I can see the time when it will be necessary for many private schools for Negroes to discontinue voluntarily upon due notice in order to force upon the community the assumption of their proper duty and burden.

One of the factors in the present transitional situation is the timidity and vested interest involved in these special schools for Negroes that, what- ever their previous service and his- torical inevitability, are now invidious

as buffers of a system of educational segregation. We often find certain temporary advantages of a dual school system responsible for extending edu- cational segregation into areas where public sentiment does not of itself de- mand it or at least have courage to initiate it. These temporary and short- sighted gains are usually motived by the same desire for careers for Negro teachers and educational administra- tors and such pressure of public senti- ment as lacks patience to see a mixed teaching staff slowly evolve out of the seasoned adjustment and progressive education of social feeling in a system with mixed students.

THE BAsIc DILEMMA

These preliminary remarks will in- dicate that I think the basic dilemma of educational segregation arises from the inevitable conflict between the short-term and the long-term point of view on this question. My opinion is that the Negro community under in- telligent leadership must be taught to see and regard as paramount the long-term interests,-which is an- other way of saying that principles rather than expediency must dictate if constructive progress is to be made. The main difficulty right here is the narrowing of view forced upon the very class that should give this leader- ship by the self-interested ambition for professional openings and liveli- hood. In the fact of this natural short

406

THE DILEMMA OF SEGREGATION 407

circuit in the process of progress, I find the chief justification for legal procedure,-the appeal to the courts, to outflank this unwitting betrayal of the mass interests by the few and the equally lethargic and often over- estimated prejudice and group re- sistance of the white community to- ward the admission of Negroes to the public school system on a basis of equality. Those who would suggest, as is true, that legal appeal and court action would generate social antago- nism and resentment and even in some instances force the loss, temporary most likely, of certain practical ad- vantages already achieved do not stop to consider how hopeless the situation is from the other angles of attack. The law seems to me, then, to be one of the only resorts possible, -if not the only one.

Negroes, therefore, should and must resort to the courts to secure any con- siderable or wholesale improvement of the situation. This becomes more im- perative when you realize that sepa- ration and a parity of standards and facilities are naturally antagonistic and rarely if ever co-exist. Without assessing the psychological damages to the minority and the impairment of the basic social democracy of the community, it actually turns out that only in a minimum of cases is there any approach to equality of opportu- nity under a dual school system.

My reasoning here is not theoretical or Utopian. The reform of educational segregation by resort to law will never be wholesale or without its temporary set-backs. Specific com- munities must begin these campaigns, risk the odds of variation in the de- cisions because of local conditioning

circumstances in the courts, face the difficulties of practical enforcement even after favorable decisions, and count upon retributive community sentiment and behavior in some in- stances. Favorable decisions or pend- ing appeals should be used by public- spirited and sanely balanced citizens' committees as bargaining points for progressive adjustment toward the equalitarian goal. No improvement is a complete defeat of the principle in- volved, provided no concession prac- tically made is accepted without res- ervation. I take it, in this section, we are not particularly expected to deal with tactics, yet I think there is great suggestion in the temporary ex- pedient of a community's accepting quasi-separate schools in congested Negro residence areas provided schools are maintained on a mixed basis else- where within the same administrative unit. The same principle seems to argue quite an appreciable difference between a system which is separate de facto and de jure: for the difference here lies in just that additional danger of the formal crystallization of the social practice of segregation in the law and statute of the community.

It is purely academic to argue the well-known relationship between law and public opinion or the written and the unwritten law as an extenuation of a temporizing policy on this issue. Nothing is more contrary to fact than the rather wide-spread policy and program of gradualism. This theory of slow accumulative growth, of the slow reform of public opinion, of "the education of public sentiment" is a fallacy; the lines of social reform are not smooth gradual curves but jagged breaks, sudden advances and inevi-

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table set-backs of reaction. By such a set-back' tolerated and condoned, specialized schools for Negroes in the South, during Reconstruction, were allowed to crystalize into a system of separate schools. Such conditions per- mit of no automatic or gradual im- provement. The general precedent of history itself in such matters offers us no such prospects. There may be a period for the gradual extention of a right, but not for the creation of a right or its recognition, this holds both for races and classes. Even though the values may exist for others, a revolutionary introduction or vindication of them as applying to the new groups is always or usually the case. In such matters I do not even think the racial situation pecul- iar, except to the degree that it offers an unusual degree of social resistance and reluctance. The only other effec- tive alternative of legal pressure would thus be political pressure, which in the nature of the case in the South is even more restricted than legal re- course. For, in the first instance, the legal system has through the machin- ery of appeal more reliable access to a wider circle of public opinion beyond the local community and a firmer tradition of impartiality. The political channels of effective pressure are purely local or primarily so in the American political system, and what little potentiality of appeal they have from the counter-pressure of biased local tradition and sentiment is itself legal. So the political pressure attack is in the second instance a legal resort and the choice between that and the straight legal approach is then not a

1 There were many mixed schools in the South in Early Reconstruction times.

matter of principle but of expediency. It is also possibly not a matter of real alternative but of complementary effect, in which situation tactics along one line should not be exclusively followed without whatever reinforce- ment is possible along the other.

THE FALLACY OF "SEPARATE AND EQUAL"

To my thinking, both the justice and common sense of the attack on the separate school situation is based on the principle of equitable sharing in the public taxation and the social facilities which are established under it for citizens as citizens. It may be argued that this principle concedes "equal but separate accommoda- tions." It does not and cannot,-for in the first place few if any communities can afford the additional expense of entirely equal accommodations, and it would require as much and the same kind of effort at the removal of the social bias of the community and the reform of its conscience to secure gen- eral admission of the principle of com- plete equity as to secure the abolition of the dual system. Up to a certain point, communities will pay a price for prejudice, but not such an ex- horbitant price as complete economic equality requires. Assuming that such parity could be reached and consist- ently maintained, the moral damage of the situation of discrimination would still render the situation intol- erable. But the argument can and will doubtless be settled or fought out on the practical plane of the school budg- et. Whenever the standards of Negro public schools are raised to the point that the budget expense approaches parity, there will be less resistance to

THE DILEMMA OF SEGREGATION 409

educational segregation, for one of the main but concealed reasons for dis- crimination lodges in the idea that the Negro is not entitled to the same educational facilities as the white community. The Washington school system is the only example in the country where exact parity is main- tained under a dual school policy, and that is only due to the contingent charter guarantees under the agree- ment by which the Congress makes its share of the appropriations for the support of the District of Columbia Schools. This exception then must not be interpreted as the free will of a community which at the same time that it recognizes the claims of justice feels in the typical Southern tradition that it is necessary to separate the races educationally. Wherever that feeling and tradition exists it exists in the presupposition first that the Ne- gro requires a different type of educa- tion and second that on the whole he is not entitled to the same per capita expenditure of public school funds. While the argument runs from the former to the latter, the real vital logic of the situation is the reverse; the Negro's cheaper grade of educa- tion is rationalized as representing his inferior capacity and social need.

It will be noticed that the real cause of parity in the exceptional case we are discussing is a legal one,-the charter agreement of the school sys- tem. Potentially the itax assessment acts of states and counties are just such legal contracts and guarantees when associated with compulsory school laws as now prevail in most states, even those who break this principle and obligation flagrantly in practice. No state- would dare under

modern conditions to legislate this qualitative differential openly. This proves, to my way of thinking, the value of legal recourse, granting even the probability of many adverse or equivocal decisions on technicalities. Even adverse legal decisions are long- term gains; as a factual and provable admission of the situation they raise the matter from the category of a vague social grievance to that of a public wrong. The Scottsboro case, if we have forgotten the Dred Scott decision, illustrates the strategic gains made possible by definite self-indict- ment in situations of customary in- justice.

THE STRATEGY OF LEGAL RECOURSE

It may be argued that separate schools and public carrier facilities have for years been set up almost with impunity by legislation. However, dis- criminatory legal decision and prec- edent are decidedly more difficult to maintain and more embarrassing both because of the machinery of appeal and the operation of the principle of precedent. Although not of the legal profession, I am of the opinion that competent legal skill can find many more avenues of attack on discrim- ination in such a basic public service as education than have been tried or even suggested. For in law it is through the ramifications of the prin- ciple of precedent that the most suc- cessful pleas are most often made; our legal approach too often has been dictated by the sentimental concerns of an aroused community and the cases have until very recently been in the hands of very amateurish and superficially trained lawyers. Granted also that the lower courts are honey-

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combed with politics and shamefully amenable to local sentiment, these discriminatory cases should be pre- pared for the supreme tests of the highest possible courts of appeal, and should expect to lose in the courts of first instance. Based usually upon shallow financial support and popular appeal that lasts only while the mem- ory of some flagrant discriminatory act is fresh, these cases frequently go by default in the lapsing of public support after the first defeat. The laity must be primed for initial defeat and taught the slowness of the process of legal adjudicature. And more im- portant yet, the best legal talent must be incorporated in the case from the outset. Many of the adverse Supreme Court decisions in recent years on matters affecting Negro rights have been due to shallow, second-rate law pleading interjected into the case in the pleading of the case in the lower courts. It is false pride and social short-sightedness not to expose this frequent source of defeat. A Negro lawyer who would carefully analyze several recent cases and show this to the public in simple form would render one of the greatest legal services the community could receive.

In short, I have argued almost with- out reservation for recourse to the courts in this and other matters of flagrant public cases of racial discrim- ination; not however, without realistic regard for the normally expected fail- ures and set-backs, but with every expectation of occasional successes here and there and eventually a very general betterment of the situation. Especially at this time when the fed- eral government is exercising more and more direct and indirect in-

fluence over new programs and even new types of educational service, the change of tactics recommended should be made. For it must be admitted that with the exception of the general campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo- ple and sporadic suits based on local, usually border state conditions, the general policy to date has been to let the principle of racial discrimination go by default. The tolerance of in- equitable and hampering conditions in education is a matter of real re- proach for well-thinking self-respect- ing Negroes as individuals and as com- munities. It is worth the protest in the enhancement of self-respect alone, even if no practical results were to be obtained; and the latter outcome is scarcely conceivable if instead of a few isolated cases scores were instituted.

This is based upon an assumption, which represents my own conviction, that the advantages of mixed schools in the long run are greater than cer- tain admitted temporary advantages of separate schools. The contact of Negro teachers with groups of handi- capped and socially maladjusted Ne- gro students are undoubtedly more helpful than indifferent pedagogic attention from white teachers. How- ever, special attention from a higher grade of truant and probation officer than is now generally employed and from special vocational guidance and personnel counsellors will adequately supply these needed factors in a mixed-school system,-more ade- quately because the basis of attack will be the individual case and not the assumed general group deficiency. On the other hand, the student is better conditioned to the eventual

THE DILEMMA OF SEGREGATION 411

stress which he must undergo in the adult community and the white or non-Negro student will have the additional educative exposure and experience with Negro associates un- der more advantageous circumstances than the casual associations of out of school life. Much of the arguments pro and con on this side of the issue assume absolute or minimal non- contact of whites and Negroes as children and as adults. This is con- trary to fact,-there is -considerable and often intimate association, espe- cially in Southern communities. Only it is unfavorable and takes place un- der educationally disadvantageous conditions to both groups. The school is the logical and perhaps the only effective instrument for the corrective treatment of this situation. It is immediately tolerable to children, though unfortunately not to their parents under the prevailing tradi-

tions. However, if firmly supported by official policy, few parents would exercise their right to send their children to separate private schools and forego the advantages of public education on this account, in spite of an almost unanimously expressed opinion to the contrary. Such coercive opinion is always characteristic of a threatened reform; it rarely material- izes after the fact in anything like the proportion predicted. Of course, part of a successful campaign for the removal of dual school systems would necessarily involve convincing state- ments of the general educative gains of a democratically organized school system, especially in the matter of social education. In fact, without a movement for stressing social educa- tion in our public schools no drive for the abolition of segregated schools could hope to be successful.