I
the tribunal aid WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28.1976
EDITORIALS
‘You're A Part Of The Solution, Or You’re A Part OJ The Problem
IHJ VIEWS OF THE JRIJERJ ARE MOT IIWAYS THOSE OF THE PAPER’S
From THE CHARLOTTE POST
School Desegregation
In Retrospect
Blacks’ Destiny In Own Hands
By Gerald 0. Johnson
Post Staff Writer
In a recent Press neiease by
the Southern Regional Council
Statistics were used to refute
the Widely held belief that
desegregation is a failure.
The report entitled, "School
Desegregation: A report card
from the South, ” examines in
detail the school desegrega
tion experience in five south
ern cities and looks briefly at
what has happened in six o-
thers. Mr. John Egerton was
the principal author of the
report.
The school systems exanu.i-
ed in detail were the Char-
lotte-Mecklenburg County,
North Carolina; Williamsburg
County, South Carolina; Clark
County (Athens), Georgia;
Little Rock, Arkansas; Hills
borough County (Tampa),flo-
reporters in Anniston, Alaba-
The brief reports came irom
reporters in Anniston, alaba-
ma; Austin, Texas; Bogalusa,
Louisiana; Nashville (David
son County), Tennessee; Nor
folk, Virginia; and Meridan,
Mississippi.
Tne report emphasizes that
the South still has problems
related to school desegrega
tion, but it has made vast
progress. Moreover, since
heavy opposition has risen
against the implementation of
school desegregation in the
North, the South’s progress is
threatened.
Included in the report are
preliminary results ol opinion
surveys conducted by the In
stitute For Social Research at
Florida State University and
the Southern Regional Coun
cil.
The survey was to deter
mine school principals and
superintendents opinions on
how desegregation has work
ed in their districts.
Following are some of the
results of the survey.
When asked “How, if at all,
desegregation had interrupted
the educational process?” the
officials answer^: (1) Super
intendents ; 36 percent said no
interruptions, 54 percent said
minimum interruptions, and
10 percent said very disrup
tive. (2)' Principals; 30 per
cent said no interruptions, 61
percent said minimum inter
ruptions, and 9 percent said
very disruptive.
When asked “Had desegre
gation affected white enroll
ment” the officials answered:
(1) Superintendents; 22 per
cent said large numbers had
left the school ^stem, 74 per
cent said there was no notice-
same, and 10 percent said it
was worse, since desegrega
tion. (2) Principals; 42 per
cent said it was better 34
percent said it was the same,
and 24 percent said it was
worse since desegregation.
Finally, when asked about
the long term effects of school
desegregation in the commu
nities served by the schools,
the officials answered: (l)
Superintendents; 45 percent
said it had had a positive
effect, 45 percent said it had
had no effect either way and 10
percent said it had had a
negative effect. (2) Princi
pals; 46 percent said it had
had a positive effect, 44 per
cent said it had had no effect
either way, and 10 percent
said it had had a negative
effect.
Similar attitudes were con
cluded from a similar survey
administered to more than 500
individuals in the region in
cluding teachers, students,
and elected officials.
An interesting part of this
survey revealed that 73 per
cent of those surveyed felt that
busing had been a positive
experience and only 19 per
cent felt it to be a negative
experience.
In the report, Mr. Egerton,
in referring to the Charlotte-
Mecklenburg School System,
writes,“After years of tur
moil, Charlotte today seems to
be ‘At least resigned to and at
most comfortable with a state
of affairs that few cities have
fully experienced: ST ABIL
ITY, PROGRESS, BUSING,
AND RACIAL BALANCE IN
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS*."
Well, as I see it the report is
a clear indication that by all
people working together for a
common goal school desegre
gation can and does work. Of
course there will be problems
but currently anti-bussing foes
are blowing the problems out
of proportion.
Politicians are using this
issue as a campaign item cau
sing another conflict. It is
ironic that in a world where
the only thing constant is
change people constantly re
sist change. Even when the
change could be for the better.
There is no fear in my mind
that the anti-desegregation
movement will get enough mo
mentum to overturn the a-
chievements made by those
communities working dili
gently to do what is right for
all people.
BLACK AMERICA
ROLL UP VOUR SLBBVBS
^BLActi mns ooim ro
HAifis, 70 our 0F rnm oyn
PUOBLBfflS.tNSrBAP OFlIeAVfNO fTUP TO THB
' weffNheNTA&eNaBs anp pmorahs^
ROY HflLHIHS
ro BE EQUAL
by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
Executive Director of the National Urban League
Coining New Racial
Code Words
There is disgust in my heart,
however, that the forces of
, , j anti-desegregation will delay
able difference, and 4 percent strides of progress that could
said it resulted in white flight, already taking place.
(2) Principals; 13 percent said
desegregation brought with- I do feei tortunate, though,
drawals of large numbers of that I happen to live in a
whites 82 percent said there rather progressive City...
was no noticeable difference Charlotte.
and 5 percent said it resulted
in white flight.
When asked "How has the
quality of education tieen af
fected by school desegrega
tion” the officials answered:
(1) Superintendents; 54 per
cent said the quality is better,
36 percent said it was ther
Ten years ago the nation
turned against the South’s seg
regation policies and forced
them to be where they are
today. It is now time for the
South to turn against the na
tion’s segregation policies in
hopes of forcing them into
realization of where they
could be tomorrow.
ALTHOUGH THE EDITORIALS WRriTEN^
THIS NEWSPAPER ARE NOT INTENDED TO
THE ONLY ANSWERS TO THE PROBLEMS
AND CONDITIONS EXPRESSED, SOME PER
SONS MAY STILL DISAGREE WITH THESE
THOUGHTS, BECAUSE OF THIS, THE NEWS
PAPER EXTENDS AN INVITATION TO ANY
RESPONSIBLE PERSON WHO WISHES TO
REFUTE THESE EXPRESSIONS TO DO SO,
AND FREE AND EQUAL SPACE WILL BE PRO
VIDED.
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Jimmy Carter’s remarks about “ethnic
purity” have disturbed a lot of people,
including myself, but the rush of
politicians to denounce the phrase isn’t
very encouraging since their basic
positions on integrated housing are pretty
much the same as Carter’s.
Senator Henry Jackson leaped on the
Carter statement with a strong one of his
own, but he is the same candidate who
threw a cloud over his historic support for
civil rights measures by making busing a
campaign issue.
And Representative Udall’s criticism of
the Carter statement didn’t include a
positive stance on what strategies to take
to grant blacks and other minorities equal
opportunities in housing.
Finally, President Ford told a press
conference he didn’t like the term
"ethnic purity" and then proceeded to
laud America's "ethnic heritage,” saying
that it is "a great treasure of this country
and I don't think that federal action
should be used to destroy that ethnic
treasure.”
So what else is new? The result of this
flap over words is that no one has really
committed himself to integrated housing
and everyone has discovered a new racial
code word.
Politicians can now talk about
preserving ethnic heritage and voters will
know that this is a veiled promise to keep
neighborhoods white. It's a new addition
to the vocabulary that produced
"neighborhood schools” and "law and
order," terms that were unmistakably
understood as messages against school
desegregation and as a promise to "get
tough" with minorities.
Jimmy Carter apologized handsomely
for what he wants understood as a slip of
the tongue. Even in his original
statement that got him into trouble he
promised federal backing for black
families to live anywhere they wished,
and President Ford repeated his intention
to honor open-housing laws.
So there never was an issue in the first
place. Carter made a serious mistake in
injecting this phony issue but he’s been
attacked for the words he used and not for
making an issue out of whole cloth.
By promising he’d never use federal
power to break up ethnic enclaves or to
construct high-rise public housing in
wealthy suburbs Carter merely repeated
the obvious. The point is that neither
policy was ever considered by the
government, nor do blacks favor such
policies.
If people want to live with people of
their own background in a specific
neighborhood they can and should do so,
so long as they don’t infringe upon the
constitutional rights of others.
And high-rise public housing is a dead
horse, no one has proposed building a
Pruitt-lgoe in the suburbs. The real
issues is whether blacks will be ensured
the right to move anywhere they wish,
and whether scattered site housing - not
high-rises - will be permitted in all-white
upper income neighborhoods.
Since the alternative is to lock black
and poor people into inner city ghettos
and inferior housing removed from new
job opportunities in the suburbs, it would
be more comforting if candidates
addressed that important issue instead of
getting involved in semantics.
Instead ot worrying about the
non-existent threat to ethnic enclaves,
the candidates might do some worrying
about the exclusion of black people from
decent housing and by our slide into an
apartheid society in which races and
classes are kept rigidly apart.
Those same ethnic groups who might
take comfort from politicians’ support for
their ethnic solidarity ought also begin to
worry about this new-found respect for
ethnicity. Terms like "racial purity” and
alien groups” were once used against
those same ethnic groups when they
came to this country, and affirming
ethnicity as a national treasure may be
good for ethnic pride but it says nothing
about helping those ethnic groups to
break out of the class barriers that keep
them deprived too.
Now that the dust has settled, the
apologies made, and the press releaves
published, what we’re left with is a phony
issue and new racial code word. Somehow
1 think all the candidates owe us more
than that in this Bicentennial year.
Department Of Public Instruction
Why 6o Matric?
Why, suddenly, after all these years
should the United States scrap a perfectly
good system of measurement to convert
to metrics? The English system has
served us well for 200 years! Why change
to a new system now?
For one thing, the metric system is
simpler than the English system of
measurement, according to Robert R.
Jones, director of the Department of
Public Instruction’s Division of Mathe
matics. Created in ^791 about the time
our decimal system of money came into
being, the metric system has the same
structure as the decimal system with its
place value based on ten. Hence, noted
Jones, teaching metrics will reinforce the
work we already do with numbers and
money.
The simplicity of the system offers
another advantage, said Jones, in that
calculations are easier to make in metrics
because decimals are easier to work with
than the complicated fractions we come
up with in the English system. The
system will simplify the teaching of
measurement in mathematics by delaying
the introduction of fractions and
requiring fewer units of measurement to
learn, he added.
A major reason for the changeover,
according to Jones, is that metric
measurement is a worldwide standard
use in international trade. Over 99% of
the world population lives in countries
either using the metric system or in the
process of convertiing to it. United States
industries have spent billions of “extra”
money in past years to manufacture both
metric prqductg.^.for export to these
countries and English products to be sold
in the United States. By 1978, Jones
pointed out, no country will be able to
trade non-metric products on the
European Common Market.
With the signing of the Metric
Conversion Act in December of 1975, the
United States made a commitment to the
changeover. The Act established a
17-member Metric Board to coordinate
voluntary conversion to the metric
system. In North Carolina, the State
Board of Education has adopted a
resolution calling for conversion to
metrics in the public schools by 1981.
Business and industry have already led
the way, said Jones. Medicine, chemical,
photography, science, food packaging
and some automobile industries have
converted to metrics. The appearance of
road signs with metric distances and
speed limits is an indication of the
increasing visibility of the metric system.
Many food package labels now carry
metric information.
“We have obviously already begun to
use the metric system,” Jones noted.
"This should help us make the
changeover in schools, reinforce our
knowledge of numbers and money, assist
us in getting our share of international
irade, and economize by producing fewer
sizes of products.”
NOTE: For more information on
conversion to the metric system
of measurement, contact Robert R.
Jones, Metric Information Center, (919)
829-3602.
me BETTER WE KNOW US
Continued &om Page 1
Commerce; received Key to the City of
Chattanooga, Tenn., and a Certificate,
proclaiming him as “Ambassador of
Good Will”; received from Mayor Bates
of Columbia, S.C.; charter member of the
American Academy of Actuareis;
Honorary Member Iota Sigma Nu Honor
Society of New York University: member
Governor’s Advisory Council, North
Carolina Technical Services; member
Advisory Council of the U.S. President’s
Youth Opportunity Campaign; elected to
Board of Directors, Durham Chamber of
Commerce; member of Trustees,
National Conference of Christians and
Jews; member of Eight-man trade
Mission, sponsored by the United States
Department of Commerce to Central
American and the Republic of Panama;
member. United States Trade and
Investment Missi Mission to the African
Countries to Ghana, Zambia, and the
uniqueSesquicentennial Award, in Com
memoration of the 150th Anniversary,
University of Michigan; Frederick
Douglass Sesquicentennial Lecturer,
University of Rochester, N.Y.; chairman
of Board of Trustees, Howard University;
participated in the 53rd Annual Meeting
of the United States Chamber of
Commerce, Washington, D.C., as a
member of a three-man panel to discuss
the economic moral and spiritual values
involved in the provision of equal
opportunity, at an “Equal Opportunity
Luncheon”; member. Board of Directors,
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc.:
appointed by former U.S. President
Lyndon Johnson to a nine-member Board
of the Washington Technical, Institute;
elected. Director of Boys’ Clubs 'of
America: consultant to the Ford
Foundation and the General Electric
Company; toured the Republic of West
Germany; as a guest of the German
Government to observe the progress
made in 20 years with help under the
Marshall Plan; appointed to the
International Board of Directors of the
Insurance Hall of Fame; recipient of the
Durham Chamber of Commerce Civic
Award - the first and only Negro to be so
honored; recipient of “Distinguished
Citizen’s Award,"—from the North
Carolina Prince Hall Grand Lodge free
and Accepted Masons; member. Board of
Commissioners, Durham County; listed
in “100 years - 100 Men” (1871-1971), by
Edwards and Broughton, as one of those
who had done the most for the State of
North Carolina in the past 100 years.”
And there are scores of other HONORS
and affiliations of equal distinction;
Among this scholarly publications,
articles and public addresses are: “Negro
Insurance in the United States”; “The
Impact of the Changing World on
Women s Organizations - Economically”,
which was printed in the U.S.
Congressional Record: “Discrimination
and the Negro in the United States”;
Moral and Spiritual Values: America’s
Greatest Need” - all of which have been
widely distributed.
Dr. Spaulding is listed in: The
Cyclopedia of Insurance in the United
States; Who’s Who in Insurance; Who’s
Who in Commerce and Industry; Who’s
Who m the South and Southeast: Who’s
Who in America; and the International
Yearbook and Statesmen’s Who’s Who.
He is married to the former Miss Elna
Bridgeforth of Athens, Alabama; and
there are four children: Asa, Jr., Patricia
rtnn, Aaron, Lowery, and Kenneth
Bridgeforth.
A dedicated churchman. Dr. Spaulding
IS a member of Durham’s White Rock
Baptist, where he is a devoted teacher of
the James Shepard Bible Class.
Currently, this distinguished American
- in addition to his varied other business,
civic, educational, and governmental
leadership roles - on both the state and
"ational levels - is president of the ASA
T. SPAULDING CONSULTING AND
ADVISORY SERVICES, with headquart
ers at 104 West Parrish Street, Durham.
Most recently he was asked to serve as
a personal representative of the President
of the United States and head of the U.S.
delegation to the inauguration of
PresideiA William R. Tolbert, Jr., and
Vice PresWent James C. Greene of the
Republic df Liberia, West Africa.
When one thinics of recognition, one
should be acquainted with Mr.
Spaulding, for the better we know him,
the BETTER WE KNOW US.