Soc (2009) 46:461–465 DOI 10.1007/s12115-009-9234-5

BOOK REVIEW

Raymond Wolters, Race and American Education 1954–2007 Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. 2008. 313 pp. $44.95. ISBN-10: 0826218288; ISBN-13: 978-0826218285 Robert Weissberg

Published online: 7 July 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Centuries from now scholars might assemble for a yearlong conference to dissect America’s impassioned efforts to equalize blacks/white educational outcomes, especially the impact of racial integration. It will be a staggering task requiring countless specialists; just cataloging all the claims and acrimonious counterclaims, chronicling the myriad political battles, every item surrounded by the hot button biologically-infused issue of race, foretells exasperation. It might therefore be judicious to prepare a time capsule featuring Raymond Wolters’ Race and Education, 1954– 2007 to help these future beleaguered academicians navigate the clutter. Wolters, the Thomas Murray Keith Professor of History at the University of Delaware, has long expounded about race and education and does not shy away from awkward facts. Orwell defines freedom as when it is permissible to say that 2+2=4, and Wolters, happily, is willing to say, “4” not “5.” Race and Education is of the Sgt. Joe Friday school of analysis (for those too young to remember the TV program Dragnet, Joe Friday was the hard-boiled detective known for his “Just the facts, M’am” style). Outside of his own ethnographic accounts of school desegregation efforts, Wolters relies on the writings of others, in sometimes mind-numbing detail, all copiously footnoted, particularly legal and social science investigations supplemented with occasional “real world” journalism. This is serious, careful scholarship and justifiably so, given its importance. But, in a field where upholding the unalloyed benefits of integration is the official party line, Wolters is skeptical. Step by step, the holy crusade is stripped naked, showing it to be R. Weissberg (*) 99 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280, USA e-mail: [email protected]

often an ineptly conceived, clumsily administered, occasionally dishonest, often a wildly unpopular rush into social engineering where promised benefits always seem just over the horizon. If there is a single take-away message here, it is that social engineering, even of the noblest sort, with the full force of government and the anxious-to-help academy, seldom works as promised. Make no mistake, Wolters is not some mean-spirited, racist Southerner fighting the tide of history. It may sometimes seem this way but only because defenders of the liberal orthodoxy have snuffed out doubters. He favors racial desegregation, even endorses vigorous implementation, but he also recognizes dubious judicial and bureaucratic heavy-handedness when he sees it. Of the utmost importance, he rejects the notion that social scientists must subordinate truth to idealism. Wolters begins with the justly famous Brown (1954) case declaring state-imposed school segregation unconstitutional, a ruling that inspires near religious devotion. Reality is more complicated and Wolters methodically exposes the multiple birth defects present at conception. While prohibitions against state-mandated racial segregation may now appear a self-evident truth, arriving at the point via constitutional reasoning was hardly simple in the early 1950s. Segregated schools had long flourished, the “separate but equal” doctrine had been constitutionally affirmed, and the Constitution itself says nothing about education, let alone required color-blindness. Yet, for multiple reasons, some domestic, some pertaining to America’s flawed image overseas, legally mandated segregation had to go. The question was how, and the NAACP and its allies needed a plausible rationale to convince at least five Justices, and it was insufficient just to say that sorting students solely by race perpetuated an onerous caste system. It is often said that “war is hell” and Wolters does not spare the reader blood and guts. Prior to rendering its decision, the

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Court asked litigants if the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment (ratified following the Civil War to protect newly freed blacks) could be construed, whether by statements made either by its authors or legislators voting to enact it, to ban state-imposed segregation. If this intent could be found, de jure segregation was DOA—the Court would simply apply the most “conservative” constitutional interpretive tactic, original intent. To this end, the NAACP enlisted several notable historians, among them C. Vann Woodward and John Hope Franklin, but the team came up empty-handed. The deeper these NAACP-enlisted experts dug, the worse the original intent news. The very Congress that enacted the 14th Amendment simultaneously imposed racially segregated schools in Washington, DC while those states ratifying the Amendment did not end school segregation; some even extended it to post ratification. Matters became sufficiently desperate that it was suggested that John A. Bingham, the 14th Amendment’s principle author, purposely used broad legal language since he “secretly” sought to end segregation, a truly bizarre claim lacking any legal consequences even if true. These distinguished scholars ultimately escaped by muddling the issue. They sheepishly claimed that the Constitution always permits re-interpretation and that this legislative history was “inconclusive,” so distorting the 14th Amendment’s meaning was just the “interpretation business” as usual. These experts recognized that they had prostituted themselves, and many would years later lament their indiscretion, but only after Brown (1954) had become sacrosanct (better anti-segregation legal arguments did eventually appear but this hardly rehabilitates prior sophistry). Denied an historical/legal justification, the NAACP retreated to social science. Here the case was even weaker and embarrassingly transparent. Still, something was needed to kill segregation and so “science” was to be enlisted. (Wolters suggests that this “scientific” material was so weak, so legally peripheral that opposing lawyers failed to take it seriously, and it thus escaped close scrutiny). This is the famous black/white doll studies conducted by the psychologist, Kenneth B. Clark. Clark claimed that segregated schools grievously injured the selfesteem of black children so, in legalese, segregated schools are inherently unequal since they disproportionally damage blacks but not whites. The gist of Clark’s conclusion (with data drawn from tiny, unrepresentative samples), was that black youngster in black schools disproportionately selected white dolls if they could freely choose, and this choice reflected low sense of self-worth which, in turn, engendered defeatism and lower personal ambition, which further undermined learning. NAACP lawyers, assisted by willing academics, then piled on the alleged psychological evidence even further—segregation gave whites a false sense of superiority while denying blacks the opportunity to learn valuable social skills necessary to relate to dominant

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whites. Worse, legally keeping backs and whites separate reinforced prejudice, heightened mutual hostility and contributed to racial violence. Though the NAACP’s own lawyers were lukewarm about this strategy, Clark’s analysis increasingly loomed large as the Justices sought ways to void de jure segregation. It also helped that 32 distinguished social scientists seconded Clarks’ findings. None of this grab bag of harms had been scientifically confirmed when Brown was argued, and Clark’s own data, which he reported only selectively, supported the opposite of what he claimed. That is, blacks attending integrated schools were even more partial to white dolls, an inconvenient truth that was later creatively interpreted to prove that black youngsters had been culturally brainwashed, an outcome rendering his “harm” hypotheses scientifically un-falsifiable. In retrospect, nearly all this make-it-up-as-you-go-along research has been shown to be false. We now know, for example, that blacks enrolled in largely black schools enjoy the highest self-esteem since they do not have to compete with more academically advanced whites, (So if sky high self-esteem is the aim, just restore segregation.) Had the Court now replaced law with social science when race entered the picture? Hardly: it just depends on where the social science leads, regardless of its veracity. In a case long air-brushed from history, Stell v. Savannah (1963), prosegregation lawyers decided to fight fire with fire and assembled mountains of social science data supposedly justifying racial separatism. Academic experts now testified about how blacks trailed whites academically and how these gaps increased with age; how integrated schools would lower academic standards and cause widespread failures among blacks; and how protecting academic excellence would restore segregation through ability grouping. Their star witness, Henry E. Garrett, former president of the American Psychological Association explained how blacks scored dramatically lower on IQ tests than whites with striking differences on items tapping abstract thinking. He stressed that integration could not reverse unequal in educational outcome and with discomfiting accuracy, predicted how integrated schools would soon be mired in racial violence with whites fleeing to safer, more academically attuned schools. Professor Ernest van den Haag testified about Clark’s misleading doll data and pointed out that many black leaders, notably W. E. B. DuBois, endorsed a modest degree of separatism as helping blacks. Paradoxically, the NAACP argued against incorporating social science data in court cases and asserted that all the key legal issues were properly decided in Brown (1954). Though segregationists convinced the trial judge, they lost on appeal where the judges dismissed social science data as irrelevant; Brown (1954) was thus reaffirmed as legally controlling. Nevertheless, sloppy legal thinking, even soliciting bogus evidence is hardly unique to civil right cases, so

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chalk up yet one more verdict first, trial afterwards decision. But it gets worse. To fast forward Wolters analysis, Brown’s shaky legal foundations were exacerbated by its dishonest implementation, and as failures mounted, pro-integration experts grew bolder. Chief Justice Earl Warren in Brown’s unanimous verdict speaks of ending the state’s sorting of school children according to race. This does not mean forced integration; it only means that government cannot impose racial separation, so if neighborhoods are racially segregated, and school districts follow the contours of neighborhoods, Brown (1954) provides no constitutional relief. Ironically, Brown (1954) resulted from Linda Brown’s efforts to attend a white neighborhood school instead of being bussed across town to an all-black school. In principle, with a different twist to Brown, America could be on its way to being a color-blind society; the very opposite was about to happen, however. This de jure and de facto segregation distinction is critical, and Wolters marches from case to case showing not only how Brown’s message was distorted beyond all recognition, but more telling, how “good” academics, “wise” judges, and “enlightened” politicians contributed to this shaky enterprise even after it became clear that things were sliding downhill. One can only wonder if the current acrimony over affirmative action would ever have arisen if judges had just stuck to what Brown implied—government should ignore racial distinctions. Still, why admit one might be wrong, let alone reverse course, if millions of other peoples’ children are available for experimentation? With Washington leading the charge and ably assisted by creative federal judges, this transformation shifted into high gear in the mid-1960s. The standard for progress quickly evolved from the right to choose schools regardless of race to racial balance, as calculated by judges. Wolters points to several factors pushing in this once unthinkable direction, for example, the need to calm burgeoning urban racial disturbances, the increasing employment in Washington of “idealists,” many of whom were veterans in the civil rights movement, but lacked hands-on experience in local schools and, the elite’s impatience with slow progress, especially in the foot-dragging redneck south. Academics eagerly enlisted in the crusade and of special importance was the 1966 research of the highly regarded sociologist, James S. Coleman, who reported that blacks performed better academically when in school with whites, a finding later repudiated, but at the time it offered the highest possible blessing to coercive integration. The perfect social engineering storm was about to happen. To condense a long story, by the mid-1960s federal judges were ruling that both Brown (1954) and the recently enacted Civil Rights Law of 1964 required that everything possible be done to ensure racial integration, both grievous misinterpretations of the 1964 law and Brown (and this was

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done knowingly). This shift became indisputable in the 1968 landmark case of Green v. County Board of New Kent County where the Supreme Court compelled school districts to assign students on the basis of race to achieve a balanced mixture of whites and blacks. That black students in this case enjoyed total freedom to choose schools, and at least some (115, to be exact) had exercised this right, and that their freedom to choose seemingly satisfied past judicial decisions and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was irrelevant. A few Justices even suggested that thanks to centuries of white brainwashing, blacks only had the illusion of free will though many had, indeed, exercised it (again, a wonderfully un-falsifiable hypothesis). American education was now to be commanded into Utopia. Students were no longer individuals; they existed only as members of a racial caste. Judges and Washington bureaucrats were soon drawing up school district boundaries, assigning teachers and drawing busing routes, even compelling school districts to raise taxes to pay for the promised progress. Insatiable micro-management even covered the racial composition of the cheerleading squad. What had begun as a narrow remedy to eradicate the vestiges of America’s racial caste system mutated into a hugely expensive, politically contentious crusade to transform society, if not human nature. For those who might enjoy watching a social engineering train wreck in slow motion, Race and Education supplies everything you might want. Wolters offers numerous vignettes of school integration efforts in varied settings, north and south, urban and rural, all detailing local conditions and personalities and while some were more successful than others, the overall bad news pattern is undeniable. Matters usually begin with a high degree of racial separation though this is typically an accident of a geography reflecting economics, less government mischief. Whether via litigation, the threat of litigation or outsider agitation, the first integration steps are taken. The political costs were almost always high, often provoking threats of violence and frequently entailed spending extra money to calm troubled waters. Naturally, education experts promised the world: both blacks and whites, but especially blacks, will soon learn more, race relations will (eventually) improve, and America will become one big happy multiracial family thanks to court orders and consent degrees. Resistors, opined the experts, are just ill-informed, perhaps even closet racists. Parents worried about lower-class blacks disrupting the school are assured that these incidents, if they occur at all, will be temporary and to be quickly “cured” by professionals skilled in group dynamics and workshops promoting inter-racial harmony. Wolters shows that with scant exception the worst fears of whites are realized though academic and mass media accounts typically minimize the damage or just explain

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them away with endless excuses. Schools declined academically, race-related violence exploded, students selfsegregated, and once “good schools” became “bad schools.” The promised academic uplift for blacks almost never occurs and, worse, blacks who once did well academically were now pulled down by a newly arrived anti-intellectual black culture. A cynic would insist that this was a perfect strategy to “teach” nasty racial stereotypes, for whites and blacks alike—whites now see first-hand black academic deficiencies, blacks encounter white “arrogance.” White flight soars (and middle-class blacks often join in) and lingering whites might also jump ship if escape were only affordable. Like the Red Queen running ever faster just to stay in place, pressures to compel integration must be upped to create a semblance of racial mixing. Almost as if on cue, white academics now sharpen their messenger shooting skills, even cooking the data and still insist that integration is a “success” though test scores of blacks go nowhere. Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, DC and Detroit soon have fewer than 10% white students, so attention is directed to busing across school districts, as if kids from inner-city Detroit will thrive just by sitting next to rich white kids in clean, graffiti-free suburban schools. The fixes grow more imaginative by the day, for example, creating magnet schools with stellar physical facilities and resources so as to bribe white kids to mingle with blacks to ensure cognitive osmosis. Goals shift so, for example, freedom to select schools becomes equal test score results, a substitution guaranteeing continued legal meddling. Lawyers with expertise here develop thriving practices, school policy reflects litigation avoidance, not education, and new scholarly journals arise to address these self-inflicted tribulations—instigate a problem, publish a journal article about it, get tenure. Hardly surprising, as Wolters notes, many blacks begin voicing second thoughts about this once-heralded grand experiment. They wisely recognize that there may be advantages to a predominantly black neighborhood school where African American children feel culturally comfortable and become valedictorians. Why send junior daily on a 2 hour bus trip for zero academic gain or fight traffic to meet his teachers? Nostalgia grows for the old days of black schools, run by blacks where events brought local residents together. Many blacks increasingly resent the proposition that they are so academically backward that they can only learn if surrounded by whites or that white “experts” know what is best for their offspring. In some cities like Atlanta where there are just too few whites to make racial integration mathematically possible, segregation is accepted as inevitable and the real battle is over jobs. By the 1990s even judges are beginning to see the errors of this grand social engineering and begin permitting schools to escape. Our account here only highlights the cornucopia of tales and insights that Wolters supplies. We have skipped over

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his chapter on educational reform of the 1950s, battles involving people like Hyman C. Rickover and James B. Conant, and this chapter should be a must-read for anybody trying to navigating today ameliorative efforts. Readers are also advised to read Wolters’ analysis of the “diversity rationale” if they have the stomach for over-the-top academic sophistry. Perhaps one can only be reminded of those Japanese soldiers hiding in the Philippine jungles who refused to surrender decades after they knew the war was over. Race and Education 1954–2007 is careful scholarship at its best though in an environment where shameless advocacy is now acceptable, if not de rigueur, Wolters will be condemned for taking the wrong side. Since he is too much of a gentleman to rebuke those responsible for this fine mess we are in, let me perform the honors. First, it is truly amazing how academics, those ostensibly committed to truth, were so easily seduced by an allure whose nobility far exceeded its empirical grounding. Never under-estimate the power of a bad idea if professors are listening. Even as whites almost totally abandoned public schools, prointegration scholars published volume after volume denying what was visibly apparent. One, Christine H. Rossell, asserted that desegregation had little if anything to do with white flight (though, to her credit, she did eventually acknowledge reality). Measures of achievement were routinely “adjusted” to certify “success”—increased ambition, regardless of outcome, replaced actual academic accomplishment to “show” the wonders of racial mixing. While nobody can be faulted for despising the racial caste system, to distort reality so as to justify a patently failing enterprise is unconscionable. Perhaps doubters should have requested conscientious objector status in this war against evil. It exaggerates only slightly to equate them with “scholars” who for decades conveniently ignored atrocities in Communist China, the Soviet Union, Cuba and Cambodia (and elsewhere) since regime aims were so “enlightened.” After all, white trailer court trash and kulaks both resist history’s forward march. This affection among selfproclaimed liberals for strong-armed state coercion to establish their flawed Ivory Tower vision is a great mystery, but we’ll let others solve it. Second, and just as remarkable, are the breathtaking careers enjoyed by those who systematically lied to advance this disastrous “progress.” Again, one might be reminded of the communist functionaries assembling in the Great Hall of the Peoples to applaud wildly as Uncle Joe again announced that the Five Year Plan had exceeded all expectations. No matter that failure was painfully visible and everybody there had helped cook the data. It’s the career, stupid, and even silence failed to satisfy the overlords. Kenneth Clark among others enjoyed phenomenal academic careers publishing one falsehood after the

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next, and if black children were illiterate as a result, this was just unfortunate collateral damage on the road to progress. Dozens of scholars would lend their names to legal briefs attesting to the success of integration though this was fantasy. Meanwhile, once esteemed experts like James S. Coleman who expressed even small doubts about the awaiting Utopia were viciously attacked. When Coleman defended his disconcerting data before fellow sociologists, posters with Nazi swastikas decorated the room. Fortunately, the attack petered out and he went on to become president of the association. A worse fate befell David Amor whose career suffered multiple setbacks as a result of his heresies, including colleagues telling students to boycott his classes. Perhaps this extensive and widespread intellectual prostitution helps explain why today’s academy has increasingly become publicly irrelevant. To be blunt, it has a proven historical record of mendacity and, if anything, matters have deteriorated as the PC cancer metastasizes. Just ask Larry Summers. Those in the social sciences and humanities who refuse to drink the racial orthodoxy Kool-Aid now wisely gravitate to obscure fields or cloud everything with mathematical mumbo-jumbo. Assistant Professors do not need to be a weatherman to sense which way the wind blows—just read history or

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listen to the tales about Coleman, Armor and countless other martyrs. In sum, what began as a most noble quest, eliminating the racial caste system, soon became a totalitarian-infused project morally and intellectually corrupting well-educated judges, political leaders and academics, all of whom probably knew better. Make no mistake: the racial caste system was hideously evil, but abolishing it did not justify the dubious means, and the ill-fated crusade has only invigorated racial bean-counting. Over half a century post Brown (1954) one can only ask (privately, of course) if the costs outweigh benefits, and our imaginary future conference may answer “no.” American education still remains segregated; blacks still lag behind whites and racial acrimony continues onward despite Barak Obama’s election. Unfortunately, Race and Education 1954–2007 may linger in semi-obscurity until passions have cooled and intellectuals finally can see what is plainly in front of their noses. In the meantime, who knows what foolishness awaits us. Robert Weissberg is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, University of Illinois, Urbana, and currently an adjunct teaching in the Politics Department at New York University. His recent books include Polling, Policy and Public Opinion, The Limits of Civic Activism, and Pernicious Tolerance.