KANSAN COMMENT
To the editor:
A theory has been proposed which says that the "Now Generation" will become a group of "liberal Victorians," who will permit little dissent with liberal ideas. After the appalling demonstration given by some of the more radical members of the student body at Lt. Col. Jack Mohr's speech Monday night I am inclined to agree with the theory. There were those present who were disinclined to hear or even to permit others to hear Col. Mohr's opinions.
Although not in agreement with many of his ideas, I will firmly support his right to be heard, just as I support the right of the New Left or any radical group to be heard without disturbance.
Instead of being repudiated, Mohr was vindicated, as each of his statements about the youth of today were proven all too well.
Out of perhaps 800 there, there were possibly 50 or 60 who caused trouble. But they ran that meeting! They forbade their political opposition one of the rights that that 50 so piously defends and so piteously bemoans when it is denied to them!
But they were only a few! Yes, only a few. And it was only a few who in the 1940s killed six million Jews. "Twas only a few who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Yes, it was only a few.
M. Sidney Lynn Jr.
Kansas City freshman
To the editor:
A human being was crucified yesterday With marshmallows He really kind of enjoyed it Being not so physically painful As his years in a Korean prison camp. It seems that he came to say something Not too reasonable Not too believable Not too defensible Full of holes Like a sieve He would have been blown over With a few breaths of rational air But some had more evil plans for him. Smother him! Taunt him! Ridicule him! Bait him! Crucify him! "Peanuts, popcorn, cotton candy." Now in the center of the arena, folks! Tonight's main attraction! The paranoid John Bircher! Everyone participate! Fun for the whole family! Show your skill! Impress your friends! If you can, Stone the man in the circle Before he stones himself!! Kicks, man! Right on!!! Right on!!! The stoners and the stoned Curiously go together. They were made for each other. They need each other. They feed on each other. My sadness is We have not just the one Nor just the other; We have both.
Will Schubert
Shawnee Freshman
Integration: a flop?
By WILLIAM MORRISSEY
Kansan Staff Writer
The principle of integration has been accepted in this country since 1954, yet 16 years later, according to the best figures available, only 23 per cent of the nationwide total of more than six million black pupils go to integrated schools.
In short, integration has failed in America.
in short, integration has failed in America. The tragic failure was recognized by two leading black militants in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine.
Dan Watts, editor of the Liberator: "There's more race hatred in New York today than there is in Mississippi, and it all goes back to the schools. It's a traumatic experience, anyway, for a black kid to be bused clear across town for the privilege of sitting next to Miss Ann . . . We've got to move away from integration and toward coexistence."
Julius Hobson of Washington, D.C.: "Of course integration is a complete failure. . . What we've got is no longer an issue of race but of class, the middle class against the poor, with the Federal government standing idly by. The schools in Washington have deteriorated to a point almost beyond repair. If I could afford it, I'd send my own children to a private school. . . I have an opinion I hesitate to voice, because it's too close to George Wallace, but I think it's time we tried to make the schools good where they are . . . the integration kick is a dead issue."
Integration is a dead issue because most Americans have failed to realize what integration, on a significant scale, entails.
It is a simple matter to enforce integration on very short deadlines in rural Southern communities, where there is little residential segregation, but to apply it to all parts of the country is an enormously difficult process.
Bus loads of inner-city black pupils have to be transported miles to predominantly white areas and white students have to be bused into the inner city. Finances that could be spent in helping the educational quality of the schools go instead to transporting students to and from school daily.
These are the hard facts we face in large-scale integration. For it would hardly be just to require the small rural communities of the South to submit to the strict enforcement of integration and not the rest of the nation. This would only add fuel to the politics of George Wallace.
As noble as the principle of integration is, it can reach a breaking point. This has happened when whites have been sent to constitute a minority in a school that is largely black. The result has been a mass exodus on the part of the whites to a different section of the city where the schools reflect residential segregation. What it amounts to is resegregation where whites change places with blacks.
The Supreme Court in 1954 had no way of knowing the feasibility problems involved in nation-wide integration. It was hoped by the courts that the objectives of desegregation would eventually result along non-racial lines, thus creating a unitary school system from a dual one.
Sad to say, this has not been the case. It does no good to say that racism and bigotry have prevented integration from working; the
question is, How can you prevent whites from fleeing schools when they find themselves in the minority?
A more reasonable approach would be to apply integration to the extent possible up to the breaking point where resegregation sets in. Basically, this is what the Nixon administration has been advocating.
What seems to be the biggest difficulty with integration is the concept of racial identity. Historically, schools in America have been an extension of the family. The children have attended schools which reflected their class and cultural identity.
This concept of racial identity has to be broken down before integration can take place smoothly. The way to do it, however, is not by court orders for compulsory busing and racial quotas resulting in a heightening of racial tensions and violence.
The root of the problem goes deeper than the merits of compulsory busing or racial quotas.
One person who recognizes the depth of the problem is Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, D-Conn., who says, "The problem is not only the dual systems of education which existed 16 years after the Supreme Court struck them down in 1954. The fundamental problem is the dual society that exists in every metropolitan area—the black society in the central city and the white society of the suburb. Massive school segregation exists not because we have segregated our schools but because we have segregated our society and our neighborhoods."
Perhaps the answer lies here. As Ribicoff suggests, we cannot have an integrated school system unless we have an integrated society. And this, in all honesty, is not attainable within the near future.
We must now devote all our energies and resources to improving the schools where they are, while doing our best to open up middle class jobs and middle class suburbs to the Negroes. If there is to be a solution, it must come through cooperation—not force.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN An All-American college newspaper
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