Racism and the Left

IN 1965, the Massachusetts Legislature passed the Racial Imbalance Act calling for the cessation of all state funds to schools in which minorities comprised 50 per cent or more of the student body. It took nine years, and a court order, for that act to be implemented in Boston's school system. Now Boston has Phase One, the school desergregation plan implemented by Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity. While national attention focuses on Boston's busing problems, local politicians court its vocal anti-busing segment and the Boston School Committee sees itself as the embattled defender of alienated rights.

Phase Two in Judge Garrity's school desegregation plan is coming around next September, and he has over 16 proposals from which to draw up its guidelines. Five of these plans are particularly important because they represent the major groups involved. The School Committee proposes voluntary busing, with the rather unusual stipulation that each pupil would have to attend an integrated school at least once a week. The School Committee staff's plan, which it rejected, opted for alternative learning styles within racial guidelines, and the busing of at least 31,000 students. The Home and School Committee, which represents the interests of many South Boston parents wants a holding action pending an appeal of Garrity's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the State Board of Education calls for a "controlled transfer system," a modification of the present busing system, the NAACP's proposal advocates busing in conjunction with a system of neighborhood schools.

AS CITY POLITICIANS prepare for next fall's elections, and one of the stalwarts of the anti-busing cause, state representative Raymond Flynn; compares the situation in Boston today to that facing the revolutionaries 200 years ago, students and left-wing politicians formulate their own plans to "fight the racist offensive" and to "keep the buses rolling." For them Boston '74 is to be compared to Selma '64 and Little Rock '54. They have a different vision of the "freedom trail" but in the long run, it appears almost as narrow as Flynn's and the South Boston mob's.

"Students Wake Up! We have another sin to expose," Ray Sherbill, one of the five "coordinators" for the National Student Conference Against Racism (NSCAR) announces in its keynote speech. From the red, white and blue bannered stage, James Meredith establishes the conference's tone. "This is a great opportunity to establish what the American consciousness is." And a massive, pro-busing march on May 17 proposed by Thomas Atkins, the head of NAACP in Boston, is the focal point of the conference.

Like the anti-busing people who talk of constitutional amendments and gather in groups like Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR), the 2000 people who have come from across the country to attend this conference see busing as a transcendent political reality, an uncompromisable issue. Many here spend over twenty hours in NSCAR's plenary sessions and workshops. Some sleep in the basement of B.U.'s Hayden Hall, where the conference meets; some travel to cheap housing at other area colleges. Long hours of haggling over dubious matters drag out time, but the people's time, the time of freedom, equality and justice, is said to be just around the corner. A few call this "the most exciting experience of my life."

In Saturday morning's discussion of procedural rules, the conference's veneer of harmony is shattered. The charge surfaces that the conference has been packed by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and their youth wing, the Young Socialists Alliance (YSA). "The black community was not involved in the organization of this conference," asserts Vivien Morris '75, a member of a coalition of black and third-world groups. However, most of the people favor the conference's set-up. By the time the plenary session is adjourned, the tone of the conference has been set. The debates are long and boring. The issues are obscured and the allegations of SWP-YSA influence are never put to rest. Certain militant factions are increasingly alienated, but the proposals put forth by the organizers are passed with near unanimity. And the majority, predominately white and middle-class, reflects with great pride upon its accomplishments.

IN THE NEARLY-deserted auditorium, nearly 1300 or so plastic and steel chairs quiver in erratic rows. Two women from Chicago, both in their early twenties, sit in the rear row. "The conference doesn't look dominated by anyone so far," says one. She is shocked by the people in South Boston. "But you just can't look at these people like monsters--they're regular human beings." Her companion, a college student, believes. "The only way to stop the stoning is to show them that we won't put up with that stuff. Students by themselves can change the situation." The black-third world coalition, however, sees the need to conduct a grass-roots campaign, and, through consulting and working with the community, transforming this from a student movement to a true social movement. Though they see imperialism and capitalism as the sources of racism, they don't get lost in the labyrinthine tangles of Trotskyite-Marxist-Stalinist thought, as other groups that also protest the conference's single-minded emphasis upon student action, and the march.

According to the SWP, the most radical thing to do is to organize as many people as possible in the streets--and the conference's majority believes them. "I need to take back to the people some real life activity, something concrete," says a blond-haired student from Texas. A girl sent by the San Francisco State College Senate tells the conference, "This will give us the proper platform to go back and build and build and build." Jim Garrison, NSCAR's Michigan organizer, thinks the people have come here for "an action program," and that the march will be a "springboard" for future action. He's been an activist for seven years, and like Greg Johnson, a cottony-voiced black who sees this as "an experience oriented, people movement," he worked in the anti-war movement with the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC), an SWP dominated group. NSCAR's staff, in fact, is largely comprised of former NPAC organizers, an anonymous but highly visible group at the conference. On the other hand, two of the NSCAR's five national coordinators. Maceo Dixon and Paul Mailhot, are members of the YSA, and a third, Robert Harper '78, is said to be under great pressure from the SWP-YSA, although he is not a member of either group.

On Saturday night, two proposals reach the floor, one, by Harper, supports Phase One, but condemns the closing of schools and cutbacks of bilingual programs under it. Harper's proposal also calls for better educational facilities and student participation in the monitoring of schools and buses. The second proposal, sponsored by the other four national coordinators, calls for support of the May 17 march. Before the vote is called, there is tense back-room politicking between Harper and Paul Seideman, who describes himself as "the head of the SWP."

Both proposals pass, but not before the black third world coalition, about 300 strong, seizes the microphones for 25 minutes, and then leaves the auditorium in protest against the SWP-YSA influence on the conference. "Don't play us as fools...we know what you're trying to do to us," they tell the conference. "Get off the bus, Maceo. You've got to come home," they shout at Dixon. However, the conference is glad to get rid of people who, as a tall skinny black wearing a huge leather hat says, "won't discuss constructive programs." But the black third world coalition charges that they were intentionally left out of the planning for the conference, even though they offered to help organize it at its first planning session, held after the December 14 march. In their opinion the issues are quality education, the black community's right to self-defense, and the right of third world people to attend the school of their choice. They decide to go into Roxbury and "find out what the people want" instead of returning to the conference Sunday.

HAYDEN HALL is plunged into a slimy mist at 10 a.m. Sunday morning. A bearded fellow wearing a blue parka lurches across its granite steps. "Go picket Louise Day Hicks's house," he barks into a portable loudspeaker. The Committee Against Racism (CAR) is trying to mount a demonstration.

By noon, CAR's proposal to picket Hicks's house reaches a vote. Seideman hurries to the aisle mike and tells the crowd not to accept it; CAR is reactionary, there is too great a risk of violence. Support for the proposal is neglible.

Al Leisinger, a boyish, crew-cut math teacher at Boston State College, is organizing this expedition. It is learned that a couple of thousand have gathered in Southie to greet the buses and Leisinger says, "We're not out to fight, but we're not pacifists, either. You don't fight racism because it's a moral issue, but because it's a life and death issue." He is a very nice guy. He's very friendly and talkative, though he doesn't say that the Progressive Labor Party is behind CAR. By 12:50, the affair is over, and Jeff Mirelowitz, a YSA organizer, denounces CAR's action as an "adventure and a disruption."

And it is an adventure and a disruption, and though CAR evidently feels it expresses their legitimate desires, their action seems more to represent their frustration with the situation in Boston, with their elected leaders, and with this conference. Something must be done here and now, they say, but they can only mount a futile, petty action.

The conference, however, contents itself with adopting four proposals. One condemns the Republic of South Africa, calling for the severing of all diplomatic and economic ties with that country, and its expulsion from the United Nations. This is hardly an original proposal; it seems there is little the conference can do towards accomplishing this end. A second proposal is Harper's, which is as close as the conference comes to taking any direct action in the context of the Boston school system. It's a sound proposal, but not much stress is placed on it--the march proposal is what occupies the conference's time and energy. There is a fear in the national group gathered here that supporting "quality education" is just giving in to "the racists," and from there busing will quickly be scuttled, leaving the present situation unchanged. A march, on the other hand, will unite the country and force "the racists" to see the truth.

The last proposal adopted creates an on-going organization, the National Student Coalition Against Racism (NSCAR), which is, in effect, an extension of the conference. After old NSCAR effectively eliminated the radical left, black and third world groups, new NSCAR will continue its efforts to build a "united front" by creating a steering committee so large as to be unconvenable. The coordinators are, with the addition of two more, the same as for old NSCAR, the national staff remains the same. In a word, the conference is quite content with the progress it makes and wishes to do more of the same. It even trusts the old coordinators so much as to accept an election for the new coordinators where the nominees are not allowed to state their views, nor even to stand up and identify themselves. "We're not running a beauty contest," the chairperson says. There's a little grumbling, but not much.

But it is not as if NSCAR doesn't have anything to be proud of. A national organization with the potential to mobilize broad-based action against racism has been formed, and a march which stands to unite groups from across the social spectrum and the country in Boston, is being planned. Perhaps the exodus of the more militant factions is a good thing; now the Young Democrats, Young Republicans, church groups, etc. won't be so wary of NSCAR. And Harper's proposal, if acted upon, would provide immediate protection to school children, and directly engage NSCAR in community and school affairs.

BUT NSCAR HAS yet really to attack the core of the problem in Boston: the Boston School Committee and its manipulation of whites and minorities alike. The School Committee is denounced, and two of 43 workshops do deal with matters relevant to local issues. In one Luis Fuentes discusses community control in New York schools, in the other the necessity of a coalition of blacks and whites to elect a pro-busing school committee member is stressed.

According to the SWP, 80 per cent of all School Committee members have come from two wards, and only 11 per cent of the electorate is black, though 40 per cent of the school children are from minority groups. But the NSCAR never takes an official stand on the validity of the concept of the School Committee. Their efforts are directed more towards middle-class whites already segregated in suburbia, and students isolated on campuses, than towards the black inner-city community.

Many of the people of South Boston are now in the position of defending a school system that has never been adequate for the needs of their own children. The schools have always been poor, but not until the advent of busing has the cry of "quality education" been raised. The very people raising that cry are those who are to blame for the school system's deplorable state: past and present School Committee members, like Hicks, Kerrigan, Tierney and Ellison. These people are making money from the crisis, and conducting the School Committee illegally in the process according to a report recently prepared by the Boston Finance Commission. Contrary to state law, the discussion of routine staff matters is regularly held in private executive sessions, and most of over $2,100,000 worth of no-bid contracts was awarded without the mayor's signature.

The Finance Commission's report urges the disbanding of the Boston School Committee for fiscal reasons. NSCAR should profit from this opportunity to join in supporting the transfer of control of Boston schools to their respective communities, and this implies a certain recognition of self-determination for blacks.

But until full community participation in educational matters is restored to blacks and other minorities, little progress can be made in the fight against racism. In the violent attacks and ameliorative positions on school desegregation in Boston as elsewhere, there is an attempt to deny the black man his future as a citizen with equal social, economic and political status. In the direction NSCAR is heading--estranged from the black community as a whole--there is an implicit rejection of the black past. It is taken for granted that the black experience will rise to the level of the white experience, that white politics and white philosophy will uplift the black man. But until the integrity of the black community is recognized, the fight against racism can't really start.