Willie: Integration Yields Education

Charles Willie, a professor of education and urban studies at Harvard's Education School, believes his "controlled choice" plan represents the most effective way to desegregate inner city public schools. Unlike some others in his field, he says this type of desegregation can be complete without including predominantly white outlying suburbs in the school district.

"Throughout the United States I've heard persons say you can't desegregate the cities because they are 80 percent Black or 80 percent brown," he says. "Well, that means they are 20 percent white."

Willie, who was hired by Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn last year to design a new desegregation plan for the city, says, "Over the years people thought that an institution which was 20 percent Black or brown was desegregated. Harvard boasts of the fact that one-fifth of its entering class each year is minority.

"So if Blacks and browns when they are 20 percent can be considered to be participating in a desegregating situation, why is it that when whites are 20 percent they cannot be said to be participating in a desegregating situation? The fact that whites have difficulty being a minority and not being a majority is their problem," he says.

Willie says he is committed to desegregation for reasons of education as well as reasons of justice. For him, it isn't just that separate school systems are unequal. It is also that separate school systems can't teach certain things.

"All knowledge is partial and Blacks don't have the right to hoard their knowledge from whites. They are mighty deficient when they are not educated in the presence of Blacks. Most whites don't know that. That's one of the most unfortunate aspects of modern states. Most people who are dominant don't know how dumb they are... To not have an education in the presence of people you are going to have to deal with seems to me shortsighted."