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Race, Class and Power: the New York Decentralization Controversy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Louis Kushnick
Louis Kushnick
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Racial and religious tension and conflict in New York City have dramatically increased over the past few years. Charges of ‘black anti-Semitism’ and ‘white racism’ abound, while meaningful communication between the races is less than it has ever been. The general context within which the situation has developed has been that of the growth of the Black Power concept and the resulting black challenge to the white economic, political and educational power structures. This challenge, so different from the glorious days of the civil rights decade of the 1950s when blacks and whites marched together in the South, represents a realization among black leaders that the basic problems of jobs, housing and education in the urban ghettos of America have to be solved before there can be any real progress of black Americans as a group. This, however, brings them into conflict with whites with vested interests to protect, and the resulting controversy has been bitter. An example of the break-up of the old civil rights coalition following the presentation of a challenge to white self-interest can be seen in the mobilization of the majority of Reform Democrats of the FDR–Woodrow Wilson Club to defeat plans to pair PS84, a predominantly white elementary school, and a nearby black and Puerto Rican school. David Rogers, in 110 Livingston Street, quotes one disappointed club member saying: ‘All their old liberalism went by the boards. They are liberal in the abstract, and when the problem is far away, say in Selma, Jackson or Birmingham, but not for their children or their schools and neighbourhoods.’ The same, as we shall see, could be said of the ‘liberal’ United Federation of Teachers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , December 1969 , pp. 201 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 201 note 2 Rogers, David, 110 Livingston Street: Politics & Bureaucracy in the New York School System (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 83Google Scholar.

page 202 note 1 Roberts, Wallace: quoted in ‘ The Battle for Urban Schools ’, Saturday Review, No. 16 (1968), p. 97Google Scholar.

page 202 note 2 Quoted in Fantini, Mario and Magat, Richard: ‘Decentralizing Urban School Systems’, in The Schoolhouse in the City, edited by Toffler, Alvin (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), pp. 134–5Google Scholar.

page 203 note 1 David Rogers, op. cit., p. 473.

page 204 note 1 ‘ For example, 39 of the 106 projects in the board's 1964–1965 building program were for local school areas where it was estimated that 90% or more of the pupils would be Negro and Puerto Rican.’ Ibid., p. 18. See also p. 70.

page 204 note 2 Ibid., pp. 63–64.

page 204 note 3 Ibid., p. 306.

page 205 note 1 Ibid., p. 309.

page 205 note 2 Cf. Clark, Kenneth, Dark Ghetto, ch. 6, pp. 120–5Google Scholar.

page 206 note 1 New York Times, 13 Aug. 1967, about release of Co-operative Research Project No. 3237 of the U.S. Office of Education's series entitled Investigations of Fiscally Independent & Dependent School Districts.

page 206 note 2 Rogers, op. cit. p. 269.

page 207 note 1 Interview with Rev. C. H. Oliver, 21 May 1968, in London. Cf. also Calhoun, Lillian S., ‘New York: Schools and Power—Whose?’, Integrated Education, 8, No. 1 (01–02 1969), p. 18Google Scholar.

page 207 note 2 Ibid., p. 23.

page 207 note 3 Reconnection for Learning—A Community School System for New York City, 9 November 1967.

page 208 note 1 N.Y. Civil Liberties Union, ‘The Burden of Blame: A Report on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville School Controversy’, New York, 9 October 1968, mimeo., p. 1.

page 210 note 1 ‘UFT Statement on Decentralization’, mimeo., 10 January 1968.

page 210 note 2 Gordon, Edmund W., ‘Decentralization and Educational Reform’, IRCD Bulletin, 4, No. 5; 5, No. 1 (11 1968–01 1969), p. 3Google Scholar.

page 212 note 1 Rosenthal, Robert and Jacobson, Lenore F.: ‘ Teacher Expectations for the Disadvantaged ’, Scientific American, 218, No. 4 (04 1968), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also their book Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1968)Google Scholar. Cf. also Clark, op. cit. pp. 125–53, and Fuchs, Estelle, ‘How Teachers Learn to Help Children Fail’, Transaction, 5, No. 9 (09 1968), pp. 45–53Google Scholar.

page 212 note 2 Calhoun, loc. cit. p. 17.

page 212 note 3 Private communication, Nov. 1968.

page 213 note 1 ‘Burden of Blame’ p. 6.

page 213 note 2 An Evaluative Study of the Process of School Decentralization in New York City, 30 July 1968, p. 95.

page 214 note 1 Cf. interview with John O'Neill in Ferretti, Fred, ‘ Who's to Blame in the School Strikes ’, New York Magazine, 18 11 1968, pp. 34–5Google Scholar.

page 214 note 2 New York Civil Liberties Union, Memorandum to Special Committee on Religious and Racial Prejudice, 26 November 1968, mimeo., pp. 2–3.

page 214 note 3 Daily Telegraph, 11 March 1968.

page 215 note 1 Cf. for example, Duker, Abraham G., ‘ Negroes versus Jews I. Anti-semitism is Assorted.’ Patterns of Prejudice, 3, No. 2 (03–04 1969), pp. 9–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Much of the following discussion is based on the author's ‘ Negroes versus Jews II. Anti-semitism is Denied. ’ Ibid., pp. 13–15.

page 215 note 2 Marx, Gary T., Protest and Prejudice (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 131Google Scholar.

page 215 note 3 Ibid., pp. 138–139.

page 215 note 4 Quoted in Memorandum from Oscar Cohen on ‘ Negro anti-Semitism and Negro anti-Semites ’, 23 January, 1969, mimeo., p. 2.

page 215 note 5 Ibid.

page 216 note 1 Marx, Op. cit., p. 179.

page 216 note 2 Ibid., p. 182.

page 216 note 3 Ibid., p. 153 (italics in the original).

page 216 note 4 Ibid., pp. 158–159.

page 217 note 1 Stone, I. F., ‘ The Mason-Dixon Line Moves to New York ’, I.F. Stone's Weekly, 16, No. 22 (4 11 1968), p. 2Google Scholar.

page 217 note 2 Ibid.

page 217 note 3 George D. Strayer and Louis Yavner: quoted in Rogers, op. cit. p. 283. Rogers also quotes Dr Mortimer Kreuter of the Center for Urban Education saying that teachers have become ‘ infantilized ’ by a system whose functionaries grade and inspect them much like children. Ibid. He also quotes a school official who said, ‘It is known by everyone that headquarters doesn't know what's going on. Information does not get back from the field and people don't even know what policy actually is. They get no help from headquarters, only a mass of paper directives. It is set up like a machine, and the basic set throughout the system is not in any way toward experimenting or even pushing at a rule. A coherent plan has to aim at loosening up the central bureaucracy to begin with, and you have to build in rewards to innovate.’ Ibid., pp. 279–80.

Ferretti, op. cit. pp. 34–35.

page 218 note 1 New York Times, 2 May 1969.

page 218 note 2 Ibid.

page 218 note 3 Interview with Rev. C. H. Oliver, 21 May 1969 (in London).

page 219 note 1 Letter from David Spencer, 3 January 1969, mimeo.