AIL. AL, Page Six THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE Tuesday, April 9, 1968 Tuesday, April 9, 1968 THE MICHGAN DAILY MAGAZINE ._... -Daily-Thomas R. Copi Charles Thomas environment the lower class child will also acquire the means of achieving his goals, retain an orig- inally high aspiration level, and achieve at a higher academic level than a lower-class student in a low- er-class school. While the evidence does not draw a direct causal link between segregation and inferior academic achievement, it is strong enough to conclude that'where ra- cial and social class segregation oc- cur together, the segregated student suffers. The campaign for "equal educa- tional opportunity" has not even im- proved deficient tools of measuring educational progress. Educational testing, a growing body of evidence indicates, does not measure ability as such, but rather nieasures the manifestation of that ability apcord- ing to the standards of one social, class. Sociologist David Reissman has found this, and has indicated that intelligence tests do not meas- ure native ability, but rather some degree of proficiency in manipulat- ing the symbols and idioms of the ,dominant culture. As members of a sub-culture with its own values and goals, Negroes are at an inherent ar- bitrary disadvantage in being com- pared with whites. The problems with educational- testing might drive Negroes intent on succeeding in school to give up their oWn values and demonstrate white cultural goals in order to do well on such tests. This results not in integration or assimilation but "''amalgamation." As the growing white exodus to the suburbs and the higher urban birth rate hasten the blackening of central cities, any talk of desegrega- tion within a school district becomes largely rhetorical. In Chicago and --Daily-Richard Lee Luther Weems -Daily-Richard Lee Larry -Mann -Daily-Thomas R. Copi. Albert Wheeler "As the growing white exodus tc and the higher urban birth rate has ening of central ciies, anytoIkofc within a school district becomes lrge In Ann Arbor Detroit elementary school enroll- ments are now over half black, and most big cities will have predomi- nantly Negro school systems by 1975 or 1980. If desegregation- is a goal,- then it must be accompanied by a radical restructuring of the public education system. Instead of separate school dis- tricts for each suburban community and big city, there should be a met- ropolitan school district with school complexes large enough to draw, their population from all races and social classes-the concept of an ed- ucational park. The Detroit area alone has 96 separate school dis- tricts. Without going into discussion of the educational, economic, and recreational advantages of a system of educational parks it would be an effective alternative to the present inefficient system of 6,604 school dis- tricts in 212 standard metropolitan areas in the country. With central- ized policy-setting and collection and alfocation of funds, and decen- tralized control of curriculum, hir- ing and firing of teachers and all other educational, and administra- tive matters, the school could once Black Can Be, Beautiful again become responsive to local needs and desires without losing touch with the larger world around it. Further, by bringing about the total desegregation of the schools, the problems which result from seg- regation could be largely eliminated. Some white and black critics point to the failure of past and current desegregation attempts as evidence that desegregation cannot succeed as long as blacks are at a disadvan- tage from the time they enter white schools. Previous attempts at deseg- regation indicate they are correct. However, there has been no real in- tegration of American schools start- ing at kindergarten. It is quite logi- cal to argue that by junior high it is already "too late," but the rela- tive disadvantage of a five year-old Negro to a five year-old white is much less than when the children are ten or twelve years old. Whether or not desegregation from kinder- garten would work is unknown, but it is unreasonable to condemn de- segregation on the basis of pre- vious, half-done attempts. If black and white children at- tended school together from age five, there would be much more chance for success on the part of the Negro. When they are put together at the junior high or high school level, the results are tragic. Counselors im- plicitly and explicitly act as though Negroes are not college-bound, an assumption based somewhat on sta- tistical da are genera er ability system" d dents was District J found not de facto s equal opp and Negr( of their which agg lations ar plicitly th be a barri al opporti Unable working school off prej udicia ample, de plinary pI School, wi ly betweer stantly p. lems, ac While th major 'co also a m prejudices ulty mem of the ne students, mentionec tation to Lincoln a Faced v black stue ucational desegrega Reflections at the the end of National Negro History Week By DAVID WEIR and ALISON SYMROSKI It was not the kind of gathering you would normally expect to see on a Sun- day afternoon. High in an otherwise desertedMason Hall, 30 young people were crowded into a classroom,having an intenselyemo- tional discussion with few smiles and fewer laughs. Some of the people taking part were students, others were members of the faculty, others were local towns- people. All, however, had one thing in common: their -skin was black. They were pondering whether the University was "turning them white". There were slight differences of opinion on this, but the consensus was clear. "For all intents and purposes we are white by the time we get here. After all, for 17 years we've been living in a white society," said one student. "Maybe what we have to do now is to learn how to become black." The discussion came at the end of a three-day University program in a con- junction with "National Negro History Week." There had been speeches, sym- posiums, and group discussions. Now, in a small classroom some conclusions were being formulated.- "We're just going to have to create within each one of us a system to evalu- ate the system . . . that's the real lesson of all this." "People have thrown out integration .. It's not an obvious value any more." "What we need new is unity among ourselves . . we must work together against the common evils facing us all." SITTING AT A TABLE in the Union Grill's "Second Room", looking into the very black face of Charles Thomas. one senses the depth of emotion underlying the race problem in 1968 America. His blackness just keeps going. Whether rising to the heights of hysteria, or delving to the depths of despair, his voice is in tune with the meaning of his words.- In a very real way, he comes over to the listener. Thomas knows how to make his points. "Black Power is going out and talking to black folks. We are saying, 'Hey, you're black. You have power. You can and you gotta do something for yourself. Nobody else is ever going to do it for you.' "At the same time, we are trying to reach white people. We are acting for white people; we are burning for white people. We are saying: 'Hey, listen to us before it's too late. You are headed for a catastrophe'," Charles Thomas ("the name is Charles, not Charlie") is a tall, bearded leader in the local chapter of the Direct Action Committee (DAC). 'The local DAC group, which Thomas helped organize several years ago, is not a student organization; there are very few student members in it. Nevertheless, the DAC has great influence on campus. This is mainly due to Thomas. When he is not working, he frequents the Union Mug. But a good deal of Thomas' time-is de- voted to work for the DAC. "We go out into the surrounding communities - Willow Run, Ypsi, Ann Arbor. We try to get the oppressive powers off our backs. "DAC also has an international per- spective . . . we have sympathy for the oppressed peoples all over the world: South America, Asia, Africa." In 1965 Thomas went to Africa. He now often harries a book entitled The New Nations of Africa, which the Liber- ian ambassador to Mauritania gave him. On an inside flap, a map of Africa is marked with the route he traveled: down from the north, along the western coast, then back up through Nigeria to the cen- tral part of the continent. Thomas says that in- one village he visited there was an enlarged picture of a police dog attacking an Alabama black man. He describes the scene as terrible, pitiful, but realistic. "They (the Afri- cans) know all about what's going on over here in America, much better than you do," he says. "Whites over here have to care about what the Africans think. The resources are in Africa, huge resources, and white Americans will never get them if they kill American blacks. "In DAC, we are educating -our broth- ers, here and in Africa. We're saying to them: "You're black, "You have power, "You can and you must do something for yourselves, "Nobody's going to do it for you." Is Black Power catching on? "Nation- wide it's moving . . . in Detroit it's mov- ing . . . in Ann Arbor it's moving. We represent the blacks ...we move." To Charles Thomas, Black Power is much more than just a symbol or a term. "To me, the words are real. We changed the name from Negro to Black. There's nothing wrong with Black. That's good!" But the system is bad. Thomas has un- derstood Marx's principle. "Black Power means black folks determining' their own fate by owning the means of production. "Who owns the means of production? Who makes.the law? Are there going to be riots? I don't know-ask these people. White people cause riots, not blacks. What causes riots? Ask the police, ask the men who make the laws, ask the corporation heads - they cause the riots. Ask them if there will be riots this sum- mer - they determine that. The trouble is, they don't even know it." LUTHER WEEMS is a psychology in- structor. His home state is Florida, the Sunshine State. He has felt the effects of the white racism noted by the Presi- dent's Commission on Civil Disorders.- But he's still in America. "I've gone through a complete cycle- during the last nine months. Last August I was fed up, I felt that we might as well burn it all down . . . burn the whole damn country down. All I wanted then was to get my degree from this place and get the hell out of here. "By last December, I was in the middle somewhere, I didn't know what I wanted. "But now I feel differently-I look at the realistic aspects' . . . Burning cities was unrealistic-we know we can't do this. But the impulse to do it is based in reality. "Now I feel that something can be done: maybe I can get through to some white students. There has been some satisfaction through my experience as a teacher, having come in contact with 150 people. "I think there's some hope now. Vio- lence in the .North did more than the sit-ins ever did in the South-it's been the only effective device up here. It's. served a valuable purpose-it has awak- ened the white community." IT HAS ALSO AWAKENED the black community. To Ann Arbor professional people present at the Mason Hall dis- cussions, the Universityastudentsrepre- sented a new hope. One young Negro woman, a teacher at a local high school, explained best perhaps why they had come: "The reason older people are search- ing for a group now is that you get tired ... you need a group. You get tired of fighting by yourself. We are watching the students and we are interested in getting involved." The students themselves are searching for methods of involvement-in the Uni- versity, in the community, in the coun- try. "What, I'm worried about is what we are going to do now, not what we are going to do later ... " "What we need is some kind of unity . . . at times, Negroes have betrayed Negroes just as much as whites have betrayed Negroes . . "The black students on this campus are divided into three groups: the ones 'turning white', the ones who are apa- thetic or afraid, and the ones left that are worrying about what we can do ... " LARRY MANN, 21-year-old chairman of the Afro-American Liberation 'Move- ment, is one of the students in the third group. "We're trying to activate black students. We're trying to tune them in to the atmosphere in Detroit, Harlem and all over the nation. It's happening." Mann explained the difficulty in con- fronting the apathy of some black stu- dents on campus. "It's a defense mecha- nism. Sometimes they can only take so much. They want to escape, stop reading papers, instead of getting into it. He helped establish the Afro-American Liberation Movement last October as a student organization "designed to study the heritage and history of the colored peoples of the world." The Movement's purpose, as stated in the Preamble to the Constitution, is "to