Ashcroft Battle Likely to Focus on Race Issues
by Neil A. Lewis
Excerpts from The New York Times, Sunday, January 14, 2001, Page1
The St. Louis plan that Mr. Ashcroft opposed was VOLUNTARY and was based on the idea that some white suburban students might choose to go to a magnet school in St. Louis while a limited number of inner-city black students could enroll in suburban schools
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"Mr. Ashcroft was the major public official in opposing school desegregation plans
in St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., when he was Missouri's attorney general.
He was so persistent in challenging a voluntary desegregation plan for St. Louis,
a plan that exists to this day
, that he was criticized by a federal judge for being obstructionist.
Prof. Gary Orfield of Harvard University, a leading expert on school desegregation,
studied the efforts in both both Kansas City, where he was a witness,
and in St. Louis, where he was appointed by the federal judge as a consultant.
"Mr. Ashcroft was an unrelenting opponent of doing anything in St. Louis,"
Mr. Orfield said. "He had no positive vision and constantly stirred up racial divisions
over this question."
Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who is a friend of Mr. Ashcroft's and is expected to act as one of his chief defenders at the hearings, said that the desegregation issues in Missouri were complicated……..
Mr. Orfield is a professor of education who is known for his pragmatic approach
to the subject has often testified that some desegregation plans are impractical
. He said that in the more than 30 federal court cases involving desegregation efforts
in which he had been involved, Mr. Ashcroft was the most resistant individual
he had yet encountered.
"He was simply opposed to having the federal courts do anything
about racial justice or the state having any accountability even though
the state of Missouri had many years of segregation
AND SCHOOLS WERE INCREDIBLY UNEQUAL." Professor Orfield said.
The St. Louis plan that Mr. Ashcroft opposed was VOLUNTARY
and was based on the idea that some white suburban students
might choose to go to a magnet school in St. Louis while a limited
number of inner-city black students could enroll in suburban schools.
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"At a press conference today, Ralph G. Neas,
the president of People for the American Way,
an organization opposing the selection, said that the Ashcroft record
of desegregation efforts in Missouri showed a "troubling insensitivity."
"It shows a man who, more than a quarter century
after Brown v. Board of Education, used the resources of his office in a divisive,
single-minded fight to obstruct even voluntary desegregation of St. Louis schools," Mr. Neas said.
"His tactics were like the massive resistance employed by virulent
segregationists during the early days of the civil rights movement."
The St. Louis plan that Mr. Ashcroft opposed was VOLUNTARY
and was based on the idea that some white suburban students
might choose to go to a magnet school in St. Louis
while a limited number of inner-city black students could enroll in suburban schools. |
