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THE NIXON DOCTRINE ON SCHOOLS, THE COURTS, SOCIETY & RACE: "THE COMPROMISE OF 1970"

On March 24, 1970, the Nixon Administration issued a carefully drafted comprehensive 8,000-word statement on the status of school desegregation in the United States. The president attempted to establish two philosophical and administrative priorities: one, to provide compensatory educational help to minority group children in de facto segregated classrooms, two, to relive the pressure on local districts to conform to de jure federal segregation guidelines. The president also summarized the findings of various court rulings which have sought to untangle the complexities stemming from support for neighborhood school patterns in the North and freedom of choice plans in the South. His conclusion: de facto segregation does not violate the Constitution; de jure desegregation as practiced in the South does "in both Constitutional and human terms." The statement was attacked by most members of the black middle-class establishment as a retreat on school desegregation ("desegregation yes, integration no"), and a tacit endorsement of tax-exempt status for separate white "private" schools in the South. At the NAACP convention in July of 1970, critics of Nixon ticked off other grievances: Nixon's retreat on the use of federal registrars to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his emasculation of the cease-and-desist powers of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), his willingness to sign defense contracts with textile companies not complying with desegregation guidelines, and his Supreme Court nominations. Although this statement does not explicitly contend with all these accusations, it does summarize Nixon's views on the principles for human advancement and the policies which he is prepared to back in order to guarantee black progress within the framework of American society. The document is printed in its virtual entirety as a statement of the President's intention to press for "a free and open society" in hiring, housing practices, and higher education.

[[image - black & white photograph of Daniel Patrick Moynihan]]

MR. MOYNIHAN ADVISED MR. NIXON ON A "BENIGN NEGLECT" policy which he followed. "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of "benign neglect." The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades."


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