Viewing page 127 of 132

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

BOOK REVIEW      DELANY

In the introductory chapter the author states: “This is an analysis of the way in which fifteen American city school systems made decisions regarding school integration." Actually, the book itself deals with only nine school systems; eight which the author describes as Northern (including Baltimore in the Northern category), and then a detailed analysis of New Orleans as representative of the Southern cities. The author states that it is his purpose in writing the book to write a report that, “will be valuable to the persons involved in school desegregation… more important, a perspective of the whole matter that may help him to understand his own community.”

This is a lofty purpose and certainly one that whets the appetite of any reader. Unfortunately, the book falls far short of providing guidance or help. The reasons for this are myriad.

Of prime importance is the fact that, although this purports to be a rather detailed, scientific approach to the question of school integration, the methodology employed by Crain and his associates is dubious. The raw data were collected by “two to three interviewers going into a city usually for a week and conducting an average of twenty-two interviews.” The interviews lasted “thirty minutes to eight hours.”

Can there be any real understanding of the complex issues involved by two or three people visiting a city for a week and interviewing merely twenty-odd people in each city? 

Additionally, the whole methodology of using questionnaires and interviews is an ineffective approach for achieving the underlying attitudes and values of the people, particularly when it is very obvious to those people that the results of these interviews and questionnaires are going to be published and it is very easy to identify the individuals interviewed.

Beyond this serious methodological error, many of the author's statements and conclusions are often obvious, naive, sometimes confused, superficial, and meaningless; there is even, at times, an indication of Crain’s unaware bias.

For example, the naivete of the author is revealed when he states, “the civil rights movement did not argue that the segregation of Woodlawn would be an illegal gerrymander. If they had, the Board might have reacted differently. Rather, the movement took the position that the Board had a moral obligation to integrate the schools whenever possible. This is a vague position."

To any individual who has had direct experience with school

421

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-13 13:48:35 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-14 12:17:47