speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Experiments in Particularism
and threatened to disapprove Westminster Theological Seminary
unless it put women on its board of governors, the U.S. Secretary of
Education forced it to back down by delaying its own reauthorisation.
An adviser to the Secretary denounced the Middle States
diversity standard as "taking a side" and "impos[ing] a moral or
political litmus test." 55
Subordinated peoples increasingly reject integration as a strategy
of collective mobility in favour of protected spaces within which to
develop their distinctive strengths. 56 Because this appears to reinforce
or revive the very separation liberals have fought for more
than a century through coeducation and desegregation it causes
considerable unease. The British Muslim Education Co-ordinating
Committee advocates "separate educational institutions for male
and female pupils in accordance with the principles of Islam,"
although the government has refused to grant voluntary-aided status
to the several dozen Muslim schools. 57 Such initiatives can attract
embarrassing support from conservative groups like Parental
Alliance for Choice in Education, the Social Affairs Unit, and the
Adam Smith Institute and even the racist National Front. Some
Muslims strongly disavow them. Southall Black Sisters denounced
the Labour Party for "abandon[ing] the principle of equality where
black women are concerned . . . [and] delivering] us into the hands
of male, conservative and religious forces within our communities,
who deny us the right to live as we please." 58 In the United States the
ACLU vigorously challenged a Milwaukee plan to create elementary
and middle schools exclusively for black boys. The New York Civil
Liberties Union condemned a proposed New York high school,
which, though nominally open to all, would emphasise the experience
and culture of black and Hispanic men and be located in a
largely minority neighbourhood. Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, the noted
black psychologist who had testified for the plaintiffs in the 1954
desegregation case, was appalled:
It's isolating these youngsters and telling them "You're different.
We're having this school because black males have more social
and crime problems than others." . . . This is an approach that
stigmatizes rather than educates. 59
Feminists have defended girls' schools, pointing to the success of
their graduates and the tendency of teachers in coeducational
settings to favour boys and assign textbooks with sexual stereotypes.
60 A British scientist noted for discovering that the hypothala-
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