The last proposal adopted creates an on-going organization, the National Student Coalition Against Racism (NSCAR), which is, in effect, an extension of the conference. After old NSCAR effectively eliminated the radical left, black and third world groups, new NSCAR will continue its efforts to build a "united front" by creating a steering committee so large as to be unconvenable. The coordinators are, with the addition of two more, the same as for old NSCAR, the national staff remains the same. In a word, the conference is quite content with the progress it makes and wishes to do more of the same. It even trusts the old coordinators so much as to accept an election for the new coordinators where the nominees are not allowed to state their views, nor even to stand up and identify themselves. "We're not running a beauty contest," the chairperson says. There's a little grumbling, but not much.

But it is not as if NSCAR doesn't have anything to be proud of. A national organization with the potential to mobilize broad-based action against racism has been formed, and a march which stands to unite groups from across the social spectrum and the country in Boston, is being planned. Perhaps the exodus of the more militant factions is a good thing; now the Young Democrats, Young Republicans, church groups, etc. won't be so wary of NSCAR. And Harper's proposal, if acted upon, would provide immediate protection to school children, and directly engage NSCAR in community and school affairs.

BUT NSCAR HAS yet really to attack the core of the problem in Boston: the Boston School Committee and its manipulation of whites and minorities alike. The School Committee is denounced, and two of 43 workshops do deal with matters relevant to local issues. In one Luis Fuentes discusses community control in New York schools, in the other the necessity of a coalition of blacks and whites to elect a pro-busing school committee member is stressed.

According to the SWP, 80 per cent of all School Committee members have come from two wards, and only 11 per cent of the electorate is black, though 40 per cent of the school children are from minority groups. But the NSCAR never takes an official stand on the validity of the concept of the School Committee. Their efforts are directed more towards middle-class whites already segregated in suburbia, and students isolated on campuses, than towards the black inner-city community.

Many of the people of South Boston are now in the position of defending a school system that has never been adequate for the needs of their own children. The schools have always been poor, but not until the advent of busing has the cry of "quality education" been raised. The very people raising that cry are those who are to blame for the school system's deplorable state: past and present School Committee members, like Hicks, Kerrigan, Tierney and Ellison. These people are making money from the crisis, and conducting the School Committee illegally in the process according to a report recently prepared by the Boston Finance Commission. Contrary to state law, the discussion of routine staff matters is regularly held in private executive sessions, and most of over $2,100,000 worth of no-bid contracts was awarded without the mayor's signature.

The Finance Commission's report urges the disbanding of the Boston School Committee for fiscal reasons. NSCAR should profit from this opportunity to join in supporting the transfer of control of Boston schools to their respective communities, and this implies a certain recognition of self-determination for blacks.

But until full community participation in educational matters is restored to blacks and other minorities, little progress can be made in the fight against racism. In the violent attacks and ameliorative positions on school desegregation in Boston as elsewhere, there is an attempt to deny the black man his future as a citizen with equal social, economic and political status. In the direction NSCAR is heading--estranged from the black community as a whole--there is an implicit rejection of the black past. It is taken for granted that the black experience will rise to the level of the white experience, that white politics and white philosophy will uplift the black man. But until the integrity of the black community is recognized, the fight against racism can't really start.