J.
ANTHONY LUKAS
433
As I researched my book about three families in Boston during the
school desegregation crisis,
Commol'l Ground,
I found a curious phe–
nomenon among the Charlestown and South Boston families I came to
know. They expressed little rage at their historic enemies, the fabled
Yankees, generally perceived by then to be bystanders in the city's central
dramas, looking on from sinecures in banks, insurance companies, and
educational television stations. And while surely these inner-city Irish
families did not care much for blacks, indeed often held them in fine
contempt, I rarely heard much about black failings. It was as though ev–
eryone "knew" that; it was hardly worth talking about. What I heard a
great deal about, though, was the moral bankruptcy of the "four-toilet
Irish" - those who made it to the suburbs, to the corporate suites, the
State House and Congress, and, God forbid, the White House - who
had forgotten the Irish they left behind. The real venom I detected was
reserved for those Irish-Catholic "traitors," their "own kind," who de–
serted the old neighborhood, the old church, the old tavern, the old
pieties for the comforts - and immunities - of the suburbs. This primal
rage was directed at various times against W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., the fed–
eral judge who had handed down the school desegregation order;
Senator Edward Kennedy, who had a hand in Garrity's elevation to the
bench and was one of his most consistent supporters; Speaker of the
House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neil; to some extent Mayor White; and
much of the senior clergy under the Portuguese Cardinal Humberto
Medeiros.
If one aspect of the school desegregation battles of the 1970s was a
struggle between the Irish who had made it and the Irish who got left
behind, so one aspect of the B-BURG tragedy was a struggle between
the assimilationist Jews of the suburbs and the Jews who got left behind.
In both cases, the burden of working out the great issue of equality in
American life was placed on those least able to bear it, while those with
the greatest resources - psychological, educational, and financial - were
almost entirely exempt. In each case, the poor were pitted against the
poor, with both sides losers. That does not mean for a moment that the
desegregation of Boston's schools and neighborhoods was not long
overdue. There can be no question that the Boston School Committee
had unconstitutionally segregated the city's schools, leaving Arthur Gar–
rity no alternative but to undo its dirty work. Moreover, much of the
problem was rooted in Boston's fabled neighborhoods, so ethnically
homogeneous, so impermeable to minorities. Yet the desegregation of
both schools and housing produced unintended consequences.
The shortcomings of Boston's schools are now well known. Many
whites have fled into parochial and private schools and the suburbs, but
that is not the worst of it. If the schools had been nominally desegre-
