by the Way . . .

Nearly everyone has at least an instinctive grasp of the centroid and its social derivative, the wobtroid, but since art history majors tend to confuse it with the vanishing point, please bear with me while I go over it again.

The centroid, nicknamed “the center of a planar lamina”, is simply that point on which a two dimensional object balances. Or you could say the center of mass. While you can find the centroid of any polygon mathematically, most of us don’t feel like looking for a pencil when we run into this in everyday life, so we just wiggle the object around until it pretty much balances. “Pretty much” is the key concept here, since unless you accidentally hit on the exact centroid, it is going to wobble some. When you reach the set of points where the wobble is tolerable, you have reached the “wobtroid”. Examples abound. Anyone who has ever hung a ceiling fan knows you cannot get it perfect. You go for the wobtroid, which is the point where your wife says “oh the hell with it”. If you shorten the string hanging down from the switch, you won’t notice it goes in little circles.

Have you noticed the little lead weights they always put on the rims when you get new tires? That is because no tire is perfectly uniform. Since you cannot find the center of mass, you change the mass. But you can only slam so many of those on, and you only have three sizes, so you have to satisfy yourself with the wobtroid, which is the point at which people won’t point and shout at the customer that his tire is wobbling. When you are dealing with social issues, no one can even agree on what the centroid is, so you have to content yourself with a wobtroid that is politically attainable, and which you can get by the courts.

As you know, for certain purposes you can’t discriminate on the basis of color, sex, age, or a couple of other things. For other purposes, of course, you can (even though most don’t at closing time). Somehow it has worked around that it is improper discrimination if you don’t have “balance”, such as in the race of children at a school. Now you see how important the wobtroid is. The issue becomes how you attain or maintain a wobtroid, thereby not discriminating, without discriminating. That is, just how do you wiggle things around? Thank goodness the Supreme Court is now going to tackle that issue. They just agreed to review the Federal appeals courts’ approval of two school district plans, one from Louisville, Kentucky and one from Seattle. Both plans offer the student a choice of schools, but take race into account in deciding whether to allow a request.

We are going to get into some detail here, but in case you are in a hurry, here is the executive summary. You can choose to transfer from your school to a different one, but if the move would worsen the racial imbalance at either school, you can’t go. If you are a black wanting to transfer to a white school you are probably OK, unless of course you are the only black in your present school, and the other school already has one. If you are a white wanting to transfer into a predominately black school, you are OK, well, legally, that is. Other permutations, however, are likely to make that string swing wildly.

Let’s add two other pieces of background. Just three years ago the Supreme Court, Justice Day writing, approved a racially conscious admission plan at the University of Michigan Law School. She said that discrimination for that purpose might be necessary for another 25 years. Maybe so, Sandy, but you needed to stay on the court for those years. Also, just 6 months ago, the Court refused to review the a plan of Lynn, Massachusetts which is essentially identical to that of Seattle and Louisville.


The “not so fast, Snow White” Louisville plan, called “managed choice” says that if a district is at least 1/3 non-white, the school must seek black enrollment of at least 15% but no more than 50%. This kindergarten white kid was refused because the target school was short blacks. The Seattle plan, called “open choice”, just uses some “tiebreakers” in deciding whether the open choice is yours or theirs. One is race. Any school that deviates more than 15% from the present balance, which for the 10 schools covered is 60% black, must consider the applicant’s race so as not to deviate further. Reread the next to the last paragraph for the translation.

You might be asking yourself, “self, why do they even have these transfer plans? Didn’t have them when I was a kid.” The idea was to help kids, presumably black, who were stuck in segregated schools in poor areas, transfer to better schools, presumably not segregated (read “more whites”). You could hardly say that only black kids could transfer, not directly anyway, not P.C. you know. Besides, that would be discriminating. There was no way to anticipate that white kids would try to take advantage in one way or another. But don’t worry, the Supreme Court will say whether or not you can discriminate in order to avoid discriminating.

'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice, 'what that means?' 'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.' 'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.