Mass. City Defends Use of Race in Assigning Students to Schools

By Karla Scoon Reid

Lynn, Mass.

Residents of this gritty, working-class city of immigrants seem almost embarrassed that Lynn, Mass., is at the center of a legal debate about school integration. For most people here, as the mayor says, the attitude is "live and let live."

The city school district, which survived a legal challenge to its voluntary desegregation plan at the U.S. District Court level a year ago this month, is preparing to vigorously defend its efforts to integrate schools as the case heads to a federal appeals court.

Richard W. Cole, the assistant Massachusetts attorney general who is arguing for the district’s plan, emphasizes the sociological and psychological benefits of racial and ethnic diversity as a reason to preserve Lynn’s race-based student-assignment system. The approach—and the district’s battle to keep its desegregation plan—are noteworthy at a time when many districts have backed away from efforts to balance the racial...