Desegregation

In your article (Part I, June 21) on the conclusion of the NAACP’s desegregation lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District, I was quoted as saying that the agreement to terminate “ ‘arises out of the recognition that . . . precious little can be accomplished’ to desegregate a school system that, in 1988, is barely 17% white.”

The quote is accurate as far as it goes. However, it omits the phrase “beyond what the district is doing already” after the word “accomplished.”

My intention was to state that most of the desegregation that could theoretically be achieved in a district having the size and demographic distribution of Los Angeles has in fact resulted from the district’s voluntary plan.

The district has approximately 100,000 white students. As a result of the district’s voluntary desegregation plan, almost all of them are attending integrated schools with about 150,000 of the district’s 500,000 minority students. In the quoted statement, I was referring to what I believe to be plaintiffs’ recognition that even the mandatory busing remedy that they favored (and which could not be imposed without proof of de jure segregation) could not provide much more integration within the district than exists now.

PETER W. JAMES

Los Angeles