(3 of 3)
The Nixon Administration's caution has tended 'to blur the guidelines for school desegregation, casting doubt on the inevitability—or at least the near-term certainty—of enforced integration in the South. The result is a loss in valuable psychological momentum. For local Southern officials, the pressure to integrate can be cruel, and the most effective argument they can make to their constituents is that integration is inevitable under the law. If Washington's course is ambivalent, if school districts that have held out the longest against the law are now granted still more delays, then the position of moderates in neighboring districts is clearly undercut.