The Court also noted that this preference was reasonably and directly related to a legitimate nonracially based goal, thus preventing it from violating the Constitution.

But in the 1960's, Imam Bakiriddin, like many other adherents, embraced a more universal, nonracially based Islam.

"There is some feeling that high SAT levels imply a nonracially mixed area," Mr. Sumber said.

For example, to have city council members run for office from a number of nonracially drawn neighborhood districts, instead of electing them at-large, is to choose a race-blind electoral system.

Indeed, in 1937 there appeared a journal called Deutsche Mathematik, and its first editorial solemnly proclaimed that any idea that mathematics could be judged nonracially carried "within itself the germs of destruction of German science."