Full Version: Desegregation Busing
I have my own views on understanding busing.
As I see it is was the first thing that showed that racism in the US during the "Civil Rights Era" was far from a Southern problem.
Consequently I'll start with Boston.
Link
Some of you may remember the photo of a black journalist being speared with an American flag. That was Boston as recently as the late seventies (1976).
Photo Link
That's busing as history remembers it, a fundamentally good policy with entrenched oppostion.
Yet in the popular mind I keep seeing the idea that busing was met with practical failure due to logistics, that it put kids through undue stress.
Well, what do you say?
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The greatest success?
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies?
What about the America of today?
As I see it is was the first thing that showed that racism in the US during the "Civil Rights Era" was far from a Southern problem.
Consequently I'll start with Boston.
QUOTE
". . . [Assistant principal] Bob Jarvis [knocked] at the door to report that police had isolated the whites on the staircase, freeing the fire stairs on either side. Buses were drawn up in the adjacent alley, ready to receive the minority students. Detectives would lead them to safety. . . . Just then, the whites got wind of what was happening. 'They're getting away!' they shouted. 'They're going out the side!' Around the corner raced a dozen white boys, heaving stones at the buses as they rumbled down the alleys."
Such scenes are usually associated with desegregation of schools in the Deep South. This one, however, occurred at Charlestown High in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston had been regarded as the "cradle of liberty" ever since it played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, but two hundred years later, a court-ordered plan that utilized busing to achieve integration of the city's public schools led to frequent protests, demonstrations, and confrontations between blacks and whites. Northerners who had called for desegregation in Southern schools for decades soon discovered that their own schools were just as segregated and that integrating them was just as difficult.
Such scenes are usually associated with desegregation of schools in the Deep South. This one, however, occurred at Charlestown High in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston had been regarded as the "cradle of liberty" ever since it played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, but two hundred years later, a court-ordered plan that utilized busing to achieve integration of the city's public schools led to frequent protests, demonstrations, and confrontations between blacks and whites. Northerners who had called for desegregation in Southern schools for decades soon discovered that their own schools were just as segregated and that integrating them was just as difficult.
Link
Some of you may remember the photo of a black journalist being speared with an American flag. That was Boston as recently as the late seventies (1976).
Photo Link
QUOTE
The Phase I plan, authored primarily by Charles Glenn, called for busing students from Roxbury to South Boston. South Boston was a primarily white neighborhood regarded as "the stronghold of opposition to desegregation," while Roxbury was "the heart of Boston's black ghetto." Not surprisingly, this arrangement worried many people around the city, including Judge W. Arthur Garrity, who did his best to distance himself from the plan, placing responsibility for any violence that came from it squarely on Glenn's shoulders.
The school board implemented the integration plan in September 1974. Most schools integrated quietly. In South Boston, however, protestors "stoned buses, shouted racial epithets, [and] hurled eggs and rotten tomatoes." Nine black South Boston High School students were injured when angry whites shattered the windows on their buses. Even elementary school students were not spared from the violence. Ellen Jackson, who ran a community center in Roxbury, described the scene as a bus of elementary school students returned home:
When the kids came, everybody just broke out in tears and started crying. The kids were crying. They had glass in their hair. They were scared. And they were shivering and crying. Talking about they wanted to go home. We tried to gently usher them into the auditorium. And wipe off the little bit of bruises that they had. Small bruises and the dirt. Picked the glass out of their hair.
The next day, Roxbury families formed an escort to accompany the children, and they did not experience any additional violence. Racial tensions, however, were still prevalent. On October 7th, a black man named André Yvon Jean-Louis was severely beaten when he drove into South Boston to pick up his wife, who worked in the neighborhood. Roxbury students reacted with "a wild rampage during which they stoned cars and attacked passing whites," forcing Governor Frank Sargent to call out the National Guard.
The school board implemented the integration plan in September 1974. Most schools integrated quietly. In South Boston, however, protestors "stoned buses, shouted racial epithets, [and] hurled eggs and rotten tomatoes." Nine black South Boston High School students were injured when angry whites shattered the windows on their buses. Even elementary school students were not spared from the violence. Ellen Jackson, who ran a community center in Roxbury, described the scene as a bus of elementary school students returned home:
When the kids came, everybody just broke out in tears and started crying. The kids were crying. They had glass in their hair. They were scared. And they were shivering and crying. Talking about they wanted to go home. We tried to gently usher them into the auditorium. And wipe off the little bit of bruises that they had. Small bruises and the dirt. Picked the glass out of their hair.
The next day, Roxbury families formed an escort to accompany the children, and they did not experience any additional violence. Racial tensions, however, were still prevalent. On October 7th, a black man named André Yvon Jean-Louis was severely beaten when he drove into South Boston to pick up his wife, who worked in the neighborhood. Roxbury students reacted with "a wild rampage during which they stoned cars and attacked passing whites," forcing Governor Frank Sargent to call out the National Guard.
That's busing as history remembers it, a fundamentally good policy with entrenched oppostion.
Yet in the popular mind I keep seeing the idea that busing was met with practical failure due to logistics, that it put kids through undue stress.
Well, what do you say?
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The greatest success?
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies?
What about the America of today?
QUOTE(turnea @ Feb 25 2008, 10:19 AM) 
That's busing as history remembers it, a fundamentally good policy with entrenched opposition.
Not a failed policy with dubious justification? I'm just asking...
Here's the problem: many people the believe that the government can solve social problems. In this case, schools were segregated across the country due largely to the fact that neighborhoods were segregated. The idea that children of all races should have equal access to education is admirable and is Constitutionally mandated. However, busing them to integrate the schools to achieve this end was (in my opinion) of dubious justification to achieve the ends.
QUOTE(turnea @ Feb 25 2008, 10:19 AM)
Yet in the popular mind I keep seeing the idea that busing was met with practical failure due to logistics, that it put kids through undue stress.
And some who went through busing, as I did, see it as much worse than inconvenience and stress. It literally destroyed the school systems.
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
Well, first we can see if it achieved its stated intent: desegrating the schools. In Cleveland, busing began in the late 1970s and ended in the late 1990s. Tens of thousands of students were transported each morning hither and yon and back again in the afternoon. My bus rides (I was bused from 1984 to 1987) lasted from 35-50 minutes each way, from the lower middle class, predominantly white, West side of Cleveland to the lower middle class, predominantly black, East side of Cleveland.
From 1980 to 2000 (the era of busing in Cleveland) the city's population shrank by 17%, losing nearly 100,000 residents (including myself). At the beginning of the busing era, the Cleveland schools were 63% black. In 2000, it was 70% black. The 2000 census has the city of Cleveland at 51% black overall. Where did all the white kids go?
The policy, along with the economics of the area and the declining overall performance of the school, caused anyone who was able to leave the Cleveland Public School District to do so. If I chose to attend John F Kennedy High School, which was about a mile from my house, I could not. Instead I was bused to John Adams High School on the other side of town while kids from the neighborhood of John Adams were bused to the school near my house. Who cares that it wasted one to two hours of time every day for each kid that was forced onto a bus? Who cares that the neighborhood no longer saw the school as a part of the neighborhood, since the kids attending there did not live nearby? Who cares that tens of million of dollars were spent annually in the quest to integrate?
This same story repeats itself in all districts that I am aware of that forced busing: quality of the schools go down while the amount of money spent in those districts rises at an every increasing pace. Students who are able flee the district for either the suburbs or private schools while students who are unable to flee are stuck in a district where no amount of spending can stem the tide of falling performance. The original integration problem is never solved.
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
What the government did, let me rephrase: what the federal courts FORCED the district to do, was to take away any say in where a kid could attend school. What they took away was any sense of belonging to the schools.
The greatest success?
Perhaps some people realized that the government cannot solve all social ills? The federal judge ruled that Cleveland has taken all "good faith efforts" to integrate the schools and release it from any further (failed) attempts to integrate. Sure, they failed, but that isn't the point: they TRIED.
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies?
The response as you have reported it shows that there are racists and anti-government types everywhere, not just in redneck states. The more peaceful and rationale response to busing -- "Where the heck is the exit?" -- shows that parents will often try to make the best choice available for their kids. It is a form of capitalism.
The problems of the pre-busing situation--where school assignments were shown to be racial, such as in Boston--did show a form of institutional racism existed in the system. But instead of fighting the racism that was occuring, the courts devised an entirely different solution which led to more problems than solutions.
What about the America of today?
Are any districts still busing? If not, it shows that we aren't doomed to the failed policies of the past.
Are there any districts that succesfully used busing to solve the "integration problem"? If not, it shows how failed our implementations are, despite the best intentions. Good intentions are not sufficient.
Are there any districts that did not experience white flight and a downward spiral of education in forced busing cities? Are we any smarter today?
What it shows is that the real solutions to school integration is choice: magnet schools, charter schools, school vouchers and private schools are all places where the pupil and his orher parents have a say in where they will attend, which gives them empowerment and a stake in the outcome of the education.
QUOTE(turnea @ Feb 25 2008, 10:19 AM)
I have my own views on understanding busing.
As I see it is was the first thing that showed that racism in the US during the "Civil Rights Era" was far from a Southern problem.
Consequently I'll start with Boston.
Link
Some of you may remember the photo of a black journalist being speared with an American flag. That was Boston as recently as the late seventies (1976).
Photo Link
That's busing as history remembers it, a fundamentally good policy with entrenched oppostion.
Yet in the popular mind I keep seeing the idea that busing was met with practical failure due to logistics, that it put kids through undue stress.
Well, what do you say?
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The greatest success?
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies?
What about the America of today?
As I see it is was the first thing that showed that racism in the US during the "Civil Rights Era" was far from a Southern problem.
Consequently I'll start with Boston.
QUOTE
". . . [Assistant principal] Bob Jarvis [knocked] at the door to report that police had isolated the whites on the staircase, freeing the fire stairs on either side. Buses were drawn up in the adjacent alley, ready to receive the minority students. Detectives would lead them to safety. . . . Just then, the whites got wind of what was happening. 'They're getting away!' they shouted. 'They're going out the side!' Around the corner raced a dozen white boys, heaving stones at the buses as they rumbled down the alleys."
Such scenes are usually associated with desegregation of schools in the Deep South. This one, however, occurred at Charlestown High in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston had been regarded as the "cradle of liberty" ever since it played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, but two hundred years later, a court-ordered plan that utilized busing to achieve integration of the city's public schools led to frequent protests, demonstrations, and confrontations between blacks and whites. Northerners who had called for desegregation in Southern schools for decades soon discovered that their own schools were just as segregated and that integrating them was just as difficult.
Such scenes are usually associated with desegregation of schools in the Deep South. This one, however, occurred at Charlestown High in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston had been regarded as the "cradle of liberty" ever since it played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, but two hundred years later, a court-ordered plan that utilized busing to achieve integration of the city's public schools led to frequent protests, demonstrations, and confrontations between blacks and whites. Northerners who had called for desegregation in Southern schools for decades soon discovered that their own schools were just as segregated and that integrating them was just as difficult.
Link
Some of you may remember the photo of a black journalist being speared with an American flag. That was Boston as recently as the late seventies (1976).
Photo Link
QUOTE
The Phase I plan, authored primarily by Charles Glenn, called for busing students from Roxbury to South Boston. South Boston was a primarily white neighborhood regarded as "the stronghold of opposition to desegregation," while Roxbury was "the heart of Boston's black ghetto." Not surprisingly, this arrangement worried many people around the city, including Judge W. Arthur Garrity, who did his best to distance himself from the plan, placing responsibility for any violence that came from it squarely on Glenn's shoulders.
The school board implemented the integration plan in September 1974. Most schools integrated quietly. In South Boston, however, protestors "stoned buses, shouted racial epithets, [and] hurled eggs and rotten tomatoes." Nine black South Boston High School students were injured when angry whites shattered the windows on their buses. Even elementary school students were not spared from the violence. Ellen Jackson, who ran a community center in Roxbury, described the scene as a bus of elementary school students returned home:
When the kids came, everybody just broke out in tears and started crying. The kids were crying. They had glass in their hair. They were scared. And they were shivering and crying. Talking about they wanted to go home. We tried to gently usher them into the auditorium. And wipe off the little bit of bruises that they had. Small bruises and the dirt. Picked the glass out of their hair.
The next day, Roxbury families formed an escort to accompany the children, and they did not experience any additional violence. Racial tensions, however, were still prevalent. On October 7th, a black man named André Yvon Jean-Louis was severely beaten when he drove into South Boston to pick up his wife, who worked in the neighborhood. Roxbury students reacted with "a wild rampage during which they stoned cars and attacked passing whites," forcing Governor Frank Sargent to call out the National Guard.
The school board implemented the integration plan in September 1974. Most schools integrated quietly. In South Boston, however, protestors "stoned buses, shouted racial epithets, [and] hurled eggs and rotten tomatoes." Nine black South Boston High School students were injured when angry whites shattered the windows on their buses. Even elementary school students were not spared from the violence. Ellen Jackson, who ran a community center in Roxbury, described the scene as a bus of elementary school students returned home:
When the kids came, everybody just broke out in tears and started crying. The kids were crying. They had glass in their hair. They were scared. And they were shivering and crying. Talking about they wanted to go home. We tried to gently usher them into the auditorium. And wipe off the little bit of bruises that they had. Small bruises and the dirt. Picked the glass out of their hair.
The next day, Roxbury families formed an escort to accompany the children, and they did not experience any additional violence. Racial tensions, however, were still prevalent. On October 7th, a black man named André Yvon Jean-Louis was severely beaten when he drove into South Boston to pick up his wife, who worked in the neighborhood. Roxbury students reacted with "a wild rampage during which they stoned cars and attacked passing whites," forcing Governor Frank Sargent to call out the National Guard.
That's busing as history remembers it, a fundamentally good policy with entrenched oppostion.
Yet in the popular mind I keep seeing the idea that busing was met with practical failure due to logistics, that it put kids through undue stress.
Well, what do you say?
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The greatest success?
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies?
What about the America of today?
We in the South got integrated much earlier than Boston did. My school did not experience violence, and I was in one of the first classes (3d grade) that was integrated.
The black kids in my class couldn't keep up with the work and cut up in class--they were not prepared for intergration, and may have been scared, as they were outnumbered (About 5 black kids in a class of 20).
If there was a real flaw with busing, it was a lack of preparation. Someone needed a plan to intergrate the cultures, not just put white and black kids into physical proximity with one another in a classroom. We needed to adopt standards of behavior and curriculum and stick to them. We did not.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Not a failed policy with dubious justification? I'm just asking...
I won't say such a view is entirely unreasonable (thus the debate) however I will seek to substantiate the any failure in policy had little to do with the methods or what I consider to be an almost flawless justification.
Namely enforcing the Brown decision in a meaningful way.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Here's the problem: many people the believe that the government can solve social problems.
Well... minimize them certainly.
It is indeed the entire purpose of government, to benefit society.
What you may mean is you believe it is mistaken to legislate towards vested interest outside basic natural rights.
Or more particularly to try and mitigate the affects of racism through legislation.
Of course looking at is from the other side, not only is it better for society in the long run, in the immediate sense is was simply giving African-Americans what they were due for the first time in American history.
It is the gapping chasm between this:
QUOTE(Amlord)
And some who went through busing, as I did, see it as much worse than inconvenience and stress. It literally destroyed the school systems.
and this:
QUOTE(Amlord)
Who cares that it wasted one to two hours of time every day for each kid that was forced onto a bus? Who cares that the neighborhood no longer saw the school as a part of the neighborhood, since the kids attending there did not live nearby? Who cares that tens of million of dollars were spent annually in the quest to integrate?
That concerns me the most.
Methinks the country didst protest too much
By no measure did busing destroy the school system. White flight did do a lot of damage to inner-city schools, but that's not a flaw of the policy.
It's a flaw of the public which is why I think it's s important to understand this issue.
Our big problem was entrenched racism.
A longer commute to school, replaced by suburban sprawl and longer commutes to... everything pales in comparison.
Busing worked well in places like Charlotte, NC after people stopped throwing hissy fits and just sent their kids to school.
It was the oppostion to busing that caused the real problems.
Okay, I'm hearing that people are flawed. I agree. Your argument ignores the fact that people will do what they can to better themselves and their family if it within their power.
In this case, many people disagreed with busing as a tool to integration. This includes blacks. It was not a popular policy in the districts which I have read about.
You use Boston as an example. Boston today is 54% white. Yet the public schools in Boston are 86% minority. The effects of busing linger. The Boston public schools have a mission to cater to low income kids. They've abandoned even attempting to appeal to upscale people that live in the city. In other words, they've acknowledged that they cannot compete with better options available to those who can pay--private and parochial schools.
Which of these school districts have benefitted from desegregation via busing:
Boston?
Los Angelas?
Pasedena?
San Francisco?
Wilmington, Deleware?
Richmond?
Baltimore?
Prince George County, Maryland?
Kansas City?
Nashville?
Cleveland?
The exact same scenario played itself out in district after district thoughout this country where busing was forced. Families who could fled the public schools for the suburbs or for private schools or for parochial schools. Are all whites really that racist or (as I suggest) were the school systems so damaged by this feel-good system that these families were forced to find an alternative?
Remember that "white flight" doesn't really mean upper class whites leaving a city. It refers to working and middle class whites. Guess what today's "white flight" is? Black flight. As immigrants move in to these same neighborhoods that whites once left and blacks now reside, the blacks move out. Are blacks Hispanophobic? Are they racist? I believe that they simply want the best for their kids and it ain't public schools in these districts.
Now, I can't say difinitively whether the collapse of the public schools were a cause or an effect of white flight. I'm sure there are arguments on both sides.
However, public school busing was an excuse and a catalyst for this flight to accelerate. It, along with other factors, destroyed the districts that I referenced above.
The whites were racist and now the blacks following them out of the failed inner cities are now racists. I'd say the argument is not a racist one, but a classist one. Those who can afford to flee the crumbling cities have done so and they certainly (where land values preclude their flight) find alternative school options for their kids.
In this case, many people disagreed with busing as a tool to integration. This includes blacks. It was not a popular policy in the districts which I have read about.
You use Boston as an example. Boston today is 54% white. Yet the public schools in Boston are 86% minority. The effects of busing linger. The Boston public schools have a mission to cater to low income kids. They've abandoned even attempting to appeal to upscale people that live in the city. In other words, they've acknowledged that they cannot compete with better options available to those who can pay--private and parochial schools.
Which of these school districts have benefitted from desegregation via busing:
Boston?
Los Angelas?
Pasedena?
San Francisco?
Wilmington, Deleware?
Richmond?
Baltimore?
Prince George County, Maryland?
Kansas City?
Nashville?
Cleveland?
The exact same scenario played itself out in district after district thoughout this country where busing was forced. Families who could fled the public schools for the suburbs or for private schools or for parochial schools. Are all whites really that racist or (as I suggest) were the school systems so damaged by this feel-good system that these families were forced to find an alternative?
Remember that "white flight" doesn't really mean upper class whites leaving a city. It refers to working and middle class whites. Guess what today's "white flight" is? Black flight. As immigrants move in to these same neighborhoods that whites once left and blacks now reside, the blacks move out. Are blacks Hispanophobic? Are they racist? I believe that they simply want the best for their kids and it ain't public schools in these districts.
Now, I can't say difinitively whether the collapse of the public schools were a cause or an effect of white flight. I'm sure there are arguments on both sides.
However, public school busing was an excuse and a catalyst for this flight to accelerate. It, along with other factors, destroyed the districts that I referenced above.
QUOTE(turnea)
Our big problem was entrenched racism.
The whites were racist and now the blacks following them out of the failed inner cities are now racists. I'd say the argument is not a racist one, but a classist one. Those who can afford to flee the crumbling cities have done so and they certainly (where land values preclude their flight) find alternative school options for their kids.
QUOTE(Amlord @ Feb 25 2008, 10:02 PM)
QUOTE(turnea)
Our big problem was entrenched racism.
The whites were racist and now the blacks following them out of the failed inner cities are now racists. I'd say the argument is not a racist one, but a classist one. Those who can afford to flee the crumbling cities have done so and they certainly (where land values preclude their flight) find alternative school options for their kids.
I think you're both right. Every time we move, we choose a house for the school district. We have a fantastic school here (really kills me to leave it). The community is very involved in the school because it is close. There are a lot of after-school events and activities. If my children were to be bused an hour away, I would enroll them in a nearby private school instead. Really, I probably would have chosen a different neighborhood because the houses in other school districts, for the same size, are 100K less. I just consider how much a private school would have cost, tack that onto the mortgage payment and I'm ahead living here.
That said, however, I live in a very integrated neighborhood. My sons' classrooms are very diverse. Rewind back thirty years ago and that wasn't the case. Something drastic had to be done to change things. Yes, it basically sucked for everyone...but what was the better option at the time? There is going to be a lot of pain with that level of social change.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Your argument ignores the fact that people will do what they can to better themselves and their family if it within their power.
Not at all. I simply point out that the common ideas of betterment at the time...
...left a lot to be desired.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Are all whites really that racist or (as I suggest) were the school systems so damaged by this feel-good system that these families were forced to find an alternative?
Damaged how? The majority of busing situations had the black kids taking the long bus rides as whites had the better facilities.
Even for those whites who were bused it's at best a minor inconvenience, not a reason to flee the city.
No, racism (and fear of racist violence and upheaval) was the primary factor.
QUOTE(Wikipedia)
The Supreme Court subsequently mandated in the 1971 decision of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the institution of busing of black students to mainly formerly all-white schools in the suburbs, and vice versa. Beginning in the mid-1970s, some minority students (especially blacks) were transported miles from poorer core cities to newer affluent suburbs. As Justice William Douglas observed in his dissent in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), "The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer…" A similar 1977 Federal decision, Penick v The Columbus Board of Education, accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio to its suburbs. According to sociologist Cardell K. Jacobson, opposition to integration was strongest among people who did not themselves have children in public schools, and in particular among those who already had children in parochial schools.
It's not even those who were affected that got angriest. It was the very idea of integration not busing, that got under people's skin.
QUOTE(Wikipedia)
Busing and desegregation orders in education had also led to a further, non-geographical white flight: out of the public school systems subject to desegregation orders, and into private schools. For example, in 1970, when a federal court ordered desegregation of the public schools of the Pasadena Unified School District (in Pasadena, California), the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After desegregation began, a large number of whites in the upper and middle classes could afford private schooling and so pulled their children from mixed public schools. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena was home to sixty-three private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. The superintendent of Pasadena USD characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man"[19] and mounted policy changes and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into the public schools.
Link
QUOTE(Amlord)
Now, I can't say difinitively whether the collapse of the public schools were a cause or an effect of white flight.
All the evidence points one way, it's pretty definitive.
QUOTE(Amlord)
The whites were racist and now the blacks following them out of the failed inner cities are now racists. I'd say the argument is not a racist one, but a classist one. Those who can afford to flee the crumbling cities have done so and they certainly (where land values preclude their flight) find alternative school options for their kids.
Specious.
The timing on these two waves (separated by decades) and the circumstances surrounding them are entirely different and there is no reason to assume the reasons are the same.
It was racism that struck the crippling blow to our nation's schools. The exodus of middle class families that followed was just a natural consequence of a tax base collapse.
So I can summarize your position as : "whites are fundamentally racist"?
I don't agree that one race or the other was the primary bussee. For every black kid that was transported to the better "white" school, a white kid was sent to the "black" school. The courts had ruled that these schools, even if equal, were not Constitutional if they were segregrated (even informally).
In some districts (such as Boston) the discrimination was institutional. Blacks were denied equal facilities or newer schools. However, the district bussed upper middle class kids into the neighborhoods that it ruled had inferior schools. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the kids subject to the bussing order that sent them to what they perceived as a bad school exited stage left. Unfortunately, this misguided policy simply assigned another white kid to take the white flight kid's place and so that kid left. And so on.
I agree with your premise that the underlying idea was noble. What I disagree with is that these districts and the courts which imposed these busing orders didn't care a whit that the entire district was falling apart as the white flight took good students and (more importantly) involved parents out of the districts and into the private schools or the suburbs.
The noble cause had completely destroyed the system which it had sought to improve via forced integration via busing.
Instead of the government insisting on equal facilities and staffing while encouraging integration of neighborhoods, it separated the schools from the neighborhoods by busing kids from this neighborhood to somewhere miles away. This is at the very least a component of the failing schools of today's big cities.
I don't agree that one race or the other was the primary bussee. For every black kid that was transported to the better "white" school, a white kid was sent to the "black" school. The courts had ruled that these schools, even if equal, were not Constitutional if they were segregrated (even informally).
In some districts (such as Boston) the discrimination was institutional. Blacks were denied equal facilities or newer schools. However, the district bussed upper middle class kids into the neighborhoods that it ruled had inferior schools. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the kids subject to the bussing order that sent them to what they perceived as a bad school exited stage left. Unfortunately, this misguided policy simply assigned another white kid to take the white flight kid's place and so that kid left. And so on.
I agree with your premise that the underlying idea was noble. What I disagree with is that these districts and the courts which imposed these busing orders didn't care a whit that the entire district was falling apart as the white flight took good students and (more importantly) involved parents out of the districts and into the private schools or the suburbs.
The noble cause had completely destroyed the system which it had sought to improve via forced integration via busing.
Instead of the government insisting on equal facilities and staffing while encouraging integration of neighborhoods, it separated the schools from the neighborhoods by busing kids from this neighborhood to somewhere miles away. This is at the very least a component of the failing schools of today's big cities.
QUOTE(Amlord @ Feb 26 2008, 07:03 PM)
I don't agree that one race or the other was the primary bussee. For every black kid that was transported to the better "white" school, a white kid was sent to the "black" school. The courts had ruled that these schools, even if equal, were not Constitutional if they were segregrated (even informally).
I disagree completely. When I was in the 7th grade (somewhere right around 1970), I was one of a handful of white students bussed to a predominately black school in Catonsville, Maryland. It was a living hell. For all the crap I hear from blacks about how using a term that could be construed as racist, many have no idea of what it's like to be physically assaulted because of their race.
In that one school year, I had to defend myself in a fight once a week with a pack of black students (none if them would ever do that when alone) wanting to kick my butt because I was white - and I wasn't alone. Once a month, I'd lose any money I had on me when 4 of them would hold me while the other emptied my pockets. If I told a teacher, I'd have to deal with them 3 times that week instead of once. At the very end of the year, I couldn't go to school because the violence was out of hand. Us white students got called "Whitey" (yesteryear's version of "cracker") so much, we though that was our name. It took cops in the hallway the last 2 weeks of the year to quell the violence. To be clear, this violence wasn't directed specifically at us - the race riots on Baltimore were just starting. we just happened to be prime targets.
During all this time, I was a social experiment. We tested roughly once a month and the questions were always "Do you think black people smell?" to "Do you think white people are smarter than black people?". I remember those tests as clear as day.
Somebody at lunch would walk up to me and say "whitey, your sister smells like pee" and start shoving. Inevitably, it would be game on and I would be fighting. And in the spirit of equality, I got the same punishment as the jerk that picked the fight. No matter how much I tried to defend myself and stay out of fights, the counselors would find someway for me to share the blame to keep it from being a black on white issue. After that year, nobody got bussed anymore and I got to go to my regular school.
Fortunately, I figured out that blacks weren't the problem - the problem was some blacks are as big of jerks as lot of white guys. However, the level of violence between the 2 types of jerks was incomparable.
Bussing is a failed social experiment. People naturally migrate to their comfort zones no matter what color they are. Forcing that change is to ignore reality.
QUOTE(DaytonRocker @ Feb 26 2008, 07:29 PM)
QUOTE(Amlord @ Feb 26 2008, 07:03 PM)
I don't agree that one race or the other was the primary bussee. For every black kid that was transported to the better "white" school, a white kid was sent to the "black" school. The courts had ruled that these schools, even if equal, were not Constitutional if they were segregrated (even informally).
I disagree completely. When I was in the 7th grade (somewhere right around 1970), I was one of a handful of white students bussed to a predominately black school in Catonsville, Maryland. It was a living hell. For all the crap I hear from blacks about how using a term that could be construed as racist, many have no idea of what it's like to be physically assaulted because of their race.
The way you describe it is exactly as I expected. I never experienced that degree of confrontation, but when whites in the schools you attend are 20% of the student body, there are definite groups that form. Had your parents had the need to, I expect you would have moved out of that district or gone to a private school if they knew what was going on.
I agree that there are always bullies and that bullies are most likely to pick on outsiders who "aren't like them" and this isn't really racism. Being different in any way in school is always a path to scorn or worse.
QUOTE(turnea @ Feb 25 2008, 10:19 AM)
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The greatest success?
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies?
What about the America of today?
1.) I think it opened a lot of doors. There's no question desegregation had to happen. However, the manner in which is was conducted in public schools was rather ineffective since it also had an adverse outcome for people who saw themselves going across city limits into what we'd term "neighborhood schools" today.
2.) See above.
3.) Leveling the playing field although sometimes at childrens' expenses.
4.) How eager it was to make amends for past troubles.
5.) I don't view it as a problem. Perhaps it's just in Florida, but now you aren't transported great distance to attend school. My high school has 2,200 students and literally only 70 are of any ethnic minority. Today, it isn't so much a problem of having to bus people to make it leveled.
QUOTE(Amlord)
So I can summarize your position as : "whites are fundamentally racist"?
I don't recall saying that.
I'm keeping this one trim. All I said was that racism was the chief motivation for white flight out of the public schools in response to integration in the 1970's
QUOTE(Amlord)
I don't agree that one race or the other was the primary bussee. For every black kid that was transported to the better "white" school, a white kid was sent to the "black" school. The courts had ruled that these schools, even if equal, were not Constitutional if they were segregrated (even informally).
I'm working on pulling the numbers, but studies from the time are all hard copies so that could take a while.
In any case that doesn't really make sense. The relative size of the populations alone suggest one to one parity is mathematically impossible.
Edited to correct:
Okay, unlikely as it wouldn't reflect a desirable demographic mix in the view of the state.
QUOTE(Amlord)
In some districts (such as Boston) the discrimination was institutional. Blacks were denied equal facilities or newer schools. However, the district bussed upper middle class kids into the neighborhoods that it ruled had inferior schools.
Were that the case children who left the schools would be primarily made up of whites being bused in, as opposed to those who had to share with bussed black students.
We'd see a lopsided kind of picture if you see what I mean. Do you have evidence to support that?
From what I've seen, Bostonians whites left their own historically white schools when blacks were bussed in.... after smashing a few buses.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Instead of the government insisting on equal facilities and staffing while encouraging integration of neighborhoods, it separated the schools from the neighborhoods by busing kids from this neighborhood to somewhere miles away. This is at the very least a component of the failing schools of today's big cities.
The problem was attacked from both ends. Fair Housing Laws were just coming into enforcement at this time.
QUOTE(DaytonRocker)
Bussing is a failed social experiment. People naturally migrate to their comfort zones no matter what color they are. Forcing that change is to ignore reality.
There is nothing natural about segregated housing patterns in this country.
There are a results of conscious policy decisions (both governmental and by restrictive neighborhood covenant) and occasionally vigilante action.
Our separated neighborhoods were created by forces blacks had no say in.
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
Busing was not worth the effort because it was an effort that failed miserably and helped IMHO fuel the backlash that has made affirmative action a dirty word and create the present strong divide between balck and white america today over the issue of civil rights as history or as an ongoing process.
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The biggest proble with the policy is that is usually applied to metropolitan school districts with schools that were already struggling from the effects of a large population base moving to surrounding suburbs and taking a valuable tax base with them. Then bad schools using de facto segregation bolstered by neighborhood and lending rules and practices were mixed together and the nation saw this as mixing upper middle class schools with central city schools and it was not usually doing this. It took these bad schools and mixed them in the name of social justice and created worse schools from which more and more higher quality students were removed in white flight to the suburbs or into private schools, many of which cropped up at this very time.
The greatest success?
I'm not sure I know of a great success story that isn't more directly based on Brown v. Board and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than it is related to Charlotte v. Meclenberg (I think there is a Swann in there somewhere.)
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies? It says that Americans, as they always have been, are looking out for number one. A solution that takes a child from his neighborhood school to one that is miles away scares parents. It says that Americans felt inner city schools were failing and underfunded then. Not much has changed. Perhaps the funding is improved but the results haven't.
What about the America of today?
I think America today has written off inner city schools. The districts that only recently are coming out of court mandated desegregation programs must be looking at the recent Supreme Court decision on districting and wondering how any attempt to draw district lines in the 21st century with an eye toward racial, ethnic, or economic diversity can withstand a court challenge. I think the future is to return to pockets of good non-magnet schools in urban districts and have the worst of the city schools continue to get worse based of recent court decisions.
I think we have mostly lost the battle for good public schools in our cities that are not magnet schools and I don;t think anyone has a system or program that will make things better.
Busing was not worth the effort because it was an effort that failed miserably and helped IMHO fuel the backlash that has made affirmative action a dirty word and create the present strong divide between balck and white america today over the issue of civil rights as history or as an ongoing process.
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
The biggest proble with the policy is that is usually applied to metropolitan school districts with schools that were already struggling from the effects of a large population base moving to surrounding suburbs and taking a valuable tax base with them. Then bad schools using de facto segregation bolstered by neighborhood and lending rules and practices were mixed together and the nation saw this as mixing upper middle class schools with central city schools and it was not usually doing this. It took these bad schools and mixed them in the name of social justice and created worse schools from which more and more higher quality students were removed in white flight to the suburbs or into private schools, many of which cropped up at this very time.
The greatest success?
I'm not sure I know of a great success story that isn't more directly based on Brown v. Board and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than it is related to Charlotte v. Meclenberg (I think there is a Swann in there somewhere.)
What does the response to busing say about the America of the seventies? It says that Americans, as they always have been, are looking out for number one. A solution that takes a child from his neighborhood school to one that is miles away scares parents. It says that Americans felt inner city schools were failing and underfunded then. Not much has changed. Perhaps the funding is improved but the results haven't.
What about the America of today?
I think America today has written off inner city schools. The districts that only recently are coming out of court mandated desegregation programs must be looking at the recent Supreme Court decision on districting and wondering how any attempt to draw district lines in the 21st century with an eye toward racial, ethnic, or economic diversity can withstand a court challenge. I think the future is to return to pockets of good non-magnet schools in urban districts and have the worst of the city schools continue to get worse based of recent court decisions.
I think we have mostly lost the battle for good public schools in our cities that are not magnet schools and I don;t think anyone has a system or program that will make things better.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Busing was not worth the effort because it was an effort that failed miserably and helped IMHO fuel the backlash that has made affirmative action a dirty word and create the present strong divide between balck and white america today over the issue of civil rights as history or as an ongoing process.
As I see it busing just exposed the divide that was already there.
The failure of busing was an effect of a racially scarred society, not a cause.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
The biggest proble with the policy is that is usually applied to metropolitan school districts with schools that were already struggling from the effects of a large population base moving to surrounding suburbs and taking a valuable tax base with them.
Well busing plans originally applied to whole metropolitan areas including suburbs, but suburban legal challenges but a stop to that the keep blacks out of their schools.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
A solution that takes a child from his neighborhood school to one that is miles away scares parents.
Not really, parochial schools, magnet programs, most private schools and the like usually involve a long commute outside the neighborhood.
The distance problem was always a red herring meant to distract form the real opposition to integration.
Edited to Add:
...not to say they're weren't real concerns.
Violence was a problem in some areas, extra-curriculars another, but these were often solved.
QUOTE(turnea @ Feb 27 2008, 06:50 PM)
QUOTE(Eeyore)
A solution that takes a child from his neighborhood school to one that is miles away scares parents.
Not really, parochial schools, magnet programs, most private schools and the like usually involve a long commute outside the neighborhood.
The distance problem was always a red herring meant to distract form the real opposition to integration.
Parents will tolerate a long commute if it's necessary for their kids to get a better education. If I had the choice of sending my child to a much better school a half hour away, or a terrible one here, I would endure the commute. However, a long commute to go to a worse school is another matter. Obviously no one wants to send their children to crappy schools. Isn't that the reason they started busing in the first place, because black communities generally had bad schools that weren't well funded and their children's educations suffered as a result?
I'm still working on finding the numbers that I think would conclusively prove my point, but here's a sample of what I've been saying.
Whites' Opposition to "Busing": Self-Interest or Symbolic Politics?
That's stat-speak for what I've been saying all along.
Busing was a racial issue, not a purely practical one.
From the full study.
As usual I have to go... but I hope this helps
That was part of it.
The other issue was that "separate but equal was inherently unequal" whether it be de jure or de facto because of the message of inferiority it sends among other things.
That was what Brown was really all about.
QUOTE(David O. Sears et al @ The American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 369-384)
This article contrasts the "self-interest" and "symbolic politics" explanations for the formation of mass policy preferences and voting behavior. Self-interested attitudes are defined as those supporting policies that would maximize benefits and minimize costs to the individual's private material well-being. The "symbolic politics" model emphasizes pressures to make adulthood attitudes consistent with the residues of preadult socialization. We compare the two models in terms of their ability to account for whites' opposition to busing school children for racial integration of the public schools, and the role of the busing issue in presidential voting decisions, using the 1972 Center for Political Studies election study. Regression analysis shows strong effects of symbolic attitudes (racial intolerance and political conservatism) on opposition to busing, and of the busing issue on presidential voting decisions. Self-interest (e.g., having children susceptible to busing) had no significant effect upon either. It is concluded that self-interest is often overestimated as a determinant of public opinion and voting behavior because it is too rarely directly assessed empirically.
Whites' Opposition to "Busing": Self-Interest or Symbolic Politics?
That's stat-speak for what I've been saying all along.
Busing was a racial issue, not a purely practical one.
From the full study.
QUOTE(Sears et al @ The American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Jun., 1979))
Long bus rides, consolidated school districts, public schools of mixed social class or of modest quality (at best), peripatetic parents whose children jump from one school or another-all are routine, common experiences in the lives of American school children, without great political outcry. Indeed, one national survey, done in 1972, found the same high level of white opposition to busing to magnet schools ("Would you send your own child to a new and better school in a neighborhood predominantly occupied by residents of another race?") as to busing in general; 75 and 73 percent opposed, respectively (Wall, 1973).
As usual I have to go... but I hope this helps
QUOTE(Mrs. Pigpen)
I would endure the commute. However, a long commute to go to a worse school is another matter. Obviously no one wants to send their children to crappy schools. Isn't that the reason they started busing in the first place, because black communities generally had bad schools that weren't well funded and their children's educations suffered as a result?
That was part of it.
The other issue was that "separate but equal was inherently unequal" whether it be de jure or de facto because of the message of inferiority it sends among other things.
That was what Brown was really all about.
QUOTE(turnea @ Mar 1 2008, 08:52 PM)
Busing was a racial issue, not a purely practical one.
From the full study.
As usual I have to go... but I hope this helps
That was part of it.
The other issue was that "separate but equal was inherently unequal" whether it be de jure or de facto because of the message of inferiority it sends among other things.
That was what Brown was really all about.
From the full study.
QUOTE(Sears et al @ The American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Jun., 1979))
Long bus rides, consolidated school districts, public schools of mixed social class or of modest quality (at best), peripatetic parents whose children jump from one school or another-all are routine, common experiences in the lives of American school children, without great political outcry. Indeed, one national survey, done in 1972, found the same high level of white opposition to busing to magnet schools ("Would you send your own child to a new and better school in a neighborhood predominantly occupied by residents of another race?") as to busing in general; 75 and 73 percent opposed, respectively (Wall, 1973).
As usual I have to go... but I hope this helps
QUOTE(Mrs. Pigpen)
I would endure the commute. However, a long commute to go to a worse school is another matter. Obviously no one wants to send their children to crappy schools. Isn't that the reason they started busing in the first place, because black communities generally had bad schools that weren't well funded and their children's educations suffered as a result?
That was part of it.
The other issue was that "separate but equal was inherently unequal" whether it be de jure or de facto because of the message of inferiority it sends among other things.
That was what Brown was really all about.
Imagine for a moment that you are older and established in a job, have children that attend a school in your neighborhood...in fact, you selected that neighborhood to live in, in large part because of the school (I can tell you that schools make up 90 percent of our home location decisions...moving to New Mexico soon, 48th in the nation for schools, after living in the creme de la creme where my kids are flourishing is killing me inside). Now, legislation comes down and says you have to bus your kids far away to a worse school, while children who live in that area will be bused in to go to your kids' school.
Just step back and consider what you would think about that. I don't think it's even possible to realistically separate people's motivations here into categories of pragmatic and racist. 1970s America was an indirect caste society, definitely. It was also a directly racist society. But busing children was a pragmatic issue.
I don't want to move to NM because of the education system, but it also has a huge population of Hispanics. Furthermore, I would object to my children going to school in a bad neighborhood too were that the case (though fortunately Alamogordo, though poor, is a low crime area) even if the school was good. Is the Hernandez family racist against Hispanics? If my husband was Hugh Lucius Cox the third would we then be racist against Hispanics? Is that the reason I don't want my kids to go to school in Alamogordo? The answer might be yes or no, but there really isn't any empirical way to "prove" either of those questions based solely on my position on my children's education.
QUOTE(Mrs. Pipgpen)
Just step back and consider what you would think about that. I don't think it's even possible to realistically separate people's motivations here into categories of pragmatic and racist. 1970s America was an indirect caste society, definitely. It was also a directly racist society. But busing children was a pragmatic issue.
See there's the sticking point.
Using a bit of logic it actually is possible. Numbers don't lie and there are tell-tale signs of most any large scale motivation.
The trick is look at actions, not just words.
If the issue was purely pragmatic we'd see white students stay in their local schools despite black children being bused in. We'd see a greater opposition to the policy among parents who's students were actually affected by busing.
...but we don't. In fact the greatest oppostion was found in those who didn't even have kids in the public schools.
...and when asked to choose between local white schools or better integrated magnet schools, well you saw the numbers.
"Even a child is know by his actions" we just have to know what to look for.
QUOTE(turnea @ Mar 2 2008, 11:32 AM)
QUOTE(Mrs. Pipgpen)
Just step back and consider what you would think about that. I don't think it's even possible to realistically separate people's motivations here into categories of pragmatic and racist. 1970s America was an indirect caste society, definitely. It was also a directly racist society. But busing children was a pragmatic issue.
See there's the sticking point.
Using a bit of logic it actually is possible. Numbers don't lie and there are tell-tale signs of most any large scale motivation.
The trick is look at actions, not just words.
If the issue was purely pragmatic we'd see white students stay in their local schools despite black children being bused in. We'd see a greater opposition to the policy among parents who's students were actually affected by busing.
...but we don't. In fact the greatest oppostion was found in those who didn't even have kids in the public schools.
...and when asked to choose between local white schools or better integrated magnet schools, well you saw the numbers.
"Even a child is know by his actions" we just have to know what to look for.
turnea,
I have to ask this question: have you ever been forced to be bused to school?
To say that the opposition to busing did not come from the parents of the kids being bused is simply not in line with reality. These parents voted with their feet and left the districts that did not listen to their objections. The courts imposed their will of what they thought was socially just. The courts did not stick to enforcing the law--it made new law. Schools that were not significantly integrated must force integration, despite what black or white parents thought about the fate of their kids.
Parents who had chosen their place to live for the sake of what school their kids would attend were forced to attend different schools. The big discussion these days at my kids' school, which is very significantly white, is whether to move from the parish into the suburbs for "free" public schools. Are these parents white racists to want to move from a predominantly white school or are they making what they feel is the best decision for their kids in terms of education and the affordability of housing?
Time Magazine ran an article in 1975 about the busing startup in Louisville which mentioned a 5,000 member group of parents who protested busing.
According to Richard E. Weaver, "The Resilience of School Desegregation in a Decade of Political Opposition to Busing: A Case Study of Prince George's County, Maryland, 1973-1980," diss., University of Maryland, 1985, only 25% of all parents and 32% of black parents favored busing. source
To say that parents did not oppose busing is to deny reality.
QUOTE(Amlord)
I have to ask this question: have you ever been forced to be bused to school?
No, but neither have I ever attended a neighborhood school. Long commutes were always part of my school life.
That's why I laugh at the difficulty some have being being bused to "the other side of town".
Whoop-tee-do, try commuting to another town.
QUOTE(Amlord)
The big discussion these days at my kids' school, which is very significantly white, is whether to move from the parish into the suburbs for "free" public schools. Are these parents white racists to want to move from a predominantly white school or are they making what they feel is the best decision for their kids in terms of education and the affordability of housing?
Time Magazine ran an article in 1975 about the busing startup in Louisville which mentioned a 5,000 member group of parents who protested busing.
According to Richard E. Weaver, "The Resilience of School Desegregation in a Decade of Political Opposition to Busing: A Case Study of Prince George's County, Maryland, 1973-1980," diss., University of Maryland, 1985, only 25% of all parents and 32% of black parents favored busing. source
To say that parents did not oppose busing is to deny reality.
Time Magazine ran an article in 1975 about the busing startup in Louisville which mentioned a 5,000 member group of parents who protested busing.
According to Richard E. Weaver, "The Resilience of School Desegregation in a Decade of Political Opposition to Busing: A Case Study of Prince George's County, Maryland, 1973-1980," diss., University of Maryland, 1985, only 25% of all parents and 32% of black parents favored busing. source
To say that parents did not oppose busing is to deny reality.
Evidence Evidence Evidence.
I am well aware that many black parents opposed busing. As I've mentioned before the busing plans were often implemented unequally and black students had far more to fear in terms of violent retribution.
The main factor however was that by 1975 or so most black parents saw that whites would rather move their kids than allow them to attend with blacks thus defeating the purpose.
I've talked to many black people who have said they pretty much threw up their hands in disgust.
You are proffering a common sense approach here.
"Well of course it the busing" because you refuse to consider that racism may have been more important.
...but this issue has been studied and the evidence is on my side.
QUOTE(John B. McConahay @ The Journal of Politics, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Aug., 1982), pp. 692-720)
Traditional political analysis assumes that policy attitudes of the American public are influenced more by personal self-interest than values or ideology. A symbolic politics approach holds that policy preferences are more the result of the residues of early political and value socialization, especially when the policies are linked to racial or ethnic groups. In this article, the relative strengths of the self-interest and symbolic politics approaches are tested in the context of the busing for school desegregation controversy in Louisville, Kentucky. Regression analysis of a random sample of Louisville adults found that measures of self-interest (having a child in the public schools, having a child bused, having strong ties to the neighborhood) were related only weakly and inconsistently to anti-busing attitudes whereas measures of racial attitudes (Old Fashioned and Modern Racism) were strong and consistent correlates of opposition to busing: the more prejudiced, the more opposed. The implications of these findings for school desegregation policy are discussed.
Self-Interest versus Racial Attitudes as Correlates of Anti-Busing Attitudes in Louisville: Is it The Buses or the Blacks?
I'm not saying racism was the only factor, but it was chief among them
QUOTE(turnea @ Mar 3 2008, 02:49 PM)
I'm not saying racism was the only factor, but it was chief among them
Confirming my earlier summary of your position. Thank you, turnea.
Yes, you have a "study" on your side. How much trust we can put into social science surveys is arguable. Your study says that self interest is not a key consideration.
However, it seems that the methodology or rather the rationale is a bit flawed. This study you link appears to measure anti-busing attitudes from a broad population. It found that in the broad population that racism was strongly consistent with anti-busing attitudes. Okay, that's interesting, but hardly conclusive.
Of course a racist is going to be against what he perceives harms whites and helps blacks. We can agree on that. But let's look at the other point, the one about self interest:
QUOTE
Regression analysis of a random sample of Louisville adults found that measures of self-interest (having a child in the public schools, having a child bused, having strong ties to the neighborhood) were related only weakly and inconsistently to anti-busing attitudes
All this says is that not all parents with kids in public schools were anti-busing. That hardly says anything conclusive. Without access to the study itself we can not examine how this conclusion was reached. However, I have never claimed that all parents were opposed to busing.
Further, your "strong correlation" for racists and anti-busing means little when only those with interests (the first group) abandoned the public schools for either suburban districts or private/parochial schools.
I don't think your study says what you want it to say and it certainly does not contradict my assertion (first hand) that many parents were opposed to the way busing was implemented.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Confirming my earlier summary of your position. Thank you, turnea.
Really?
QUOTE(turnea)
I don't recall saying that.
I'm keeping this one trim. All I said was that racism was the chief motivation for white flight out of the public schools in response to integration in the 1970's
I'm keeping this one trim. All I said was that racism was the chief motivation for white flight out of the public schools in response to integration in the 1970's
That hasn't changed.
QUOTE(Amlord)
Yes, you have a "study" on your side. How much trust we can put into social science surveys is arguable. Your study says that self interest is not a key consideration.
I've actually posted two studies but in any case....
QUOTE(Amlord)
All this says is that not all parents with kids in public schools were anti-busing.
I think that's a misreading.
What it said literally was that little to no correlation was found between parents whose children were affected by busing and those parents attitudes concerning busing.
Most likely most of these parents opposed busing like most people did. However they didn't do so any more than parents whose kids weren't bused or people who weren't parents at all.
Turnea, I'm having a little trouble following along with you here. I;m trying to reconcile statements like "numbers don't lie" with reality. I'm trying to figure out what you think your numbers (numbers don't lie because they don't talk) are saying.
Do you think busing was a good policy?
Are you arguing that busing commonly was rich suburbs to be mixed with poorer urban districts?
I will grant you that racism played a part of this. But the busing solution had the result wherever I have seen it applied, of worsening all of the schools involved. Do you have evidence of a busing success story? They might exist but I do not know of them.
Now, you be the parent and act without racism. Your child is zoned for a school that has a high level of diversity. However, the school district and the school itself is failing and suffers from a host of problems including poverty, lack of parental involvement, and declining test scores.
You see the neighborhood in a state of decline and you have to make a decision just as the first day of kindergarten is arriving. I made that decision four years ago, and I moved from the highly diverse neighborhood with declining schools to the best public school district in the state. I would prefer a more diverse school district but my children are in an elementary school where we as parents are the poorer and less involved parents in the school. The nurturing, support, and ability to identify areas of needs for my children and provide a solution have all been great.
The biggest problem we have is that my oldest daughter is concerned about her brown skin color in a school that is 90% white.
I went right to the brink of sending our children to the other school mostly for social reasons and trying to play a part in helping support a school in a metropolitan district. But I found that I could not face the tilting at windmills when my children's education was on the line, just as I found that I could not do the same with my career by becoming a public school teacher.
I don't think that makes me racist but everyone gets to have an opinion. I will not place myself or my children in an environment of academic failure. The neighborhood we moved from is in steady decline, perhaps it will reverse itself. I would have rather stayed because I could have afforded to live a much more comfortable life there. Maybe the neighborhood is in decline in large part because of white flight. Maybe many of the white families that moved out, did so because too many people of color and foreigners were moving in. But I think most of the people who moved did so because of the low quality of the schools, the aging and declining infrastructure, and the rising crime rates.
Do you think busing was a good policy?
Are you arguing that busing commonly was rich suburbs to be mixed with poorer urban districts?
I will grant you that racism played a part of this. But the busing solution had the result wherever I have seen it applied, of worsening all of the schools involved. Do you have evidence of a busing success story? They might exist but I do not know of them.
Now, you be the parent and act without racism. Your child is zoned for a school that has a high level of diversity. However, the school district and the school itself is failing and suffers from a host of problems including poverty, lack of parental involvement, and declining test scores.
You see the neighborhood in a state of decline and you have to make a decision just as the first day of kindergarten is arriving. I made that decision four years ago, and I moved from the highly diverse neighborhood with declining schools to the best public school district in the state. I would prefer a more diverse school district but my children are in an elementary school where we as parents are the poorer and less involved parents in the school. The nurturing, support, and ability to identify areas of needs for my children and provide a solution have all been great.
The biggest problem we have is that my oldest daughter is concerned about her brown skin color in a school that is 90% white.
I went right to the brink of sending our children to the other school mostly for social reasons and trying to play a part in helping support a school in a metropolitan district. But I found that I could not face the tilting at windmills when my children's education was on the line, just as I found that I could not do the same with my career by becoming a public school teacher.
I don't think that makes me racist but everyone gets to have an opinion. I will not place myself or my children in an environment of academic failure. The neighborhood we moved from is in steady decline, perhaps it will reverse itself. I would have rather stayed because I could have afforded to live a much more comfortable life there. Maybe the neighborhood is in decline in large part because of white flight. Maybe many of the white families that moved out, did so because too many people of color and foreigners were moving in. But I think most of the people who moved did so because of the low quality of the schools, the aging and declining infrastructure, and the rising crime rates.
I took my time in responding because I wanted to do it justice, but I realize it's best to do this a little at a time.
Numbers are probably the best representations of wider reality we've developed as human being.s
Perhaps your trouble is with matching numbers with the anecdotes and media coverage, which happens.
Oh, numbers tell the best stories.
Mine for instance have shown evidence that racial attitudes had a lot more to do with opinions on busing than more practical concerns over long rides.
Not commonly, but occasionally right up until the suburbs released the lawyers.
The do in fact exist, thought the media coverage still had the sixties hangover of racial obtuseness at the time.
Minneapolis, Charlotte, Greenville, SC
You really think these parents hung around for a couple years to see what the results would be?
Flight was highest as soon as busing was implemented and actually stabilized over the years mostly because no one was left.
I think you are confusing cause and effect. White flight caused the collapse in quality not vice versa.
Certainly they're were other reasons for moving out of the city center, but for busing in particular racial attitudes were the prime mover.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Turnea, I'm having a little trouble following along with you here. I;m trying to reconcile statements like "numbers don't lie" with reality
Numbers are probably the best representations of wider reality we've developed as human being.s
Perhaps your trouble is with matching numbers with the anecdotes and media coverage, which happens.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
I'm trying to figure out what you think your numbers (numbers don't lie because they don't talk) are saying.
Oh, numbers tell the best stories.
Mine for instance have shown evidence that racial attitudes had a lot more to do with opinions on busing than more practical concerns over long rides.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Are you arguing that busing commonly was rich suburbs to be mixed with poorer urban districts?
Not commonly, but occasionally right up until the suburbs released the lawyers.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
I will grant you that racism played a part of this. But the busing solution had the result wherever I have seen it applied, of worsening all of the schools involved. Do you have evidence of a busing success story? They might exist but I do not know of them.
The do in fact exist, thought the media coverage still had the sixties hangover of racial obtuseness at the time.
Minneapolis, Charlotte, Greenville, SC
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Now, you be the parent and act without racism. Your child is zoned for a school that has a high level of diversity. However, the school district and the school itself is failing and suffers from a host of problems including poverty, lack of parental involvement, and declining test scores.
You really think these parents hung around for a couple years to see what the results would be?
Flight was highest as soon as busing was implemented and actually stabilized over the years mostly because no one was left.
I think you are confusing cause and effect. White flight caused the collapse in quality not vice versa.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
But I think most of the people who moved did so because of the low quality of the schools, the aging and declining infrastructure, and the rising crime rates
Certainly they're were other reasons for moving out of the city center, but for busing in particular racial attitudes were the prime mover.
QUOTE
Was Desegregation busing worth the effort?
A disaster. Kids spend hours riding on busses instead of being in school or how.
QUOTE
What was the biggest problem with the policy?
the idea was ludicrous from the start – a product of the lies of liberals who instead of insuring that inner city schools were adequate tried to spread the pain far and wide. People (of both races) moved to get their kids free of this idiotic policy.
Now with NCLB we have the beginning of policies that can work. We test kids and staff and where the school fails we take action – too slow for my taste but certainly better than the disaster that was bussing in Boston in the 70s
QUOTE(turnea @ Mar 11 2008, 07:55 PM)
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Now, you be the parent and act without racism. Your child is zoned for a school that has a high level of diversity. However, the school district and the school itself is failing and suffers from a host of problems including poverty, lack of parental involvement, and declining test scores.
You really think these parents hung around for a couple years to see what the results would be?
Flight was highest as soon as busing was implemented and actually stabilized over the years mostly because no one was left.
I think you are confusing cause and effect. White flight caused the collapse in quality not vice versa.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
But I think most of the people who moved did so because of the low quality of the schools, the aging and declining infrastructure, and the rising crime rates
Certainly they're were other reasons for moving out of the city center, but for busing in particular racial attitudes were the prime mover.
I'm still wondering how you came up with scientific numbers that tell you a story that did not enforce the perception you brought to the table.
Did you notice that one of your sources was titled something like They Just Killed Busing in the One Place it Actually Worked. The others were articles to pay for or abstracts to enroll for.
I don't really like arguing against this issue, but I've not seen convincing evidence behind some of your assertions.
While the aftermath of reaction to busing continued the downward trend in these areas, these tended to be schools that were struggling to begin with.
So I don't think I AM confusing cause and effect.
I do think parents make housing decisions with schooling being a major if not a primary consideration. I aslo think that if something significant changes in the schooling situation it is a prime mover. As I said earlier, I moved from a district three years ago that in all likelihood is still under a type of busing order or under a plan that was implemented decades ago for reasons that busing was implemented in many other cities. The neighborhood I moved from was very diverse, the one I moved to not so much. Are you asserting racism is the main reason for my move?
I think that parents react to a change in the quality of their children's education for the worse. Theyt do so according to their passion for their subject and their means. Some, like the families in Charlotte, stay and fight and push for a win-win solution. Others resign themselves to a risky or worsening situation. Others look for a magnet school, others move.
Do your numbers tell you that racism was the prime reason or is it something not so scientific?
QUOTE(Eeyore)
I'm still wondering how you came up with scientific numbers that tell you a story that did not enforce the perception you brought to the table.
I'm a bit confused over what you're asking I'm afraid but I'll review what I've presented and see whether or not that answers the question.
I started with the rather clear example of Boston who's racism (despite Ted ignoring it) was on full display.
I added to it a few other cities, the centers of key court cases:
QUOTE(Wikipedia)
The Supreme Court subsequently mandated in the 1971 decision of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the institution of busing of black students to mainly formerly all-white schools in the suburbs, and vice versa. Beginning in the mid-1970s, some minority students (especially blacks) were transported miles from poorer core cities to newer affluent suburbs. As Justice William Douglas observed in his dissent in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), "The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer…" A similar 1977 Federal decision, Penick v The Columbus Board of Education, accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio to its suburbs. According to sociologist Cardell K. Jacobson, opposition to integration was strongest among people who did not themselves have children in public schools, and in particular among those who already had children in parochial schools.[...]
Busing and desegregation orders in education had also led to a further, non-geographical white flight: out of the public school systems subject to desegregation orders, and into private schools. For example, in 1970, when a federal court ordered desegregation of the public schools of the Pasadena Unified School District (in Pasadena, California), the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After desegregation began, a large number of whites in the upper and middle classes could afford private schooling and so pulled their children from mixed public schools. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena was home to sixty-three private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. The superintendent of Pasadena USD characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man"[19] and mounted policy changes and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into the public schools.
Busing and desegregation orders in education had also led to a further, non-geographical white flight: out of the public school systems subject to desegregation orders, and into private schools. For example, in 1970, when a federal court ordered desegregation of the public schools of the Pasadena Unified School District (in Pasadena, California), the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After desegregation began, a large number of whites in the upper and middle classes could afford private schooling and so pulled their children from mixed public schools. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena was home to sixty-three private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. The superintendent of Pasadena USD characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man"[19] and mounted policy changes and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into the public schools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#...and_busing]Link
That bolded point is key. Sociologists and political scientists by the very nature of their work must delve into motivations and they typically do so by surveys of what people say and studies of what they do. These measures, and often the considerable difference between them, can tell us a lot.
So I moved into the wider national focus.
QUOTE(David O. Sears et al @ The American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 369-384)
This article contrasts the "self-interest" and "symbolic politics" explanations for the formation of mass policy preferences and voting behavior. Self-interested attitudes are defined as those supporting policies that would maximize benefits and minimize costs to the individual's private material well-being. The "symbolic politics" model emphasizes pressures to make adulthood attitudes consistent with the residues of preadult socialization. We compare the two models in terms of their ability to account for whites' opposition to busing school children for racial integration of the public schools, and the role of the busing issue in presidential voting decisions, using the 1972 Center for Political Studies election study. Regression analysis shows strong effects of symbolic attitudes (racial intolerance and political conservatism) on opposition to busing, and of the busing issue on presidential voting decisions. Self-interest (e.g., having children susceptible to busing) had no significant effect upon either. It is concluded that self-interest is often overestimated as a determinant of public opinion and voting behavior because it is too rarely directly assessed empirically.
Whites' Opposition to "Busing": Self-Interest or Symbolic Politics?
It would be reasonable, if we were dealing with a purely practical motivation that those who were affected would have the most negative view.
Most harmed most alarmed in other words.
Instead no strong relationship between self-interest and opinion on busing was found.
On the contrary...
From the same article.
QUOTE
Long bus rides, consolidated school districts, public schools of mixed social class or of modest quality (at best), peripatetic parents whose children jump from one school or another-all are routine, common experiences in the lives of American school children, without great political outcry. Indeed, one national survey, done in 1972, found the same high level of white opposition to busing to magnet schools ("Would you send your own child to a new and better school in a neighborhood predominantly occupied by residents of another race?") as to busing in general; 75 and 73 percent opposed, respectively (Wall, 1973).
My other studies are pretty much in the same vein. Self-interest is present in the talk over busing but upon closer examination it had little to do with what people actually thought.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Did you notice that one of your sources was titled something like They Just Killed Busing in the One Place it Actually Worked. The others were articles to pay for or abstracts to enroll for.
Indeed I access most of my sources through databases my college has a subscription to. Local libraries out to have the same either online or in hard copy.
The abstracts are however clear enough that busing was not a failure everywhere.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
While the aftermath of reaction to busing continued the downward trend in these areas, these tended to be schools that were struggling to begin with.
So I don't think I AM confusing cause and effect.
So I don't think I AM confusing cause and effect.
Could you back that with evidence?
I understand that your have anecdotal evidence that speaks against racism as a consideration but the time period is different and it is only one example, not a wider study.
Turnea, this will likely be called out as a copout by many who read this and I would think by you as well.
In this case I do not see the evidence put forward to refute. Yet you assert it is the product of scientifically produced numbers. While you have reduced my case to one piece of anecdotal evidence and therefore dismissed it, you have argued far short of a scientific pile of evidence that I would put forth as such. Yet you do find it to be so.
Let me put forward as well that race is a clear issue, although it is one that is perceived and acted upon through oth sides of the looking glass.
I think the crime of Boston, BTW, was one of pitting two struggling communities with faltering or failing educational institutions against each other. The southies that turned to violence, clearly were in the wrong and despicable characters. Racism clearly reared its ugly head in Boston in re this issue.
You quest me to prove that in the majority of areas where busing was implemented, those that did not include suburbs, that the schools were inferior before busing? Is that what I am quested to prove? Do you really challenge this assumption?
My thesis, based on years of studying this general area of history, is that racism did and does exist. That people have progressed some in this area but not nearly enough, and maybe not much at all in the last thirty years. But at the beginning and end of the day, most white Americans would choose the better school and the diverse school over the worse and non-diverse school today. Thirty-five years ago, more white Americans would likely have chosen the less diverse school but many of those who would have would have done so less out of revulsion for blacks, but more out of concern that the institutions for those with darker skin tones had historically been inferior, with less resources, less attention paid to them by politicians, and no matter the packaging (magnet school e.g. {btw a much more recent style of institution in terms of being well-known and well understood} ) shared a fear of the quality of the education. Did racism play a factor in this generalized and inferred segment of US history? Yes. Was it the prime factor of a parent's decision? No.
ERIC link
I wonder if this is one of your articles?
The problem I have with articles like this is the same problem I have with most educational studies. While the data collected is collected scientifically )often) the use of the data is widely open to interpretation.
Most of the so-called contradictions between interest and action in here coincide with my observations that racism is stronger as education level decreases.
At this point, my time expires, and I look and sound like a white racist. So be it. My argument is with more the method of argument than conclusion.
Numbers lie. They are interpreted. They should be interpreted and debated. Yet numbers are open to interpretation.
My anecdotal conclusion is that many of those most open to integration of schools, tragically chose the same option as racists that would never allow their sons and especially daughters to go to school with non-whites (ca. the early 1970s in this case) because the remedy of busing was a well-intentioned but idea but horribly flawed in its application.
I remain open to evidence that I am wrong about the horribly flawed conclusion. But I note that you defend your other two articles but you choose not to wrestle with the implication behind the title of your 1999 Charlotte article.
I hope you debate me into retraction on this issue.
For now I rest (literally) on this matter.
In this case I do not see the evidence put forward to refute. Yet you assert it is the product of scientifically produced numbers. While you have reduced my case to one piece of anecdotal evidence and therefore dismissed it, you have argued far short of a scientific pile of evidence that I would put forth as such. Yet you do find it to be so.
Let me put forward as well that race is a clear issue, although it is one that is perceived and acted upon through oth sides of the looking glass.
I think the crime of Boston, BTW, was one of pitting two struggling communities with faltering or failing educational institutions against each other. The southies that turned to violence, clearly were in the wrong and despicable characters. Racism clearly reared its ugly head in Boston in re this issue.
You quest me to prove that in the majority of areas where busing was implemented, those that did not include suburbs, that the schools were inferior before busing? Is that what I am quested to prove? Do you really challenge this assumption?
My thesis, based on years of studying this general area of history, is that racism did and does exist. That people have progressed some in this area but not nearly enough, and maybe not much at all in the last thirty years. But at the beginning and end of the day, most white Americans would choose the better school and the diverse school over the worse and non-diverse school today. Thirty-five years ago, more white Americans would likely have chosen the less diverse school but many of those who would have would have done so less out of revulsion for blacks, but more out of concern that the institutions for those with darker skin tones had historically been inferior, with less resources, less attention paid to them by politicians, and no matter the packaging (magnet school e.g. {btw a much more recent style of institution in terms of being well-known and well understood} ) shared a fear of the quality of the education. Did racism play a factor in this generalized and inferred segment of US history? Yes. Was it the prime factor of a parent's decision? No.
ERIC link
I wonder if this is one of your articles?
The problem I have with articles like this is the same problem I have with most educational studies. While the data collected is collected scientifically )often) the use of the data is widely open to interpretation.
Most of the so-called contradictions between interest and action in here coincide with my observations that racism is stronger as education level decreases.
At this point, my time expires, and I look and sound like a white racist. So be it. My argument is with more the method of argument than conclusion.
Numbers lie. They are interpreted. They should be interpreted and debated. Yet numbers are open to interpretation.
My anecdotal conclusion is that many of those most open to integration of schools, tragically chose the same option as racists that would never allow their sons and especially daughters to go to school with non-whites (ca. the early 1970s in this case) because the remedy of busing was a well-intentioned but idea but horribly flawed in its application.
I remain open to evidence that I am wrong about the horribly flawed conclusion. But I note that you defend your other two articles but you choose not to wrestle with the implication behind the title of your 1999 Charlotte article.
I hope you debate me into retraction on this issue.
For now I rest (literally) on this matter.
QUOTE(Eeyore)
You quest me to prove that in the majority of areas where busing was implemented, those that did not include suburbs, that the schools were inferior before busing? Is that what I am quested to prove? Do you really challenge this assumption?
Indeed. Though perhaps not on the grounds you might assume. As I said to Mrs. P is the only problem was inferior historically black facilities or long bus rides we would see a two different pictures.
For those white students bused to inferior black school, flight.
For those white student having blacks bussed to them, nothing.
...and yet what we saw was a full-scale panic, it doesn't matter whether their kids we moved to different schools or not, whites left in droves.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Thirty-five years ago, more white Americans would likely have chosen the less diverse school but many of those who would have would have done so less out of revulsion for blacks, but more out of concern that the institutions for those with darker skin tones had historically been inferior, with less resources, less attention paid to them by politicians, and no matter the packaging (magnet school e.g. {btw a much more recent style of institution in terms of being well-known and well understood} ) shared a fear of the quality of the education. Did racism play a factor in this generalized and inferred segment of US history? Yes. Was it the prime factor of a parent's decision? No.
What of the poll that showed white parents would reject a higher quality school were it integrated?
QUOTE
Long bus rides, consolidated school districts, public schools of mixed social class or of modest quality (at best), peripatetic parents whose children jump from one school or another-all are routine, common experiences in the lives of American school children, without great political outcry. Indeed, one national survey, done in 1972, found the same high level of white opposition to busing to magnet schools ("Would you send your own child to a new and better school in a neighborhood predominantly occupied by residents of another race?") as to busing in general; 75 and 73 percent opposed, respectively (Wall, 1973).
QUOTE(Eeyore)
I wonder if this is one of your articles?
The problem I have with articles like this is the same problem I have with most educational studies. While the data collected is collected scientifically )often) the use of the data is widely open to interpretation.
Most of the so-called contradictions between interest and action in here coincide with my observations that racism is stronger as education level decreases.
The problem I have with articles like this is the same problem I have with most educational studies. While the data collected is collected scientifically )often) the use of the data is widely open to interpretation.
Most of the so-called contradictions between interest and action in here coincide with my observations that racism is stronger as education level decreases.
I did reference that article in an earlier post. Could you expound on the alternate conclusion you feel the date points to?
QUOTE(Eeyore)
Numbers lie. They are interpreted. They should be interpreted and debated. Yet numbers are open to interpretation.
Ah, numbers never lie. They are sometimes misunderstood, that's all.
You dispute the interpretation? Fine. Hence the debate.
On what grounds? Is that not the question?
QUOTE(Eeyore)
I remain open to evidence that I am wrong about the horribly flawed conclusion. But I note that you defend your other two articles but you choose not to wrestle with the implication behind the title of your 1999 Charlotte article.
A bit of journalistic hyperbole.
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