Not much changed. Many schools got around racial integration by testing students which, in effect, placed white and a few black middle-class students in honors classes and poor whites and black kids in 'standard' and' remedial' classes. So, in the 'real world' of school most students spent their entire day with their social class peers.
26
Seems to me that the problem is providing appropriate resources to these segregated schools. That includes finding or recruiting great teachers, developing an appropriate curriculum, and having accountability for success. The answer doesn’t have to be integrating white schools. How about investing in black ones.
28
After all this time, the old monied interests have continued to use the nature of human ego, ignorance, fear to continue employing division, economic, educational, financial, etc., and anti immigrant, racism, classism, and me-ism, on an effort to keep themselves from being seen as the source of suffering and to keep true democracy from prosecuting their evil.
10
I think busing failed because it was supposed to eliminate racism in America. It's 50 years later and, yup, we're still among the most racist places on Earth.
Imagine an alternate world, without busing for desegregation, where schools had been made integrated in the sense that any child could go to their neighborhood school regardless of race, where reasonable programs of early learning and adequate nutrition had been available to all children, where all schools had been well-funded and had competent teachers, and where red-lining* had been made illegal so that neighborhoods would be mixed. I believe that we would have made much more progress toward ending racism in that world than in our actual world where busing for desegregation was the tool of choice.
The problem is that busing is a silver bullet, a magic solution to the problem. The other approach is more complex, requires more cooperation at many different levels of government, and strict enforcement of violations including criminal prosecutions and fines or prison time. We as a nation simply did not have the will to go through that, and so we relied on the silver bullet.
_________
*This is the one thing that has actually happened, and it has probably had a larger impact on racism than busing did.
16
While the horrible history of racism the authors wrote about is largely, its impact on today’s schools is largely irrelevant
Bottom line: Parents want their kids to attend the best schools possible. When you forcibly try to take kids out of good schools to send them to bad ones, parents will revolt Many will protest, move to another school district or end their kids to private school.
Money should be spent instead improving and enriching the below par schools. The charters in NYC show that mostly black and minority schools can be exceptional. Many formerly all minority schools are voluntarily attracting whites families because those schools are great
Fro the record, i was bussed from my mostly white elementary school into “the projects” as a young child and the education was pretty awful
67
This article and its headline are intended to be inflammatory.
Of course parents want their children to go to the best possible schools, and not to be used as political pawns. This doesn't make them White racists. The children of politicians were never bused.
The fact that black schools and other public schools have been woefully underfunded is a separate issue.
73
From the article:
“Just a few years before Mr. Biden was attempting to curtail desegregation, white Southerners were bombing schools. They beat children and civil rights activists. They blackballed parents who dared sign their names to lawsuits suing for compliance with Brown, keeping them from employment and evicting them from their homes. Mobs blocked the doors to schoolhouses to keep handfuls of carefully selected black children from entering.”
The narrative that blacks just didn’t want to learn or just don’t want to work hard is false. This was still happening when I was a child and I’m only 57.
What is insane is that we kept trying to be a part of the community. That we keep asking for equal access. As the article says “you’ll didn’t mind busing when it forced black students to go by white schools or when white students could go by black schools.” You DIDN’T WANT TO INTEGRATE! You wanted to stay segregated. Then just say that.
Stop saying we are inferior so you had no choice. Our deficiencies, if any, were caused by your policies. We moved heaven and earth and the laws of this country to be able to access the ballot box and the school door.
People who are valued behave as though they are valued. We behaved as though we were valued even when we weren’t. And yet too many pretend that this was our choice to have bad schools and to not to deserve equal access to education. And EQUAL ACCESS means INTEGRATION.
19
My mother and her siblings walked a round-trip of two hours to and from elementary school as white students passed them by on school buses, hurling epithets. By the time they reached high school, they were bused two hours round trip to the only black school.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is right. African Americans are due reparations, not just for slavery but also for the theft of black tax dollars that subsidized white schools and federal mortgages for white homeowners. Pay up, America.
28
Look at the imbedded insistence that not creating good schools was the ONLY choice the majority of white people. HOW ELSE could they have behaved but to deny equal pay and equal access to education because of the “lower achievers.” It was THEIR JOB to protect their families and livelihoods. The subconscious content of course being, “those people really weren’t deserving, so we had no choice but to behave as we did. Humans are tribal after all.” But the funny thing is, black people call the people who harm whites CRIMINALS and all over this country many white people refuse to call the people who supported and continue to support these policies “criminals” but instead “good upstanding members of our society with different viewpoints.” And accuse us of being “snowflakes” for not wanting laws limiting our access to education and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Deny equal pay. Deny equal access. Set up a system where ZERO education is legal for a population. Then underfund a “separate but equal system” and presto-chango the “good people” of our country earnestly declare, “the problem was those lower achievers (you know who ‘they are’) and the higher achievers (‘we know who they are’). It’s the argument of the person who kills their parents and then pleads for leniency because they are orphaned. How can so many still be making this argument in 2019? How can you NOT KNOW the actual history of our country and the wholesale intentional denial of equal access?
4
Thought-provoking article and pretty damning of Biden's judgment. Not just for his prior conduct, but also for bringing up these Southerners for his example about working across the aisle. It seems he has shot himself in the foot again (as in '88 and '08).
In any event, wrt to the article, I have a question regarding how the author measures desegregation. There is an graphic entitled "The Segregated North" in the article and in it segregation/desegregation is defined as "black students in schools with a student body that is more than 90% minority." I am wondering whether this is a helpful definition of segregation/desegregation and why? For instance, shouldn't a marker for segregation be defined as "black students in schools with a student body that is more than 90% non-black"? I would like to see additional maps compiled that are based on different ways of measuring/analyzing segregation/desegregation.
2
This is a great article . People in the North always look down on the South, calling them racist . After spending time in the South I try to tell my kids that the North is equally if not more racist , because we choose to simply separate the upper middle-class white towns from everyone else (black, Hispanic, etc) .
16
There is no doubt that accountability in public education would go far to improve the problems in intercity schools. Unfortunately, the teachers unions, and the democrats, who they own, will never permit that to happen.
15
@J I presume you mean firing underperforming teachers. But the problem is, there aren't enough teachers in the first place, so I don't see how that's a game changer. There are places it could help on the margins, but it's not the answer.
We do need more accountability for students. If you're below grade level in 3rd grade, repeat it or go into a remedial summer program. Same thing in 5th grade, then start holding kids back consistently in 6th.
Social promotion and grouping together students with obviously different current levels of achievement is one of the big problems here. We have high schools with graduation rates over 95% and SAT scores below 900. It's silly, and any rational person could look at those statistics and realize that many of our inner city schools have become diploma mills where everyone looks the other way while the administration trumpets the high graduation rate. This is not a problem that teachers can fix because they're just a cog in the system, hamstrung by policies like "no child can get a score below 50" or "if they hand in an assignment, they must get a score of 60" which is depressing because it forces them to pass kids on to the next level/grade when they clearly aren't prepared.
18
Busing does NOTHING to improve education or schools.
If you bus someone into a "good" school, you have to bus someone else out, to a "poor" school.
What needs to be done is to improve the educational experience in schools and communities that need it. Make no mistake, part of the problem is the culture of the community in which a school exists. If the kids won't behave in class, no learning will take place, for any of the students.
There are many factors influencing the educational culture in a community, and they aren't all in the school. Quality of teaching, of course, is a huge factor. Funding has a relatively small influence (you don't need computers to teach and learn). Family situations play a very prominent role. READING to your children, every day, from infancy, has a TREMENDOUS impact on your child's ability to learn.
61
Ms. Hannah-Jones’ essay is both beautifully written and well-researched. However, the am not in total agreement with her conclusions.
Social engineering, either to segregate or to integrate, has a cost. Both forms should be discarded.
It is easier to put high schools at the crossroads of several urban neighborhoods, thus producing natural integration. It is extremely difficult to integrate elementary schools. It is cruel to subject kids to long bus rides; my adult commutes were not fun, either.
I went to a naturally integrated high school. There were many black kids whose economic backgrounds were more upscale than mine. A physician’s daughter now is a partner in a major New York law firm. Another black classmate was graduated from Harvard Medical School. A third classmate teaches at Harvard Law School (three guesses). There always were black students (although not many) in my honors classes, and I am sure that there were some honors classes where there were black students where I had not made the cut. During my high school years, I never heard of one racial incident.
I would like Ms. Hannah-Jones to write a piece on largely black, middle-class schools in Maryland and Georgia.
20
I grew up in Merrick on Long Island. My neighborhood did not have busing, as we were in walking distance of the elementary, junior, and high schools. Walking or biking to school was the norm; that is what you are used to and what you want. You get to know the houses and neighbors, maybe walk with someone. If you're unlucky that day, you may be bullied by a schoolmate on your way home. It built character. It was forced exercise, everyday, often with heavy books. One of the reasons I was in good shape. Some bad weather, but as I've seen, children stand out in bad weather waiting for school buses.
And neighborhood schools were convenient, perhaps necessary, for parents like my own in the 1960s/70s. Most wives were homemakers and did not drive, having grown up in NYC. My mother walked to school to get us when we were sick in the nurse's office. I regularly walked home for lunch.
It is probably true that many of the white parents that protested busing were racist, but to say that busing wasn't a problem for them, is not substantiated.
Every child should have an excellent education. I am at a loss to explain how a liberal and educated state like New York winds up being so segregated.
14
I for one oppose forced busing. I would not want a judge picking my kid’s school for any reason, including the betterment of society.
But I’m also opposed to the policies overt and covert that left courts with no better option. The federal government should, as George Romney tried to do, use funding to encourage integrated neighborhoods and encourage states to equalize school funding.
Lest anyone forget, for decades now New Jersey has been fighting its own constitution and Supreme Court on that very issue. The state guarantees a “fair and efficient education” to all children, whether from Trenton or Short Hills. The legislature has, by popular demand, for decades, successfully defied the court’s mandate to equalize funding.
New Jersey is unique only insofar as it has a constitutional mandate. Its practice of funding schools with property taxes is used everywhere, and everywhere the results are the same: the wealthier the district, the better funded are the schools. Until and unless that changes, the poor will not only always be with us: their poverty will be systematically perpetuated.
9
"Many black activists and communities grew weary of chasing white people across the city as they fled integration, and instead they decided to focus on gaining resources for schools that served their own neighborhoods." - I am an Irish-Catholic born in 1946 in NYC. I went to Catholic school K-12. Everyone was Catholic and European-American. At 18 I took a train downtown to work in a integrated, multi-denominational environment. Things went fine because I had gotten a sound education. At 20 I was in the army with folks from all over the country. My top sergeant was a black man as were the 2 barrack sergeants. Got along fine, even served in Vietnam with guys from all 50 states. I adapted well because I had gotten a sound basic education. That's what was critical. Not the parochial nature of my schooling but the soundness of the teaching. The color of your classmates is not so important. A good all-around basic education sets you up for life. Today I live and work in Asia with (obviously) Asians and a majority of non-Christians. Not a problem. I had a sound education. Always knew there was a big world out there. For black students to thrive, the color of the classmates is not so important. The teachers, schoolbooks, resources, that's what is important. The intentional separating of the races is deplorable but a solid education overcomes just about every hurdle.
28
Thank you to Ms. Hannah-Jones for reminding us that the debate around busing is more about our prejudices, hidden and overt. We must challenge ourselves to move beyond the integrated OR high quality debate to the task of integrated AND high quality norm.
6
School Choice with transportation provided. Let the people decide where their Children go to school. Schools would select students on a blind lottery basis so there would be no bias
1
To say busing was a ringing success is clearly not true, or our country would be more integrated and fair. Also, to say that throwing money at the failing schools will fix them is also a faulty assumption. Look at the per pupil expenditure in various schools-you might be surprised how high it is in some of the most distressed areas, and lower in better run districts. Local property tax goes to local schools-so perhaps that formula needs to change. The rules that prevent people from going to school out of their school district could also be examined. As it is now, if you live in a troubled district, you are not allowed to enroll your kid in a neighboring district. Maybe the state could take the administration of a well run district to take over schools that have been closed for poor performance. Maybe funds from wealthier districts should be redistributed so there can be plenty of extras in poorer districts like after school clubs, sports etc that now do not exist in poor districts. Nobody should be stuck in a bad school, but as it is now, people are not generally even allowed to sign up in neighboring better schools. These more gentle reforms could be more acceptable and help with a step forward without so much backlash.
8
I attended P.S. 91 in Crown Heights from kindergarten to 2nd grade. It was a very white neighborhood at the time, but my classes were integrated because of busing. I have learned that the busing experience could be very hard on the minority kids but I am forever grateful that as a Caucasian I had early exposure to a diverse community. My first "boyfriend" was a black 2nd grader, an indication of how comfortable I felt with peers of darker complexion (my parents were not especially open-minded at that time, by the way). A native and proud Brooklynite (I've been residing in Cobble Hill since 1994 and have provided social services in every neighborhood) - I suspect I would have to actively combat racist tendencies had I not been given the opportunity to be educated with students from other ethnic backgrounds.
6
Wow. I thought I knew this history. I am very sad to hear we are going backwards. Thank you for opening my eyes.
3
It is good to be reminded of this ugly history.
And, according to the numbers cited in the article, busing reduced segregation.
In another recent NYT article, I read that busing did not improve academic performance.
I've always wondered why we couldn't improve the weaker schools rather than move the children.
8
Busing kids to achieve school integration requires busing millions of minority kids from cities to the suburbs, and millions of white kids from the suburbs to urban schools.
Most urban minority parents are highly likely to approve of busing their kids to high-quality suburban schools.
Most suburban white parents are highly unlikely to approve of busing their kids to low-quality urban schools.
During the TV debate Kamala Harris made a huge mistake when she suggested federally-mandated busing of schoolkids to achieve integration. If the Democratic Party platform includes busing schoolkids to and from cities and suburbs we are doomed to a second Trump term.
36
The devastating impact of segregation on black children was not the result of being in segregated schools. The devastating impact of segregation was the fact...undeniable if one only looks...that the segregated schools for blacks were very underfunded compared with schools in the same school districts that were whites only. When I taught in segregated schools in the South Bronx and Harlem there was no chasm in the way white schools in the local districts were funded and the way majority minority schools were funded, and yet the difference in student performance was still substantial. Near the end of my years of teaching in NYC I taught in schools on the border between the upper west side and Harlem. The classes there were well-integrated racially and ethnically. The students still showed disparate educational attainment but there was no chasm as there was in the schools in the same district that were segregated by race and/or ethnicity.
Segregated schools clearly have a negative impact on student learning, but integrating schools...even integrating classrooms...is not a surefire cure for undoing generations of disparate learning results. Structural racism has led to disparities in student home life and student experiences that cannot be undone solely by sitting students next to students of different races or ethnicities. It is going to take a much greater focus on changing family and cultural patterns.
25
As somebody coming from a third a world country I'm always stunned how much resources even the "poorest" schools have in the US. They look like luxury resorts to me.
But at the end of the day if the people go to these schools are not willing to teach or learn there is no money in the world that can turn them into high performers.
61
I went to fully integrated schools in jr. and high schools. Busing didn't start until I graduated. But the many negative comments about the total failure of this initiative has the ring of truth to it. There's no question that forced busing had a negative impact on neighborhood schools while making segregation paradoxically worse. The clumsy way it was implemented was a complete disaster. That is beyond dispute. The solution then and the solution now is very simple. Public school funding in most districts was and is based on proper taxes. If you live in a poorer district your school will get less funding. That's wrong. First, all schools have to get the same yearly funding done to the penny. Second, the schools that are falling apart need to be brought up to spec. An inner city school should be indistinguishable from a suburban school. Third, we need magnet schools for those kids that excel in STEM subjects. Fourth any child should be able to attend any school in their district if they have room. This would solve most of the problems that forced busing promised to do but in the end, never did.
8
The author cites a study that shows poor results "cutting it in half for some black age groups without harming white children". Parents stressing academic excellence have to be convinced of this or the forced desegregation will not really work so. Finding the best school, education for your child is akin to finding the best spouse- it's almost never going to be good enough. I remember reading about the Clintons, the Kennedys sending their kids to an expensive prep schools during the forced busing and I knew democrats had lost all trust on this issue. Mickey Kaus had a reasoned response to the racial fears of parents. He proposed a % (supported by several studies) of low performing children being mixed into a high academic school in which the primary culture continued to support high academic achievement. The important thing was the school not lose its peer culture of academic excellence. Then everyone wins. This issue of school choice for parents have won many elections for the reactionary republicans. Research and care should be taken when offering proposals about addressing the problem of how to improve the education of needy children. Just accusing parents of racism will give us more reactionary/repubs like 45.
12
I want to add to my earlier comment. Black students were also adversely affected by the desegregation policy. Both races were struggling financially and were used as pawns by our politicians. It put a further divide between the races and hatred ensued. The public schools were of an inferior quality which meant that these students were shortchanged of a decent education. We all know that to succeed in life quality schools are a must. The desegregation program was poorly constructed and no one gained anything from the forced busing. Better schools in neighborhoods closer to home should have been implemented not busing students miles away from their homes.
6
Just absolutely brilliant and confirms why I am convinced the issue of education-racism or apartheid education will never be resolved so long as this government does not intervene and demand that it is.
3
In Denver, "busing" in the form of choice and charter schools has been the tool Denver Public Schools has used to allow resegregation of certain schools allowing white wealthy parents to transport their children to the best schools even when those schools are located in poor neighborhoods. The result is families without such resources can't even go to their neighborhood schools and have to travel further for a worse education. And kids from a single neighborhood don't grow up together. The answer is neighborhood schools with boundaries that include a variety of students. They build community, break down barriers, and instill fairness.
5
My wife and I both work long days, sacrifice vacations and other lifestyle perks, to earn enough money TO HAVE TO send our two kids to private school because the public schools in our upper income area have been destroyed by busing and from diverting our tax dollars to lower income area schools, which are still even worse.
I don’t care if my kids are wedged in a class of children of color at their private school. Most likely those other kids - because of the scarifies their parents must make to send them there - come from a home where education is valued, where there is parental involvement, where the kids are raised responsibly and well behaved, and so on.
However, if you were to swap half the kids at the private school with a group of kids of color pulled at random from a neighborhood of color, you’d get kids (statistically) who come from broken homes, gang affiliations, parental absenteeism and a raft of societal ills. Where is that going to lead? Does anyone honestly believe the kids of color are going to be transformed by their surrounding? No, but the surroundings will be transformed by them, and not in a good way conducive to education. And further, it’s not my job to help integrate them. Raising my own kids is a full time job on top of a full time job.
This isn’t an issue of racism for many people though there may be some stereotyping built into common assumptions - which could be avoided if each kid was screened. It’s about wanting for your own kids.
45
Our liberal democracy exists because of public schools that educate children of professionals with children of under skilled people who just get by. Elite schools condition children to see themselves as special and to see others as not.
6
Why do think the kids won’t be transformed by their experience, but will instead transform their environment? How to distinguish that assertion from finely tuned prejudice?
The evidence stands against. The author of the article, for one. Kamala Harris for two. Plus, you know, data.
7
As an immigrant newly arrived to the Midwest in the 80s, I attended middle school in a middle, upper middle class neighborhood. Our small apartment happened to straddle the boundary between the big city and this wealthy enclave.
Of course, as a 11,12 year old, I did not understand the political and social underpinnings of why African-American classmates were bused to our school. There were 20 per class who took the school bus daily to our 7th and 8th grade classes. I didn't know what type of neighborhood they lived in, but I knew they had come a distance... you know that feeling you get when you see people who have been in traffic for awhile, tired and sometimes weary eyed. From an anthropocentric optic, I walked 5 minutes through our bucolic neighborhood to get to school.
As a visible minority in a predominantly White school, I knew the majority viewed me as different. I was called Bruce Lee, and I always felt like a tag along rather than inherently cool (as much a as a 11 year old can ever hope to be!). But even as a naive kid, I knew that the White kids viewed the kids who were bused in differently as well. None of the African-American kids lived in the neighborhood. At the end of classes, the bus drove them back home miles away, while the rest of us walked home. I felt a profoundly strange dissonance. I was not White, but I stayed in the neighborhood. I never felt belonged. But why did some go home in an austere, yellow school bus? Why this daily detachment?
6
I remember vividly the desegregation of the Boston public schools. Having moved away from Boston, I visited my grandparents each summer in Belmont which was not one of the towns affected.
Every day in the early 1970s the Boston Globe wrote an article about the desegregating of the Boston school system. This is what all Bostonians were talking about at this time.
It was not only black students who were bused into white neighborhoods but white students were bused into black neighborhoods. Many of these white students were poor and also disadvantaged. Many of the families were just making ends meet and they felt as though they had been neglected and forgotten by the politicians. Both white and black students had to travel long distances to arrive at their new schools. It was only the poor whites who were affected. Those implementing these policies were tucked away into comfortable upscale neighborhoods and their children were not affected. There was bitter blood between the races and the children were the victims.
The result of the forced busing was that there was white flight and that many of those remaining sent their children to private and parochial schools. The end result was that the schools were once again segregated. I am not making a value judgement either way but it was poorly planned. The hatred from all sides could have been avoided if the neighborhood schools had been of a higher quality. No one came out the winner and it was the children who lost.
28
The author is missing the point in my opinion . It’s not the distance of the ride on the bus , it’s going to a completely different community than where your own school is , which includes your friends and all else that’s familiar to the student .
It’s very disruptive at a time when students need consistency.
Thank god I didn’t have to endure that or my children . It’s not a solution in my opinion.
20
The biggest flaw and the essence of this well written article is “black children will never get what white children get unless they sit where white children sit.” I am a product of public high schools in the suburbs of Los Angeles during the early 80’s. This was a time when the majority of families sent their kids to public schools. Private school was very rare. You grew up with the kids in the neighborhoods and played with them in the afternoon through early evening. I graduated high school in 1984 and busing had just started. Fast forward 35 years later and our public high schools in my same neighborhood growing up do not provide great education for my kids. Huge classes and mediocre educators. Most families are spending crazy amounts of money to send their kids to private schools.
I just wonder what would have happened if legislators spent as much energy money and resources insisting that equal if not more money and resources be pumped back into the local schools in poor neighborhoods. This might have created a situation for families in predominantly white neighborhoods to bus their kids to better funded schools in poorer neighborhoods.
I wholeheartedly support “equal resources for all”. I just think busing created a lot of revenue for the private schools across the country and siphoned those resources from parents paying those ungodly amounts of money versus pumping money into local public schools.
9
The author succeeded because of her parenting. And more often than not, a strong & steadfastly caring mother.
9
Do you know the author personally, or are you just projecting your beliefs on her story? Because her own account of her experience doesn’t credit her mother solely.
Unless you know her particularly well, it seems rude if not patronizing to place any claims about the influences on her childhood above her own account.
3
What a bait and switch. The author argues that busing desegregated schools. Fine, but did the cost and disruption improve learning? If success is desegregation, it worked. If it was better learning, no it did not succeed .
19
@Phillip Getson... If desegregation was the intent, not necessarily higher grades for the bussed students, then perhaps you can claim some success. I say that as a white student in a school population of about 70/30 (white/black). Spending time with others different than you is itself educational, so all students in that environment would benefit. I know I did. That part won't show up on report cards.
1
What if the learning that we needed was desegregation? Since whites were refusing to learn any other way? Any subject I want to learn about I can to learn. No need for school. I just need the discernment of what is accurate source material to ensure that the learning acquired contributes to my body of knowledge. Much of what we acquire in school is social capital. That includes our habits, practices, social networks and norms. Denying access to social capital often is the denial of access to financial and educational capital.
In addition, I know a whole lot of whites who don’t value education, who snear at pointy-headed “elites.” Some are even in the White House.
As a black person I find it difficult to live in a country were some segment of the population complains that they don’t want their children in schools with “those people who don’t believe in education” while supporting policies that would explicitly deny them equal access to education. Who then elect leaders who don’t believe in peer-reviewed science or equal public access to education. Is it good for kids to learn? Or not? So confusing.
Why then pretend we value excellence? And study? And deliberation?
It becomes wearying to read so many people whom are called the “educated” and “elites” be so misinformed coupled with denial caused by a lack of self-reflection of how we came to be where we here with the leadership we have now.
11
My child and his friends were in an affluent neighborhood in Los Angeles when busing began. It was a nightmare. The school polarized with the black kids ruling the roost, fighting was one way as the whites never knew how to fight or organize into gangs. At the end of the year little progress had been made. 20 white kids had committed suicide and the principal had told the parents he would not send his child to the school. The private schools were packed with waiting lists and my child was left to face the onslaught. Teachers would not interfere in the fights in fear of their own safety. My child learned to just outrun his attackers, while his classmates often got beat up. So the pent up anger from ions of abuse were unleashed without adult protection and supervision to heal, redirect, and change the vengeance. At the end of the year, there was still segregation with the cafeteria divided into three distinct sections of the Blacks in hierarchy, then the Spanish, and last the whites. My child was raised without prejudice since we had a most integrated business and eclectic base of friends. Sadly today he remains somewhat prejudiced.
29
@ronronscienceman What a savage situation. They should have called in the National Guard. In my day, the troublemakers would have been removed. Why can't we do that now?
7
The schools in the urban core weren’t bad because of the people in them. They were bad because we intentionally underfunded and underinvested in every single part of the community. We not only underfunded them. We created a police state where someone who didn’t have $1 could be arrested and jailed for not having a dollar and for learning to read (and yes those laws were ENFORCED into the 1950s).
The people in those schools didn’t hate learning. They’d just learned that it didn’t have the same impact and reward in many of their lives that it did in yours. My black child who was reading at a college freshman level in kindergarten had white teachers continually attempt to keep him out of advanced classes while they pushed my two white sons who were B students into advanced classes. From not providing bus service in and out of communities to higher interest rates, to over policing, those neighborhoods were designed to be exhausting gauntlets.
So all of you claiming, “whatever could parents have done? We just wanted what was best for our children.” That doesn’t make us racist. Well, if you supported public polices that harmed black and brown people and benefitted white people as a whole, then pretty definitionally. . . Well, you know. You don’t have to dislike black people to be a “racist.” You just don’t have to care or act against when a system of laws is enacted to limit and harm them and only comment on it when something is done to rectify the outcomes of those laws.
9
@wordsonfire
Nice idea, but it doesn’t reflect reality anymore. “Inner city” schools usually end up with at least as much, if not more, funding per student than the predominantly white ones. Schools that are deemed “underperforming” receive federal funding to offset the discrepancy in local property taxes. And in the suburbs, parents contribute financially to public education not only through higher property taxes, but through fundraisers and booster clubs, PTA, school supplies, support for after-school activities, and so on. Single parents who are themselves still emotionally and financially children? Not so much. The priorities are just different. But the issue isn’t how much schools are funded.
Source: my girlfriend is a teacher in the public school system and a bleeding heart leftist. All the funding in the world won’t fix the anti-education attitude that sadly persists in many pockets of this country. At least it hasn’t yet.
27
@RJR Actually you are blaming the effect because you refuse to admit the cause. The response to busing was just another denial of access. Then after denying rights for generations saying, "oh well, they didn't really want to pull themselves up. We are white saviors. We work with them. We are capable of judging their worthiness. We told you so."
How many generations would you tolerate being blocked from the school house door? How long would you tolerate being told how inferior you are and having laws enacted against you before YOU lost your motivation? Especially living in a country that doesn't value education or teachers?
As a high performing black person who knows way more high performing black people than I know high performing white people, you just aren't in the position to tell me "what the case is anymore."
I'm in the public schools all the time.
I have a high performing black child that his white teachers did everything they could do to keep him accessing the classes he'd earned grades to be in. But automatically placed my two white sons in advanced classes even though they were just okay students who didn't work all that hard.
Take the veil away from your eyes. Start seeing the CAUSE of this fear that learning and all the hard work won't lead to any different future than it has for past generations. Instead of focusing on the EFFECT. We have the EFFECT as was designed by LAW which is the CAUSE.
3
Thanks for pointing out what was right in front of our eyes.
4
The greatest privilege in America is not whiteness or attending a white high school, but having two sane parents in your household. I would bet anything that the author of this piece is in the latter category. Let me go look her up... yep. Civil servant and military veteran father, and college educated mother. I would guess different education levels, but that is actually irrelevant if both parents are together and care about a child's education. I think she would have succeeded at an all black high school, all white high school, all Asian high school, all Latino High School, mixed high school, or whatever.
In general, it would be easier to educate individuals to choose their partners carefully, and not get pregnant as a couple until after 1000 days of marriage, than to institute forced busing programs. we should focus on the achievable.
25
Oh, so we don’t need better schools or equitable social policies. We just need better people. Check.
Do parents make a difference? Yes, of course. Does the school make no difference? Obviously not, else parents wouldn’t struggle mightily everywhere to put their kids in the best schools. Andover would be begging to students.
Show me the happy well educated well adjusted couple unconcerned about their kid’s school. Show me the impoverished single parent with a GED who wouldn’t be delighted to have an excellent public school down the block. Show me the suburban enclave with well reputed schools and low property values, because who really cares anyway?
The school matters.
5
The best sentence in this essay is “Historically in this country, the removal of racist legal barriers has often come without any real effort to cure the inequality the now unconstitutional laws and policies had created.“. The question we continue to face is which “efforts” will yield the best “cures” for educational inequalities.
Like the author, I attended integrated schools from second grade onward. My experience suggests the efforts were not sufficient to meet the challenges. Little was done to address and remedy the effects of prior inequality. By the time we graduated, this inequality had not been remedied and black children were significantly under-represented among the top students in the school system.
There were several problems: 1) teachers received little training in how to address the needs of mixed abilities; 2) The idea seemed to be that by simply integrating the schools, equality would be achieved, without devoting special efforts to remedy prior sub-standard education. 3) rather than try to build up the skills of the black students, the overall quality of education was lowered, denying many students either the support or the stimulation their abilities required.
Forced integration in my experience was not an unmitigated success for anyone. It went only part way to address shameful prior inequalities. Much more thoughtful work must be done to develop educational systems across the US that provide equal opportunity for high quality teaching.
12
It is really about equal quality of education. And the fact was that schools in predominantly black areas did not have the resources (financial, teachers, physical plant) to provide a quality of education equal to that of schools in predominantly white areas. This what was meant by "separate but equal is inherently unequal." There were a number of solutions. One was to bring the quality of all of the public schools to the same level in terms of money, staff, and physical plant. The other was to move kids via busses to better schools. A third, and unfortunately all too common attempt was to move kids via busses to worse schools. And that created, outside of the South, a lot of backlash. Whether that was deliberate sabotage of the concept laid forth in Brown v. Board of Education is something for the reader to contemplate, but the stench of sabotage is pretty strong.
3
Busing is like using a band aid on a gunshot wound: the real problem is housing segregation. If we can integrate as neighbors, busing is not necessary.
8
Focus. People. Focus.
We are aren’t arguing for busing so stop freaking out and acting as though we are! We are merely saying Y’ALL wouldn’t get your stuff together after enacting so many laws to harm blacks during slavery, after the civil war, after Jim Crow, SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE. And ANYTHING WE SUGGESTED WAS REBUFFED.
So stop justifying. And denying. Start talking about the actual history of our country and who enacted the laws the lead to busing. It wasn’t black and brown people or liberals. It was CONSERVATIVES who by denying rights to people whom they didn’t consider to deserve equal rights.
Please note that somewhere else this week is an article on this very page that speaks of the new “Commission on Human Rights” where Trump and Pompeo feel free to ask “do we really have inalienable rights?” Or do we “earn them.”
Pay attention to what you are paying attention to. We are talking about the conditions that existed and the attitudes that prevailed that led to busing and asking each and every one of us to be reflective so that it does not happen again.
9
I do hope the author is mistaken when she concludes that "It is unlikely that we will ever again see an effort to deconstruct our system of caste schools like what we saw between 1968 and 1988." Given the woes segregation bestows upon us, one has to hope that we will do better than we are today. Of course, one cannot be faulted for assessing the cultural moment and concluding as she has. In any event, a brilliant piece of work by the author and a necessary part and parcel of what might actually lead to those now seemingly out-of-reach better days.
3
Some suggestions for this discussion. I don't claim to know everything, but here are things that should not be left out.
1. Start with honesty. Admit that making children leave their own neighborhood harms them, especially when, as often happens, their friends are not bused, or go elsewhere. Admit that making a child spend more time on a bus, often much more time on a bus, harms the child.
2. Stop smears. Admit that just because racists oppose forced busing doesn't mean that everyone who opposes forced busing is a racist.
3. Avoid reckless claims. Don't claim that you can assess the effect of complex and large scale social engineering, especially when you don't consider all the effects.
4. Acknowledge that forced busing is a major infringement on freedom of the individual. The judges who ordered busing must have thought that governments have the right to harm some children in order to, as they thought, help others. Whether you accept that or not, it is a fundamental issue. Not everything that is legal is right. Surely we know that now, with today's courts.
30
Hashtag NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE supported these brutal and oppressive interlocking public policies, but enough did that they became the laws of the land and some of their legacies remain very hard to dismantle. Many in this country are going along with the attempt to deny voting access to populations right now under the pretense of “protecting the vote.” Pay attention to what you are paying attention to.
There is no justification for how whites behaved UNLESS we continue to hold the opinion that it’s okay to subjugate certain groups of our populations and we haven’t really gotten on board with the whole idea that “we are all created equal.” It would begin the healing if more people just said “This was wrong. We are doing better and we need to do even better.” And said it every single time evidence of the way that the bad public policies of white people NEGATIVELY impacted the lives of all people in the community. It wasn’t the busing that was the problem. Say it. It wasn’t the busing that was the problem. It was the public policies we tolerated because as long as we could get rid of it, it didn’t impact us. And, we could tell stories of brutality and incidences of violence, while creating a brutal and violent system writ large and codified and practiced in LAW.
8
May I suggest that raising the income level of poor parents is a better solution than busing? I have black friends who moved our of Newark to a mostly white suburb as soon as their daughter hit kindergarten. They are not racist. When people have the means, they will vote with their feet, particularly where their children are concerned.
15
It was never about busing, it was always about race and racism. I live in a school district with a mixed elementary school. Many of my white liberal, highly educated neighbors bend over backwards to get their children into all white schools in our town driving far every morning to get their children to school. I always ask, how can anyone one say that an all white school is a “good” school in such a diverse society as U.S. is?
6
Next she'll be crying about the so-called school to prison pipeline. Claiming that black kids get picked on because white teachers don't understand their ghetto culture.
If anyone has evidence to support the idea that poor inner city black parents have made education the most important priority in their children's lives I would love to see it.
If so than why are we seeing chronic absenteeism, generally poor work habits, lack of parental engagement and support, counterproductive student behaviors, low graduation and college acceptance rates, and even lower college completion rates. Worse yet, black students who openly reject academics because it makes them look "too white".
Bad schools? Hardly. Bad (non-serious) students? Absolutely.
As they say in baseball, you are what your record says you are. And where are the black leaders willing to step up and speak truth to power in order to get their house in order?
29
Thank you, Ms. Hannah-Jones for this excellent history lesson. I did not know that the northern states have resisted school integration as much or more than the southern ones. I urge my fellow voters to learn more about our country's past than the often sanitized ("white" washed) versions we learned in school. Try Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow or Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns to name but two others one can learn much from. Further, I wonder if our arrogance or certainty (holier than thou?) feeds the different red vs blue perspectives on so many matters between us and our fellow citizens in the south.
I hope we can soon come together in a massive effort other than a war to make this county better for all of us. We have all the ability and resources we need right in front of ourselves.
8
I have always felt a bit uncomfortable about my high school experience. In Denver, in the 80's, there was a school in predominately black neighborhood that offered open enrollment. What that meant, is white kids who lived out of the district could opt to be bused to that school to help integration. The school had decent resources, was academically one of the top Denver schools - but seemingly not for the black kids that were there. I noticed there were very few black kids in the "accelerated" classes that were attended by mostly white students like myself. It bewildered me, that there were clearly a majority of black students at the school, but they were not all that integrated in the actual classrooms. It seemed that the few black kids in those college prep classes were from black affluent families and not from the black neighborhood. There were no black teachers in the accelerated courses. As I white kid, I chose to go to that school because the high school in my district was lacking in the quality of academia one would desire for higher education preparation. My choice to go to the black school was a privilege but I don't know how the presence of white people like myself actually improved the experience for the black kids who would be going to that school anyway. Even with the quality of academic offerings there, the black kids seemed to be in a different curriculum altogether.
8
Great article, Nicole! Equal opportunity in school achievement is so critical to the inequities we have between races. We have to find ways to desegregate our schools.
Thank you so much, Ms. Hannah-Jones, for this article. It is so important that we remember our history and accurately assess its consequences. This should be required reading for Sen. Biden and all other candidates for federal office. Whenever I see photos of the white faces contorted with rage at brave black students entering formerly all-white schools, I wonder whether they now feel ashamed. Someone should find them and interview them.
One can only hope their minds have changed.
4
Great article. We have a very hard time accepting that segregation is caused by racism! It is not a secondary effect of other socioeconomic causes. Segregation was intentionally built into our entire society for hundreds of years, and the efforts of many to undo it are incomplete at best.
Joe Biden’s cooperation with segregationist Senators on this issue, although not unique, was disgraceful. The fact that he would now defend that position and praise segregationist Senators as polite partners in that effort shows how stunningly out of touch he is. Kamala Harris was right to take him to task, and neither that position nor his failure in the Anita Hill matter will play well with Democratic black voters in 2020.
It is said that liberals must just look forward without re-fighting past conflicts. But that’s impossible, because the “past” conflicts aren’t really past. Racism, segregation and economic inequality are still facts of American life in 2019, and now voter suppression has gotten much worse with the Republican gutting of the Voting Rights Act, extreme gerrymandering and an openly racist President. These fights must all indeed be re-fought, including school desegregation.
8
I don't really understand why anyone would object to the desire, on the part of parents, to keep their children, often little grade school age children, close to home, in neighborhoods they understood. The answer to the problem of underfunded inner city schools was better funding, not forced busing. District or school system lines are fictions, if they have any meaning, that meaning is social, political. Really, where would you draw the line to achieve integration; is it OK to bus a child to another borough, another city or town? another county, another school district, another state? Is there any cost to children and parents that is too high to pay? Forced desegregation via busing was bound to be give rise to opposition, it was a bad idea from the start.
There were of course racists at the forefront of the anti-busing protests but a parent need not be a racist to object to having their children used as pawns in a social experiment.
12
In the 80s, I was one of three white kids who, along with most of the black kids in a predominantly black neighborhood were bused to a wealthy white school. The kids zoned to this school were rich; we were poor. There were a lot of moments of self-alienation for those of us who were bused in-- we all felt ourselves in that school as "other" in all sorts of ways. The school was progressive: we sang "this land is your land" as our morning song after the pledge of allegiance, but we all knew whose land it was and whose land it wasn't. While even the poor whites found the experience alienating, there is no doubt in my mind that this was an especially alienating experience for the black kids. Looking back on it now, I'm sure there were even times when I used my own whiteness to my advantage, in order to feel more secure.
There were good things about this experience, though, and I don't want to diminish them. We had excellent teachers who did their best to make us feel comfortable together, and even though there were obvious differences between the neighborhood kids and those of us who were bused in, there were moments of meaningful connection.
My concern with busing as an issue is that it does not even come close to addressing the totality of inequality. To do that, we have to rethink neighborhoods, urban space, and the distribution of the dough. Also, we have to find meaningful ways to value black life, which has been devalued for so long.
11
Busing was not the fundamental public policy that derived from racism. The overarching federal, state and local housing policies that subsidized "white flight " , supported by unspoken racism, is what resegregated our communities. If you could make a car payment and a mortgage payment, government at every level would subsidize your move from the city to the suburbs. Government would build the new schools, roads , libraries etc. plus pay for more police and fire services to accommodate the sprawl. And of course, the jobs followed the car and mortgage payments. If you couldn't make those payments, you were left behind with weaker schools and no job. Busing was a natural unhappy result.
Unacknowledged government subsidies for middle class sprawl is and was the fundamental issue for huge inefficient government spending that supported white flight and a major factor in busing.
In all too many communities, these government policies continue .
6
For those of us who remember busing, we know it could be a major failure, as in Boston, or a major success, as in Charlotte.
25 years ago, I looked for quality mixed race high schools for my kids. There are hardly any. In Phoenix, Sunnyslope High School is 59% minority and it has a full array of AP classes.
The graduation rate at Sunnyslope is 95% and most who go on to college attend one of Arizona's three state schools. And the top of each class attend elite colleges.
Sunnyslope seems to serve its whole student body quite well. I have never heard a parent or a student trash the school. (I'm sure there are some.)
Sunnyslope draws from two adjacent districts. One is mostly upper middle class, the other is poor. And busing for integration is not necessary because the boundaries of the district take care of that.
You don't find many districts that are naturally integrated. And that's pretty much what you need today if you want the kind of school contemplated by Brown v. Board. As for busing, at the high school level it is not a big deal. And if it were carefully used to create schools like Sunnyslope, most parents would be thrilled. But busing got a bad rap. If it were used surgically in only the right places, it would have made school shopping a lot easier for me.
6
Thanks for this great essay.
Sharing priviledges is always resisted, that is part of our selfish reflex - giving something being seen as loosing something.
Segregation in housing with large difference in housing value and school performance is a driver for people seeing integration as a risk of loss by depressing school performance and by association their most valued asset their house. That's get people pretty fired up when you hit them in the wallet.
This is obviously a very shortsighted reaction, as integration benefits out-weight the perceived costs. Schools are getting better overtime in mixed neighborhoods.
I grew up in french schools, there public schooling quality is quite good, still your zipcode mattered a lot but mostly due to socio-economics .
My daughter went to school in California and also saw very different student population in Cupertino, Los Altos and Woodside. All the school are somewhat mixed with different dominant ethnicities. From the super academically oriented mostly Asian schools, to the white/Latino more socially oriented (party school for rich kids).
Even when integrated, one high school can really hide two schools. One for the priviledge kids loading up on AP credits and one for the mostly hispanic kids taking the regular classes with little overlap. A majority of the affluent kids tend segregate as their prospective and aspirations are quite different., the school administration is happy to accomodate that (fundraising!) .
1
Some commenters seem to believe that federally mandated busing to achieve integration would be only one-way, from urban schools to suburban schools, as if all or most urban minority kids will be bused to suburbs.
However, the fact of the matter is that in order for busing to work it would have to be two-way, with substantial numbers of minority schoolkids bused from city schools to suburban schools, and substantial numbers of white kids bused from suburbs to urban schools.
This is why so many suburban residents oppose mandatory busing, not because their schools will receive some minority students, but because to balance things out some white students will have to be bused to urban schools, which parents of all races would generally agree are of lower quality than those in the suburbs.
If busing were only one-way, from cities to suburbs, the taxes of suburban residents would have to go up to pay for additional teachers and classrooms, which is never going to happen. Nor is it remotely likely that cities will give to suburban schools the money the cities save by closing schools and laying off teachers no longer needed because the city kids have been bused to suburban schools.
If the Democratic Party makes federally mandated busing of students a plank in its 2020 platform, we are doomed to another term of Trump.
11
I read an article about Palo Alto schools recently where a kid lamented that he was terrified of failing and having a "second tier life". I think that's a root fear that many wealthy white parents have about busing - yes, it might help somebody else's black and brown kids get into a good college (maybe even an Ivy), but it will doom MY kid to an unacceptable "second tier life".
One of the common arguments that I've read in favor of busing is that teaches minority kids how to operate in the world of educated, successful people and opens them to greater opportunities, networking etc. A lot of white parents, in their heads, are thinking about the opposite side of it, that rather than getting into any Ivy, their kid will be learning "street skills" and how to network with drug dealers. (I'm not defending this mind set, just pointing out that it is a prevalent fear).
You can't ask parents to sacrifice their kid's best interests to help other people's kids. When it comes to one's own children, people are incredibly selfish. I honestly don't know how to this can be solved.
13
I love how she never mentions that some of the judges and (limited) number of politicians that supported FORCED busing, sent their kids to private schools.
I love how she never mentions how much it cost to send the school buses further.
My understanding is that most inner city schools spend just as much per student as suburban schools.
Also, Kamala Harris was part of a VOLUNTARY busing program.
Forced and voluntary are two VERY different things.
Go ask 100 parents (regardless of race) in the suburbs if they volunteer THEIR kid to go to an inner city school. Good luck getting to 1.
21
Go ask 100 black people if they would have preferred equal access to education and equal protection under the law. Ask 1,000. Ask 1 million. All of them would have said that would have been the FAR PREFERRED solution.
4
A great reminder of the real history behind busing. I can add that, of the black students I knew in college around Chicago, almost all of them had been bussed (in the non-kissing sense) and attributed their ability to handle college classes to that fact. Of course bussing worked, in the educational sense. If failed politically, sometimes as violently and dramatically in the north as the south (cf. south Boston), sometimes more subtly and gradually.
While this is an interesting and detailed history, it is also a prime example of the false dichotomy fallacy. Yes, white families have tried to keep schools segregated from black and Hispanic students. But that does not preclude white families from also wanting to keep their elementary school children close to home. Both things are true, and one does not preclude the other- false dichotomy.
Also notable is the fact that the white community is not particularly opposed to integrating their schools with high-performing students from other minorities- Asians and Jews for instance. So perhaps another factor in opposing busing is to maintain high educational standards. While this may highly correlate with excluding black and Hispanic students, the primary motivation may be maintaining the standards, and not excluding minorities, as minorities per se.
17
In the 50s because of Brown vs Board of Education busing became the focus for integration, in an effort to equalize citizen treatment in education. So long as education is paid for by local communities it will reflect ether economic biases of the nation. Wealthier families can collect more more from taxes for their schools than minority families. And there have been more middle class and wealthy families among whites than blacks because of the long history of economic bias against minorities.
It was not until the Equal Right’s Law was passed in the 60s that a dent was made in the economic standing of blacks in this country. The bias that exists emanates from within the individuals comprising the majority white community and it is often quiet and easy to hide. It gets expressed in ways subtle and overt in housing (charging black tenants more for an apartment and not repairing things promptly), in pay and job advancement, in higher cost mortgages and other forms of lending — not just education. The law cannot remove the stone that lies in the hearts of people who are racially biased and equal education has to be paid for by the state or even the nation if it is to overcome the inherent bias of money. Ironically, conservatives now push for the publicly funded but privately operated school. And quickly these private schools manage to push out the minority students who attend because they argue they cannot “keep up.” Just bias expressed again and using public monies!
1
Busing worked - it got more Republicans elected than any other issue in the 20th century.
12
Exactly. So anything that could be done to rectify years of high white tolerance for laws denying civil and human rights to black and low white tolerance for laws enforcing black civil rights caused this problem in the first place.
That’s what’s depressing and is what is hiding in plain site. It lives in our White House and in our public policies being enacted to. It’s just a different strain.
2
If you oppose the tools (methods) for achieving an outcome, then you basically oppose the desired change.
If you want change, you have to find the methods to make that change take place - and then support them.
"I'm going on a diet to lose weight, but Im not dieting. I oppose any alterations in my food intake." Doesn't work.
I'm going to build a wooden fence. But I oppose the use of post hole-diggers, shovels, levels, hammers, nails and saws. No good fence is gonna be built.
We need to stop letting guys like Biden play word games. We have a POTUS and his minions who are the sloppiest of word-salad makers...he/they are enough...it should end with him...
2
@Boregard The ends don't justify the means.
4
At mid century the southern democrats were like republicans. It was difficult for politicians to survive. Biden was not alone in trying to navigate muddy political waters. Give this guy a break. He is a viable option for voters. Once a Democrat is selected to be the candidate Citizens United et al will churn out the lies and smears full time.
4
In the modern era, show me the statistics to back up your claim that busing works. In my area, we have school choice and a voluntary busing program that allows inner city kids to get free transportation to high performing suburban schools. After a decade or so, they have yet to prove any improvement in test scores from the program. Which means that maybe there's more to it than just the school that you attend, when it comes to college readiness. Democrats; stop with the circular firing squad. This is not the hill to die on.
18
I believe the point is that NOTHING would work. That whites were adamantly opposed no matter the remedy or solution. And that many are still in denial about that reality. Which means that the willingness to tolerate unjust laws that deny civil and human rights to an intentionally demonized and dehumanized minority has not decreased because too many here can’t even see that it existed in the first place.
Denying EVERY MEANS TO SOLVE A PROBLEM CREATED BY THE MAJORITY OF VOTERS means that you aren’t really too interested in solving that problem and have an high incentive for making every method for solving that problem fail. And as a bonus, you get to blame the very people whom you seek to deny civil and human right because they really aren’t worthy of those rights and didn’t earn them.
3
Busing was a cure worse than the disease. It caused more of what it intended to remedy - segregation, bad schools, and racism. Logically, doing nothing would have been better.
4
Ms. Hannah-Jones is correct, Bravo! The truth is the truth!
Certainly an interesting and challenging(for many here) article.
Big picture folks...the character and quality of life in our country ultimately depends on the on the character and quality of education and opportunities "available" to our citizens. Failure to provide them consistently is why we are in arguably the most delicate political and cultural position in our history...(when taking into account the knowledge and resources available today!) You would honestly think and expect most Americans... in spite of their differences..to realize this. There has to enough smart and motivated people who can compromise their ideals enough to actively seek to promote allocation of resources towards these goals. Our historic national experiment demands these sacrifices...without them soon, we will continue to fail our national myths and the freedoms and liberties they promised to all.
5
The reason it failed is that the right to assemble is a right of the people and not a right of the state. While the state can and should insure equal treatment under the law, the state cannot force free people to assemble with people they have not chosen to assemble with.
11
Camilla Harris was bused in Berkeley, CA, a city of 100,000 and home of the University of California. This was not Oakland or Detroit or even San Diego where white kids were bused 1-1/2 hours each day to schools unprepared to accept them. The dilema for liberal parents is that their 10 -12 year olds were unprepared to bear this burden. White parents had to decide what was best for their kids and in many cities, that meant white flight to the suburbs. Public K-12 schools are all about location. Raising families out of poverty so they could live where the better schools were would have been a macro solution rather than busing.
4
When I started Marshall High in Chicago in 1954, the student population was 25% black.
Over the following four years of a community in transition, the proportion was 75% black.
My family did not leave.
We all walked to our neighborhood school and there were no busses.
We all sat in the same classes.
School spirit was high because we had a state champion basket ball team, the Commandos!
My home room was the Orchestra, cello section.
I remember fondly Dorothy H, a black fellow student, whom I sat next to for four friendly and happy years.
We had a 50th year high school reunion some years ago, and my former co-students participated in equal racial numbers.
At the reunion, after 50 years, Dorothy broke me away from my girlfriend on the dance floor.
We danced.
What a wonderful experience after so any years!
My thanks to, and God bless, all my wonderful fellow students from Marshall high.
5
Advocates for busing implicitly acknowledge that there are certain schools in our country where it is impossible to get a top notch education.
The reason for this is we've eliminated grouping by ability at most pre-high school levels, so that in every school the most advanced kids are in the same classroom as the least advanced ones, and social promotion means they all pass every year anyway.
This means it's impossible to get a good education at these schools because they cater to the lowest achievers. That's the problem we should fix. Every school should give you the opportunity to be incredibly successful, but if you don't take it, that's on you (well really, on your parents, it's not your fault). It's not fair to the high achievers that they are put in a classroom with students who are years behind them on the development scale.
12
I teach in the nation's second largest school district. It's unofficially segregated. The school where I teach reflects the district: more than 70% is Hispanic, less than 20% Asian, the rest are a handful of non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks. I've come to understand the vitality that integration has, or could have, when some students have come back to visit after starting college. "I didn't know there were so many white people out there," or "I'm rooming with a guy who's mother works for the IMF." Most students, when they leave public school, have to adjust to a world they've never known, have to be comfortable working around people they've never experienced.
It works both ways. If you've never been around people different from you, you're not likely to suddenly become accepting of them in adulthood--and if you're in a position to hire them, you're more likely to hire someone you're comfortable with. American capitlalism works largely on networks: who you know, who you trust, who you can work with. That's one reason integration is important.
8
There are reasons why a family might want their child to be able to walk to a neighborhood school.
Defense of desegregation does not require an accusation of concealed racism. Defense of court-ordered busing does not require blindness to the complex web of dislocations that may be produced by such an impactful policy.
The most successful desegregation programs to date have been the ones that took the time and made the arduous effort to tailor the program to the local situation as they existed at that time and place.
7
@Sequel
Oh stop it! We know - with evidence - why desegregation was opposed in your hometown. Places like Boston. And it wasn't some random, and/or unique inconveniences!
We know exactly why families in the richer NYC neighborhoods don't want to see kids from less advantaged 'hoods come to their schools. Its that they don't want their kids to be distracted by "other culture", to be exposed to "other thinking", to maybe fall-in love with an "other" kid.
We know because they have said so!
We know why in Boston, they didn't want black kids in or want their kids to be moved to other schools. They said it all out-loud. And little of it was nice.
4
According to the author, the problem isn’t busing, it’s the racism of whites.
In the recent TV debate Kamala Harris wounded Biden by bringing up busing, but at the same time shot herself in the foot by suggesting that the solution to de facto-segregated schools is a federally-mandated program of busing white children to minority schools, which are mostly in cities, and minority children to white schools, which are mostly in suburbs.
In fact, Ms. Harris is right. White students are around 15% of the student body in most urban school systems, so the only way to achieve a significant amount of integration is to bus minority kids to suburban schools and white kids to urban schools.
Because school systems are controlled largely by state and municipal regulations, the only way to achieve this is through federal intervention, as Ms. Harris correctly noted.
Most parents of all races are more concerned with educational quality rather the percentages of races in schools; that is why charter schools often have long waiting lists for enrollments, while most urban public schools do not.
Federally-mandated busing of white and minority students is not the answer; what is needed are federal and state commitments to ensuring that all schools—urban, suburban and rural—offer quality education.
10
Thank you for this history of a most difficult time in our country of which we still suffer. Yes, we have failed.
2
For a moment, let’s choose to consider “busing failed,”differently. A way in which FAIL, whatever the criteria, is not a predictable, negative outcome. Rather it IS an inherent, necessary opportunity TOWARDS an incrementally achieved targeted goal. Given that critical interacting internal and external conditions-relevant knowledge, understanding, diverse technologies, human and non-human resources- are available. Accessible. In an ongoing timely way. Known,unknown as well as hidden barriers can be documented.Over time. “Passable bridges” for change can be/are constructed. Walked on. Over. By…”Busing failed?” The Buddhist’s suggest: “Fall down 7 times, get up 8 times; that is the road to perfection.” Perhaps racism, with its toxic, infectious dehumanization, exclusion, stigmatization, marginalization, unjust adjudications, etc. have not fallen enough, notwithstanding the numbers of innocent bodies, psyches, souls and spirits killed. Maimed. Traumatized.Because…Because ordinary folk are complicit. Others are complacent. Because SOME car drivers, “busers,” “trainers,””walkers,” “bikers,even folk in wheel chairs choose to BE- remain willfully blind to what should not exist. Deaf to the experienced existential pains of others ALL around. Willfully ignorant of available and accessible, generalizable FACTS. Not fictions! Fantasies! Myths! Alt-facts! “Ever tried. Ever failed.No matter. Try again. Fail Again. FAIL BETTER.” IF “buses fail;” OUR accountability is not far behind.
The simple truth is that in a democracy, if a large number of people are adamantly opposed to something for any reason, it's not going to happen. That's reality. An elected government is not going to be able to use the necessary amount of force to subdue the populace, because they need the votes and support.
10
Thank you Ms. Hannah-Jones for a superb analysis of this subject. As you make clear, one need only replace the word “busing” with “de-segregation” anywhere it is mentioned to understand more fully the true nature of the resistance.
4
I went to a school in the Boston suburbs, in the 60's, that had several courageous kids from Dorchester bused in. But, nobody stood on the front steps and screamed at them or threw tomatoes, nobody bothered them in classes or the hallway. I was only about 15, and really had no consciousness of the political ramifications, but I believe busing those kids was the best thing to do at the time. I hope those kids feel the same. I hope they were very successful having attended our school.
6
I listened to the entire Lee Atwater 1981 interview, and it does not support the view that Republicans pandered to racists to court their votes except for a limited period in the South between 1954-1968 during the turmoil after Brown v. Board and ending with Nixon’s election. That was a period of hot racism in the South as people reacted violently to desegregation. By 1968 the South had grudgingly accepted the increased political participation of African-Americans. In the early 1970s a wider geographic region reacting to forced busing presented an opportunity to use coded racism to court voters by abstract, ostensibly racially neutral arguments against busing and other progressive programs. By the end of that decade, racial issues didn’t rank in the top ten on the minds of voters. Reagan captured the country’s votes by his focus on fiscal responsibility and national defense. Class division overtook race as an issue, and the Republican strategy focused on courting “producers” - working class whites, country club millionaires, and the new black professional and business class - pitting them against “nonproducers” who were cast as mooching off the labor of others.
During and after the Reagan-Bush years, racism was pretty well extirpated from the Republican Party, but Democrats continued to exploit the legacy of temporary pandering to cold racism that occurred during the Republican takeover of the South. Republicans have been backpedaling against accusations ever since.
4
To the folks complaining about the long bus rides, I question whether they read about how Americans were perfectly happy to make black children ride the bus for long commutes past whites-only schools. Or did they read the part where in Detroit the segregated schools were literally next door, but in “different districts.”
Either way, I think a long bus ride is worth giving every child a quality education and creating a healthy pluralistic society. Not to mention, long bus rides are fine. Your precious children will survive. Ask any child who grew up in a rural area who had to wake up before dawn to catch the bus. I’m one of them. It is time to read, listen to music, or just meditate before and after school. It is time away from unscheduled activities.
I would also like to have more integrated neighborhoods, so that busing would be less necessary. Though, in my experience the people who oppose busing are also the same people who would oppose mixed income development, apartment complexes, or multi-family homes, being allowed to harm the “character” of their community.
2
@Emily Page
As a mother, absolutely not.
My young children come home exhausted and their bus ride to their neighborhood school is only 15 minutes each way. They leave at 8:30 and get home at 4:15. Considering the importance of play, busing would have a terrible effect on their development. They also have friends in our neighborhood, and we as adults all know each other and look out for each others kids, inside and outside of school. Going to a close knit community school and having time to play is FAR more important than any "pluralistic" benefit of busing. There is plenty of time to learn more about the big wide world when they go to college.
And I'm sorry, but my husband and I used to live in a high density urban area. I had to keep my windows shut because of all the noise and my doors locked even during the day when I was home. Our home and cars were broken into multiple times. I spent half my life in transit or in long lines. Just going to the store was an ordeal. We moved.
I will fight and fight hard for my neighborhood school and the low density, quiet character of my community. I voted for Clinton and straight D in 2016 and 2018 but schools and zoning are the two issues I WILL flip over.
FWIW we have many families of color in our neighborhood, including African American and Hispanic. They are good middle class families who make wonderful neighbors. My husband himself is the son of poor immigrants. It has NOTHING to do with race.
8
If school desegregation were defined as forcing blacks and whites together in a single building then, sure, busing was successful. By any other measure—educational, economic, attitudinal—the things for which forced desegregation was was but the instrument—the results fall short, and the instrument starts to look blunter and and more problematic than it appeared to it proponents.
9
So if you are busing, what will happen to the teachers in the black schools? Throw them under the bus? (pun intended :)
2
The other school will hire them. Getting more students will require more teachers.
This report is scathingly accurate. Whites discriminate wholesale but offer merely retail remedies. The power of white supremacy gives cover to lies about blacks in every walk of life. Sadly Biden fits that white pattern. But there isn’t a white candidate for president who doesn’t. Remember the Times itself ever vigilant about antisemitism loves to parade its demand for an honorable platform for the racism of the odious Charles Murray, and to give print space to people like wehner who actually brag about their friendship with Murray. Whatever Biden did with eastland was decades ago. What Murray and wehner and Stephens and the times are doing is racism right now.
2
Dear Ms Hanna-Jones
Why in God's name would anyone want to be in the same school as a lot of white Americans? Most of the school shooters are "white". Some of the worse terrorists in the US are/were whites.
Phenotype is bloody important to white Americans, not so much for me, I am Chinese by race,. Talk with me instead, I'd understand.
Sincerely,
Arthur Y Chan, Shanghai, China
3
I was one of those kids bused in the 1970s. Opposition to busing WAS all about stability and neighborhood schools. I went to 3 schools in 4 years, thanks to busing. My next door neighbor, 1 year older, went to 4 schools in 4 years. No change in address, just a random re-drawing of school lines every year. The result? Algebra every year since no info was passed on to the next school. Two hours/day on a bus, and of course, having to be the new kid at school every year. Busing was a complete horror and that's why it ended.
18
Algebra every year is horror? I came from the country where algebra every year was norm, as well as physics, chemistry, and biological science. I think the horror is the American public education in general, where algebra is considered to be a horror.
3
@yulia
Yes, Algebra repeated at the expense of other math. It set me back so I ended up taking 5 years of math in HS to catch up with college entry requirements.
10
@LAS But that has nothing to do with busing, but rather with school programs that are not centralized and the children whose families move frequently (job-related for example) very often miss whole subject. But 5 years of math doesn't sound so terrible for me. I took 10 years of math through10 years of school.
1
I grew up in southern New England in the 60's, moved to South Carolina for work in the 90's. In South Carolina we had a child (we lived outside Charleston in a predominantly African American rural area). We voted at the local elementary school and one day I walked around the school; I cried e.g., all the windows were all glazed such that one could never look outside. We didn't want our son to grown up in this environment so eventually I took a position in Newfoundland, Canada. Newfoundland (an island the size of Pennsylvania, (pop. 500,000 most live in St. John's). Most Newfoundlanders are of British or Irish ancestry. Newfoundlanders, until recently, had little experience with people of 'colour' and have no innate prejudices. St. John's has a research university, and there are now many minorities in St. John's and because there are no innate prejudices minorities feel comfortable, indeed barely noticed other than for reasons of curiosity. The USA is simply handicapped by centuries of bigotry and hatred that has nothing to do with the reality of humanity but is simply an integral part of American culture. Here, everyone has health care, decent schools, paid parental leave etc..its a society, where people do not spend their lives fighting with one another for table scraps. The modern Republican party's sole reason for existence is to perpetuate that fight. Until the USA creates a more egalitarian society, the fight for table scraps and prejudice will never end.
7
Insofar as desegregation is concerned, bussing did take care of that, at least to a degree. What it does is to put a hard burden on the parents of the children in the schools, especially in the lower grades. In order to take the bus ride, many students are getting up at 4:30 or 5 to catch a bus at 6 that takes over an hour to get to the school. In the afternoon, if school lets out at 3PM, they might not be home until almost 6PM. Luckily, I live in a small town and the schools are not that far away, so we would easily take our children to the school and bring them back home. The last statistic that I read about school buses in my state what that there was an accident, or an incident, on one every school day.
7
It's hard to believe that busing, an issue from three decades ago, is the main focus of this writers attention in 2019.
16
In North Carolina charter schools have become the epitome of white, upper middle class schools funded by tax payers. These children are getting a private school education at the cost of tax payers and the “lottery” system is a joke. Once these kids have to go to a public high school which has diversity they flee to private schools. NC needs to work towards finding a happy medium for its public schools or the charters will take away any sort of diversity for these public schools as more and more who can afford the private transportation for a charter and the required volunteer hours for parents at charters will continue to leave the public schools
3
Nikole,
I was blind to the fact that only Biden had the potential to unseat the current leader. I wanted to give him all the slacks that were appropriate.
But your piece opened my eyes to the outrage of anti-busing by whites, who even were overtly not racists. Biden is just that.
Biden has to come clean and accept the fact without sugarcoating it. My State's late senator Robert Byrd was a Klansman in his youth. He repented it and apologized, and was accepted by main-stream folks. Biden has to come clean.
I was, until I read your piece, a 100% Biden supporter. Now I have to look for Senators Bennett, Klobuchar or Harris, even though they may not make it.
Thank you for opening my eyes.
1
Detroit was ruined by the white flight when it should have been integrated to the suburbs. Milliken regrets that win to this today. Detroit suffers to this day as the education system was decimated by state control and charter schools brought in by Gov. Engler after 1994. A new supt. seems to be helping the schools. Detroit is finally coming back.
1
This article reminds of historian Eric Foner’s book on Reconstruction in the post Civil War south. For many years the common view was that Reconstruction failed due to its own weaknesses. However, the truth was that Reconstruction was actually successful in most southern states. Instead, it was violence resistance by racists in the South aided by an unholy solution to the presidential election of 1876 that caused it to fail. Again, our mythology must be challenged by the truth.
4
Revisionist. Busing is a terrible idea.
13
The writer is sloppy with the facts. The suggestion the Biden' efforts against busing were co-existent with the period of bombing is simply wrong. Biden is a generation too young for this. Yes the
South resisted desegregation, but the court ruling that forced the South to stop resistance to Brown v Board was in 1968. Biden did not enter the Senate until 1973.
17
I have never seen a more universal rejection of a social program by white blue collar and middle class suburbanites than the failed bussing program. The Democrats suffered the negative reaction to that for decades.
Your advocacy for court-ordered desegregation will work, unfortunately for Trump. It is no overstatement to say that if such a program is reinvigorated by Democrats millions of potential Democratic white Americans voters will either stay home or hold their noses and vote for Trump.
20
I remember when busing was first initiated. As a child the only major issue I remember was the whites were afraid of the blacks and the blacks were afraid of the whites. And no one wanted their children to be taken to each other's neighborhoods because they were afraid they'd never see the kid's again..it is so much better now. Not perfect, just better.
3
Kamala Harris chose to attend Howard University. She was not bused. It is not segregated.
4
@jdoubleu According to the Washington Post, Howard University is about 1% white. Its segregation is self-imposed by those who choose to go to school there.
10
She was bussed as a child. It's not a relevant idea for college.
Dear NYT:
This article provides an inaccurate, biased argument that mandatory busing worked.
Fifty years after Sen. Kamala Harris was bused to Thousand Oaks Elementary School from her nearby home in the Berkeley flatlands, the district is still struggling to resolve one of the largest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the nation, according to research by Stanford University’s Sean Reardon and his colleagues. https://edsource.org/2019/fifty-years-after-desegregation-wide-racial-and-ethnic-achievement-gaps-persist-in-berkeley/614645.
Berkeley's program was voluntary, not court-ordered, and failed to achieve desegregation or improve black performance. BUSD had approximately 16,000 students prior to its busing experiment, and fewer than 9,000 after -- a stunning dropout rate, as white students were pulled out by parents and placed in private schools.
The racial achievement gap continues to divide students at fully integrated Berkeley High School:
https://berkeleyhighjacket.com/news/achievement-gap-surfaces-in-testing/
Busing was supported by less than 10% of all families at the time it was in place, and it does not good to romanticize a practice that did not achieve its goals, and instead produced more hatred and division.
23
I would have to write an article of similar length to "prove" my point, but the point is:
Even in the "liberal" New York Times readers are doing intellectual gymnastics to refute the extraordinarily cogent piece Ms. Hannah-Jones offers.
Our society is racist. Deeply racist. In the comments I read support for "separate but equal," couched in more careful terms. I read "it's the parents' fault" trotted out like privileged white folks have done for many, many decades. I read between the lines that segregation is natural.
Busing and other remedies for a sick society are always rejected with this litany of rationalizations. Affirmative action is "bad" and constitutes "reverse racism," a concept that simply doesn't exist.
Most white people including so-called progressives are just fine with equality, as long as it doesn't inconvenience them. The responses to the inarguable truths in this column are disappointing, to say the least.
8
I didn’t experience busing having been born in 1944.
My northern town of 45 thousand, Cuyahoga Falls, was completely segregated with no blacks living in the city limits.
The first time I attended a class with black students was at Camarillo High School in Camarillo, California in 1961, where my family moved the same year. We also had Mexican American students.
My masters degree program at Kent State had a black chairman of the department who was very kind to me as a professor.
The natural integration and desegregation that I experienced rather than forced busing seemed to have a low stress atmosphere to it rather than a court ordered form of intimidation that comes with an authoritarian solution to a problem.
6
Elizabeth Warren first started cutting her political teeth with her academic observations that people (of all races) spend as much as they can afford on housing to get their kids into the best available school.
Now imagine the family who has invested this way being told their child will be required to go to a school that has worse academic outcomes and will have to travel farther and longer to do that? Not a recipe for positive feelings.
The Obamas chose to send their kids to expensive and exclusive private schools for a reason.
22
Segregation in the schools of the north is obviously caused by segregation in the community. Asking the schools to cure the community's segregation problem is, accordingly, ineffective. The schools educate, and since racism is rampant when the education system is poor, we need to improve schools educational methodology. We need to insure that all schools have the materials they need and, most importantly, good teachers. What makes a "good" teacher is another essay but, most assuredly, teachers have varying degrees of competence. In the engineering firms I have worked, "bad" engineers were weeded out; engineering companies are highly competitive and cannot suffer incompetent employees. Likewise, schools must not suffer inadequate teachers, education is the way out of misery and must be treated as our most important endeavor. Not all southerners are racists, I have observed first hand that racism is heavily scorned among the educated of the South and the North. All our schools should be made great, integration will follow. There are ways to do this; testing is certainly the wrong way to go, but eliminating private schools would go a long way towards improving all our children's education. Combat privilege ? Horrors, how would people like Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein get their pleasures ?
Yes, busing works (or may work) but the writer is oblivious to, or perhaps unaware of, is that, however much housing patterns in the North were the result of policies - the working class whites who were subject to busing, lived in white neighborhoods that they did not create, nor did they create housing policies that were different for blacks than whites. So a 40 year old white veteran with a VA loan in 1967 probably had no idea that a black veteran did not have the same opportunity. So while working class whites were beneficiaries of discrimination, they hardly felt themselves beneficiaries of white privilege.
And the cultural differences of northern urban whites (many catholic, recent immigrants) was different from the southern blacks who moved in (primarily protestant - and very rural. Whites feared them, and however benighted that might sound, and the fear was honestly felt. (My older brother told of being a child alone in his tiny yard in Paterson when a bunch of black kids climbed over the fence and stole his toys - we moved to Clifton soon after). To pretend that the cultural fears were simple racism is wrong and led to the exploitation of white fear by folks like Lee Atwater.
Now the whites are very much gone from many cities. Since many northern cities that do not have regional school districts, the issue of busing is a non starter.
And facing a Trump election - this is not the issue we need to raise now.
18
This tendentious article has a lot of broad accusations against white people without much supporting evidence.
One specific claim I've seen elsewhere and wondered about is that blacks benefited from desegregation and whites weren't hurt by it. That's plausible, but the linked source just shows nationwide black test scores rising and nationwide white scores not falling in the decades after schools started desegregating. But how many of the tested students were bused? I'm interested in a source that looks only at students who were sent to schools out of their neighborhood school boundaries. Anyone have a source?
It was obviously racist of white parents (two or more generations ago) to oppose the arrival of black students at their children's schools. But who can blame white parents for not wanting to send their children to schools that black students didn't want to attend?
20
I was a High School Coach, Counselor, and Teacher during the bussing era. It was a miserable failure and about as popular as the mumps. From the perspective of white parents who would send their children to inferior schools run by inferior administrators and teachers? No one. White parents moved out of the inner cities and many of the inner city schools closed. Contrary to what NH-J says, bussing was about as dysfunctional as a Trump cabinet meeting.
21
Thank you. Just plain thanks for speaking the truth.
I was a 3rd-grade white kid in 1960's Cleveland enrolled in what was then the city's gifted program. I rode a public bus to attend schools that were majority black. I experienced no bullying or discrimination - just the opposite.
This points to another great benefit of integration, whether mandatory or not. I found it simply impossible to be racist after growing up with black kids, a few of which became my best friends. This is one reason white racists are so resistant to integration - they don't want their children to learn the lies of their hateful ideology. To state the obvious, racism can only continue to thrive by continuing segregationist policies. Now 61 years-old, it breaks my heart that it continues to do so.
At least voices such as yours continue to expose the lies that are accepted by the majority as historic fact.
Again, my sincere thanks.
6
Well, I was one of the little girls bused to a black ghetto where we clearly were not wanted. Fires in the halls, fighting, drugs, etc. Black kids had a lot of fun beating up and tormenting the white kids in their school. No learning was going on, needless to say.
And no one cares about the white kids whose lives and educations were damaged and destroyed by these experiences. Because, after all, we were just collateral damage. Each day now in my southern Louisiana neighborhood you can see the buses and cars streaming in bringing black kids to our white neighborhood after traversing many miles in hours of traffic. No white kids are left in the school, since their parents either homeschool them or send them to private schools. This is tremendous waste of resources and accomplishes absolutely nothing. So now, instead of going to crummy schools in their own neighborhoods, they go to crummy minority schools in OUR neighborhood. Brilliant.
A better use of resources would be to invest in improving local schools and offering better child care options and investing in programs like Head Start. Increase salaries for local teachers and offer loan forgiveness programs for new teachers in poor school districts.
Busing is not the answer. It is expensive, unfair and DOES NOT WORK.
28
My six Black children attended schools on the Southside Chicago then moved to Austin. Magnet schools were the districts strategy to desegregate. Some of my kids qualified to attend the segregated elite campuses funded by school district funds. #OldAndersonHS disappeared and over time so did the Black community in East Austin.
1
It seems to me that school integration forced by the government had little to do with the children’s education and more to do with social engineering. If the government was serious about the children’s education, a more effective, more efficient, and less controversial approach would have been to force teachers to move schools such that good teachers were available in poor school districts. I grew up in a country with far less resources than the US. When I came to the US, I was afraid I was going to be behind but I was surprised that I was actually ahead. We had limited resources in school but great teachers: dedicated, involved, inspirational, committed. Based on my experience, the building does not teach children, the fancy facilities do not teach children, teachers teach and inspire children. With respect to busing, I have met people who as children were bused and had a terrible experience. Hated it. It can even be argued that busing made them racist. But those folks cannot speak openly because it is politically incorrect. Whether busing failed or succeeded, it is up for debate. Charts showing school segregation levels are misleading because there are way too many other factors involved in school segregation to draw definitive conclusions.
15
Parents most of all want their children to have the best possible education and issues like desegregation and diversity are secondary. The explosion of resentment against bussing by whites undeniably had an ugly component of racism but there was concern, justifiable or not, that their children being bused to out of neighborhood schools would not receive that education. That anger was filed to a higher pitch when they noted that rich whites did not have to have their children bused because they could afford private school or lived in wealthy, all-white jurisdictions without busing. Then, in turn, these same rich whites called busing opponents "racist" when they did not have to have their own kids bussed. The only way busing could have worked is if wealthy whites had led by example.
19
Don’t forget the many white students who were bused to historically black schools. I was one such student in the early 70s, bused from a nearly all white neighborhood in Durham, NC to attend Hillside High. It was a transformative experience for us white students who experienced the black culture from the rare perspective of a racial minority. To this day, that experience gives me a big advantage over white peers whose parents put them in “white flight” academies that sprung up in response to busing.
4
While I do not agree with all conclusions offered here, I applaud this article loudly. We needed to see/read/hear this excellent, balanced, definitive summary of your history as a nation in terms of equality of education, or not. I worked in a northern city for 28 years. I did everything I could for all students, independent of race. Today I would devote my time, pro bono, to assist any student population that deserved a quality education.
Excellent, spot-on analysis by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
To better understand the moral failure revealed by Biden's statement that “I did not oppose busing in America; what I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education," think back 160 years to when slavery was the law of the land in America. How many white 'liberals' justified their lack of support for abolution by declaring "I do not oppose freeing slaves; what I oppose is the freeing of slaves being ordered by the federal government."
Just as slavery could only be addressed effectively at a national level because too many states supported it and would never voluntarily change, in too many cases school segregation must be addressed by the federal government because various states and localities adopt policies that deepen rather than address the problem.
3
Busing is a pretty limited a solution since it only supports students from poor neighborhoods within close proximity of higher income neighborhoods. What do we do about poor neighborhoods that do not have rich neighborhoods in close proximity? Forget those children?
The whole problem is the degree of variability in quality within the US school system that is due to the taxation levels within the community - poor schools are supported by lower taxes and lower support in contrast to the opposite being true for schools located in higher income areas.
The higher income people paying these local taxes feel that by choosing to live in their neighborhood, they are paying for their particular school. If your child is bused to a poor school, it is like buying an German Audi for your child and finding out that you are getting a Russian Lada. It's not surprising that people came out against busing in large numbers.
In the end, busing is a poor and limited solution that will exacerbate tensions across suburbs and cities. If the US is serious about the high level of variability, increased state and Federal funding would be the best levers to improve quality.
11
I lived in Marin County for 5 years until recently. A lot of the sentiments in the opposition to busing parallel those made by the wealthy in Marin who adamantly opposed Lucas's proposal to build affordable housing on his property: "This will destroy (i.e., slightly change) the neighborhood. We worked hard to be able to send our kids to these great schools (i.e., we like our segregated system). Poor and minority children will destroy these school (i.e., poor and minority children are inherently stupid and lazy, and, yes, it is contagious). *also insert obligatory NIMBY high-pitched whine about traffic*"
I truly do not understand the mechanism by which a few non-wealthy and/or minority children are supposed to derail an entire well-established public school system. But then, it's not about logic, is it? It is about fear of the other. The darker skinned and the poor.
And Marin is heavily blue. Just goes to show that, whether liberal or conservative, most people are eager to demonize poor and minority children. As the article points out, liberals are good at changing the language to make their racism and hypocrisy palatable. It is easy to see through it, if you do not have your head in the sand yourself.
345
@Monica, a few non-wealthy or minority children will not derail a good school system; a lot, say 50%, will. To quote a Stanford researcher, “In other words, there is no school district in the United States that serves a moderately large number of black or Hispanic students in which achievement is even moderately high and achievement gaps are near zero.”. (Reardon, “The Geography of Racial/Ethnic Test Score Gaps,”)
Racial differences in measured intelligence are real, substantial, and have major consequences for society. Denying reality doen’t change it; it just makes your solutions ineffective.
48
@Monica
Conservative racism is the worst, most pervasive kind.
10
@Moehoward, the largest test score gaps are in the most liberal areas, as are the most segregated schools. The smallest test score gaps are actually in counties that voted for Trump. (Reardon)
21
I was in South Boston in 1975 during the busing controversy there. Without diminishing for a moment the importance of the fact of forcing racial integration, it was also true that in this case that those bused into and from South Boston were from the poorest white and black areas of the city. The solution and the hardships -- long rides through congested traffic in Boston mornings and afternoons -- were endured by the least among us. Busing in Boston was not the same as busing in Waterloo Iowa. That is always the challenge or risk with national policies and legal solutions, the diversity of geography, culture, economics, religion, and education makes one size fits all solutions incomplete. While busing unmasked the racism in Boston, this attempt at racial equity was imposed in a classist manner. It may have been worthwhile, yet it was by no means fully just.
11
I agree. Bussing works and I consider myself a beneficiary of it. As a white New Yorker growing up in the 60s, I never had a black classmate until our 5th grade class of 30+ included two black students.
By the time I was in High School, my school was still predominately white, but with a demographic breakdown more similar to that of the country and nearly as diverse as the city itself. As a result, I got to meet, study, interact and play with kids of a different color. By the time I got to college, I was comfortable with a far white range of students than I would have been had my schools remained as white as they were in the 50s and earlier 60s. I was going to college in Boston in the 70s when that city had it's tumultuous introduction to integration. The difficulties there were a surprise to me, affter years of thinking that the South was the exclusive home of blatant racism while the North featured a variety that was far subtler. But I realized the white folks there were working from a disadvantage. Unlike me, who had been introduced to the idea of integration 8 years earlier, these people were operating from a position of ignorance.
I have to wonder if Oprah would have ever become a megastar and if Obama would have been President if my generation of white Americans didn't have more interracial interactions than our elders thanks to bussing.
1
I grew up going to white public schools in the segregated south. Everything Ms Hannah-Jones says about court ordered desegregation is right on the money. American apartheid was seriously entrenched, to the point that those of us who grew up on the privileged side had only the vaguest of clues that such an egregious system was anything other than normal. The Warren court was absolutely right to force a change. The fact that the change they forced only opened the wound and did not heal it has been erroneously used as evidence that the Courts failed by overreaching. But anyone with perspective on the 1950’s and 60’s must know that they had to do something draconian. The entrenched system was just to good at absorbing attempts to change it. And having opened the wound, no one should be surprised that it is still open and bleeding.
As an educator of 40 years, however, I have been given hope by the fact that what integration we have achieved has worked. I’m not talking about the testing gap closing, although what the author says about it has to be true. I’m talking about the way new generations of students have grown up increasingly open to diversity. Healing between cultures happens when individuals in those cultures have the opportunity to interact and form relationships; then our essential similarities take over and our differences enrich rather than separate us.
It is happening, albeit way too slowly. The Warren court gave us a foot in the door, but that’s all.
3
I didn't work in Pasadena Ca. Many whites took their kids and put them in private schools.The Pasadena school system is one of the worst in the state. There are several towns that are next to Pasadena and their home values are higher because they have better school systems. Was it because the parents were racist or because they wanted the best for their children and didn't want them on a bus. I don't have the answer. But the impact of it devastated the school system.
12
Back then, in the days of busing, when I was a little kid, if people were, what we call “racist”, now, they proudly said so and acted accordingly all of the time, there was no self-censoring.
They would tell you all about it and laugh at liberal arguments.
Nowadays, no one wants to be called racist or thought of as one- across the board. That used to seem like progress.
Now, post-Obama, I’m not so sure.
3
Thank you for a lesson in history that I had forgotten (or never knew).
In my town on Long Island, it was a majority white town with a substantial population of blacks and Puerto Ricans. I went from an almost all white elementary school (grades K-6th to am integrated junior (7th-9th) and high school (10th-12th). The lunch room and study hall students self segregated. While my post elementary schooling was integrated, in fact the A-level students were almost all white while the C-level students were black and Puerto Rican. Aside from study hall and lunch, it was only gym classes that were integrated.
In junior high I saw how some of the black and Puerto Rican kids picked on some of the white kids. By high school that stopped as the white students outnumbered the minority students. But the experience made many of the white students more bigoted toward blacks than their parents had been. At high school a cold peace reigned between the races. The irony is, if that's the correct word, at the time one of my best friends was a black kid who lived four blocks away in a neighboring town. Moreover, Puerto Rican and other Hispanic kids who lived in the white areas of town were on a friendly basis with the white kids. Unfortunately, the racial problems I faced in school made me somewhat prejudice. And I did not get it from my parents. I overcame my prejudices when I began working in Manhattan where there were people of different races that all got along for the most part. Manhattan was more of a melting pot than Long Island.
12
No, it doesn't work.
In the forced busing experiment I was subjected to, all we had was massive crime, constant fights, teen pregnancies and drugs. The actual classes ended up just as segregated by race anyway, because they were separated by academic levels.
It was just sad.
20
One of the problems in Boston, the the most well known instance of federal court ordered busing was that it involved the transfer of students between predominantly black Roxbury and South Boston, one of the poorest white urban neighborhoods in the country. The two neighborhoods suffered from the worst schools in the city. While the advantages for students from Roxbury attending classes in Boston's wealthy suburbs are clear, what they gained from sitting where white children sat in South Boston is far from clear.
12
I pay $ 7000 a year in property taxes so that my children can go to an above average school district. In my city area , there are better school districts with commensurately higher property taxes and worse school districts with commensurately lower property taxes. You get the service and education that you pay for. There are people of all races in my neighborhood who pay taxes into the system so that their children can get the education they think they deserve. None of us are going to just stand by if our children are sent to a school district that we think is inferior and not of our choice. Busing is ultimately about theft of somebody's taxes who paid into the system by someone who never did.
22
I was 12 when new kids suddenly showed up to my school in 1973. I had no idea how to react or what to do. I thought everything would be the same as it was. Instead I was bullied, beat up, made fun of. What did I do to deserve this? I was only 12. Why did adults put a 12 year old in this position? Shame on adults for putting the entire problem of America’s racial divide onto innocent 12 year olds. Busing didn’t work for me. It made whatever problems adults made worse.
30
Thank you for sharing. This cannot be understood if one's logic is filtered through Eurocentrism.
1
I wholeheartedly agree with the point of this article, white racism is as real today as ever - but why? We never hear the why or seek to reveal the underbelly if persistent white racism. I don’t watch much television but much doesn’t have to be watched to see the considerable role Hollywood plays in this “racism continuation” saga. When white folks go to work,especially at fortune 50 companies, they can get a rather skewed perspective of minorities, given the lack of representation. Those same white folks then go home and for the first time all day find out about life not experienced while wearing white skin, but on television. Who do they here? What do they see? When all they get is negative examples of black America, thanks to black-casted shows about drugs, gang/prison life, athletics or anything else demonstrably stereotypical, misconceptions and baseless stereotypes suddenly have more significance to the point of becoming law.
1
This might surprise you, but I developed my views against busing and forced integration after years of attending and teaching at minority-majority schools. Going to school with and teaching black Americans shaped my opinion on the subject. Not movies or advertising. Human interaction, on a daily basis. I am against busing, and while we’re on the subject, I’m against affirmative action too. Both programs just led to more resentment towards Afro-Americans and are the very opposite of meritocracy.
If we want to end anti-black racism in this country we need to have frank conversations about what actually hinders Black achievement. Hand wringing and blaming white people for black problems doesn’t seem to be working very well.
29
@Ex-liberal
It's funny how those folks always feigning discomfort with a perception of being hated by blacks for all their woes...seem to not have any ideas. What's worse, they don't seem to have empathy and feel as if racism stopped existing in 1865 - like magic. There's no need for blame or feeling blamed. Let's just enact policy to address the problem. Policies like busing, Affirmative Action and certainly correcting Hollywood's frequent depiction of black life. If you have better ideas, run for office, get active and shout them from the rooftops.
2
Why are we dredging up one of the most unpopular polices ever devised at this point in our history? Do you understand the crossroads our country is at? This is completely unnecessary and inflammatory. I fear for our future.
17
“Dredging up one of the most unpopular policies ever “ lays bare a still open wound. Looking away won’t help. Looking at it, calling it by it’s real name and tackling it head on will.
Racism is evil
If you’re not a part of the solution you are part of the problem
1
Rehashing something from forty+ years ago is not going to beat Trump. In fact, it is going to get him re-elected. Why didn’t Kamala Harris just point out that she has much more African ancestry than Biden?
Hopefully neither of them is the Democratic Candidate.
8
Thank you Nikole Hannah-Jones for your essay on this topic. I came of age in the South and attended a fairly integrated school in the 1980s. I never heard the real story behind why busing "failed." Reading this I can understand Kamala Harris's anger a bit more.
1
Of course it works! That's exactly why so many people have tried to stop it.
3
Seems to me this misses the de facto segregation that is greater in the South when you take into account that most/many white kids go to private schools and many/most black kids go to public schools. Do the figures here just apply to public schools or do they include private schools?
American society today has formal and informal rules against racial prejudice, but without either racial integration or equality. Sadly, it's not clear the nation wants either.
Equality might, even more than integration, be approached through policies for schools. We could easily have a national policy of equal funding for every public school student in the land.
The sign that we do not have integration is that black America is so very different from the mainstream. Black people know they are different and excluded; other people understand that parts of our cities are dangerous. These worlds are very different, and more so than they might have been. Fears and resentments are among the results, as is crime, the fear of which may motive some racism but is irreducible to prejudice.
The biggest problem in America is class differences. These are disavowed except as race, which party serves as proxy for them, since almost uniformly Black Americans are poorer, and kept that way.
Americans don't usually think about class or capitalism. They think instead about social groups and attitudes. Much thinking about race and inequality seems to be driven by attempts to deal with class while avoiding it. Many are supposed to have equal status, with unequal lives and life chances. In a society where business requires forms of domination, such an Apartheid makes it easy.
But we'd be happier as neighbors who are more similar. You can learn from anyone.
1
@William Heidbreder
p.s. Ms. Hannah-Jones asks what other alternative there is besides busing to achieve integration. I know of one: Fund all public schools nationally through federal taxation, instead of local property tax based on residential home values.
Then, the funding being equal, all children would have a similar quality of education. Integration strategies would remain of value to reduce cultural differences.
Ms. Hannah-Jones also ignores that busing, like Affirmative Action, doesn't give everyone equal opportunity, only the Black kids who are selected for the bus.
3
Like most public measures, busing was good for those who benifitted and bad for those who did not (similar to war). there is no way for the good for some to atone for the bad to others. such is the human delimma. perhaps the best we can is to fund schools well and to actually create good, secure jobs with good wages and benefits and retirement for all. Rearranging he chairs in an economic cage match helps no one. I am of the age most affected by busing. I knew those who benefited,,,i also had friends beaten and nearly killed in riots (which they were merely trying to flee). The good and the bad exist side by side and neither is cancelled or atoned for by the other. The nation is more divided in terms of opportunity than it was 45 year ago. If we remember how things actually were, good and bad, we don't have any noble narratives, just history.
5
Au contraire.
Berkeley's 1968 experiment in voluntary busing was not a "success" by any factual measure. In fact, it led to the evisceration of the public school system.
There were approximately 16,000 students in BUSD prior to busing; thereafter, less than 9,000 remained, and a majority of the white, upper middle class students had elocated to private schools.
And fifty years after Sen. Kamala Harris was bused to Thousand Oaks Elementary School from her nearby home in central Berkeley, the district has one of the largest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the nation, according to research by Stanford University’s Sean Reardon and his colleagues. https://edsource.org/2019/fifty-years-after-desegregation-wide-racial-and-ethnic-achievement-gaps-persist-in-berkeley/614645
16
@Jorge
You are confounding the decline in enrollment with a national shift in residency to suburbs which happened at the same time.
White enrollment in Berkeley schools today has increased about 25% in the last 10 years. There aren’t enough private schools to enroll 7000 students. There are enough to enroll perhaps 15% of the elementary population, and perhaps 5% of the high school population.
1
Growing up white in the South I saw terrible, infuriating inequities. So philosophically I was pro-busing.
Then we moved North and as the parent of a kindergartner I saw pragmatically what busing would mean for my child.
This was the 1980s. Busing was just starting in my city. My child's school assignment, a newly remodeled school in the mostly Black section of town, required a nearly 90-minute -- each way -- bus ride. As a young 5-year-old. For 1/2 day kindergarten (all that was offered).
Busing also meant that Black kids living near their neighborhood school would be bused the equal amount of time to attend the mostly White school in my neighborhood. Many Black parents were furious.
How can 3 hours a day on a school bus possibly be good for small children?
Additionally, our district was firm that school assignments were for 1 year only; the next year she could be sent to another school where she'd have to make friends all over again. Maintaining racial quotas was the driver on that one.
In the end, parents of all races who had the means either moved or sent their kids to private schools. I was one of them.
Yes, I know that brands me as a racist. But I'd do it all over again. My daughter has had decades to learn about the considerable positives of diversity. She has -- and it didn't take 3 exhausting hours a day on a school bus to accomplish that.
23
I was a supporter of bussing when it happened to my high school in the 70’s. Parkdale High School in New Carrollton, Md was a very white high school and in my junior year bussing was implemented. Seemed like a good idea to me at the time to integrate our school (I was a liberal back then and still am). There were definitely some rough spots but it settled in. Fast forward to 2019 and Parkdale High is now just 4% white. So segregation has seeped back in. I don’t call this a success.
7
Stats are fun to manipulate. The post states that busing efforts improved scores amongst black students without harming white students.
This one of those "free lunch" ideas that I've always been skeptical of, so I looked at the math data in the study linked.
It's true that in the period from 1973-86, the gap shrunk dramatically and white scores did not decrease. However, this was the only period in the data where white scores did not increase... from 1973-86, the white score went from 225-227 (basically flat) but from 86-12, the white score rose to 252 (basically 1 point a year).
A person who has one agenda could say "See, white scores weren't hurt!"
A person with a different agenda could say, "See, white scores stopped rising for 15 years and starting rising as soon as these policies ended!"
Choose your adventure folks. I tend to believe the more logical assumption that this policy suppressed white scores, keeping them flat when they should have increased, and that the increases immediately came back once the policy was ended.
30
I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. That means I was part of the first voluntary desegregation of publics schools in the nation. A smart plan, good implementation, and a lot of community support made it successful. They even wrote a book about it, "Triumph in a White Suburb." What I remember most was how exciting it was to go to a central 6th grade -- and take the bus. Much better than walking 1/2 mile on cold or rainy days! Great to make new friends, and to feel part of something important.
Until we stop housing discrimination and the other practices that limit the economic progress of black families, Teaneck's action will remain only a band-aid. But it was a great school year. Just ask anyone who lived it.
4
The Evangelical anti-abortion movement actually had its roots in attempts by the federal government to desegregate Evangelical schools according to Randall Balmer, who teaches at Dartmouth College, is the author of "Evangelicalism in America." Also, see Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains" for more about the connection between Brown v. Board of Education and the rise of the radical right. To understand how segregation that led to poor education of blacks was a concerted effort of local, state, and federal government for 2/3 of the 20th century read "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein.
1
This highest voted comment is totally wrong.
It starts: "Isn't the root cause here actually the way we finance free public education for grades K-12? Except for limited support from the federal and state levels, most funding for public education is raised at the local level via property taxes."
Unless you want your own alternative facts, that is completely false.
Per-pupil spending in Newark, Baltimore City, and Detroit is $20,929, 15,818, and 14,631 respectively. The national median is $11,318. Without exception, large school districts with majority-minority student populations have funding that is higher, usually much higher, than the average funding in their home state.
Please let the other party be the one with alternative facts.
16
This is a faulty analysis. You cherry pick three urban areas, two of them in fairly pricey metroplexes (NYC/NEWARK and DC) and then compare them to an average of all s hooks including rural in much lower cost of living areas. The reality is that schools are largely funded by local property taxes.
1
@A Faerber
This is an important point. Many inner city schools are spend plenty per student. The taboo of acknowledging that broken families and weak parenting are the primary problems must be overcome before real progress can be made. What do you think will happen when a poorly educated teen who has grown up with lousy role models and little guidance has children she can't possibly care for? Would you like to bus your kids to a school full of children with this background? This isn't about skin color, or about oppression. It's about a cycle that is exceedingly difficult to break. Inner city districts are basically trying to become parents for students by feeding them before school, trying to teach them when they aren't really prepared to learn, and then offering after school programs to keep them off the streets. If mom and dad were doing their job the schools could focus on teaching. Unfortunately mom (what is the percentage of single mothers in the poor urban areas?) is no better off than her kids in terms of education and personal skills. Of course there are exceptions to this bleak picture, but denying that this is at the root of the problems in many poor urban communities is a tragic folly. Liberal reformers can't comprehend that people can be both victims and perpetrators. Comparisons to the 50s and 60s are not instructive given the drastically different issues and circumstances. Family planning, decent entry level jobs, and yes, good schools are all needed.
18
@Fred Shapiro
Fred, nces.ed.gov has the numbers.
You would be correct in some states - 14 of them provide from 50 to 67% of the funding from local taxes. In the other 36 states, the local share is less than 50%.
However, when it comes to poor majority-minority school districts, most of the funding is not from local taxes, regardless of state.
For example, Shelby County TN is about 41% local funded, in LA it is 25%, in some places school district local funding is under 13%.
You will not find a single large majority-minority school district with a per-pupil expenditure that is lower than its home state average. The bulk of their money comes from state and federal funds.
I am not saying that more funding is or isn't needed for these struggling districts. I am just suggesting that we get our facts straight before we make comments.
8
For anyone interested in understanding the perspectives of students, both black and white, from the first desegregated class (1959) of a Mississippi high school, I implore you to watch the documentary, "40 Years Later: Now Can We Talk?" directed by Markie Hancock and produced by Lee Anne Bell. In 2009 the all-white high school reunion committee invited their black classmates to their 40th high school reunion. For the first time. Ever. Naturally, the black classmates responded cautiously by asking: "Why are you inviting us -- now?" The documentary shows white and black alumni alike recounting stories of the daily if not hourly bullying and hazing of the desegregated black students in the late 50s, perpetrated by both white students and teachers alike. Both groups recall precious few white allies for the black students, though one teacher ally is fondly remembered. Please share this documentary with others and talk about it.
Let us each find the decency and patriotism in ourselves to serve as allies for all children now to enjoy the constitutionally protected equal right to a quality education. Remember that America's greatest asset is our people, and quality education for every child provides exponential return on investment for our nation and economy. At stake are nothing less than our nations' highest ideals: liberty and justice for all. We must decide as a nation if we really believe in America. If so, we must act as allies supporting public eduation.
3
I was never bussed. I lived in Connecticut. As far as I remember my school was integrated. No one ever worried about it. Nothing has changed. The schools are still integrated. Guess I was the exception.
3
What does "RACISM" mean.
Is it racist for middle class parents who can not afford private schools to not want their children sent or bused into low performing schools where children who want to learn are physically harassed by students who do not want to learn
OR
Is it racism to send your children to private schools and at the same time to deny the funding to improve low performing public schools that you want OTHER parents to send their children to.
While money is alone not sufficient to improve these low performing schools it is necessary..
But money is needed to reduce class size.
Anyone who has taught knows that controlling a class of 20 is different from controlling a class of 30-35.
Money is needed to attract and retain excellent teachers.
But the people who control the funding of these low performing schools [but of course do not send their children to these schools] do not care about educating OTHER peoples' children and do not want their tax dollars spent educating OTHER peoples' children..
12
I attended and graduated from a predominately white high school in Charlotte during the heyday of busing. I am black. My experience there was mixed (excuse the pun, please).
What happened was basically racial segregation within the school. White kids in college preparatory classes; black kids in vocational or remedial classes. Black kids constantly getting suspended or placed in detention (often times deserved, some times not). White teachers making snide comments about how the school didn't have a problem with theft until 'certain people' came. The National Honor Society at my high school had exactly one black member out of probably 100 people. History classes totally omitting any reference to anybody black besides slaves and Martin Luther King. I don't think black kids were particularly wanted at that school. It wasn't stated explicitly, but kids aren't dumb. Because they didn't feel wanted or welcomed, there was a lot of rebellious behavior.
It wasn't all bad. For the most part, people got along. I think the education I got there was pretty good. I had some really good white friends. Most teachers were well meaning.
Still, what I heard from black students at my school, from their parents, from black people in other walks of life, was that desegregation was a net negative for black kids because they left schools that were community based and oriented, schools where they were welcomed, and were sent to neighborhoods where they weren't wanted.
12
My two sister-in-laws were bused to a predominantly black school in previously segregated Dothan, AL. The situation was tense but the policy may have temporarily helped reduce racial disparities. Unfortunately white society lost no time in creating the myth that court ordered integration was a "disaster" and that, with the exception of blacks wealthy enough to buy their way into white society, black people actually wanted to remain separate and go to inferior schools in poor communities.
To understand the core issue with our system, here's a scenario with 4 kids:
Kid 1 goes to a school in a rich suburb. His parents are active.
Kid 2 is the same as kid 1, but goes to school in a poor inner city school.
Kid 3 goes to school in a rich suburb but his parents neglect him.
Kid 4 goes to school in a poor district and his parents also neglect him.
Here's what our school system does:
Both kids in the rich district are well served. The district has tons of resources and a culture that means the top kid does well and the kid with neglectful parents gets tons of support.
In the poor district, the neglected kid is also well served. He gets special ed services, he gets put in remedial programs with small class sizes and multiple teachers.
The kid who is not well served is the kid with conscientious parents in the poor school district. He spends grade sitting next to the lowest performing kids as the teachers try keep them under control by seating him next to them. The teachers mostly ignore him and he falls way behind the conscientious kid in the rich district.
I believe that the kid with active parents in the poor school district is the most important kid in our school system and it saddens me that he is the one that the system neglects. He's the one who could be socially mobile, be successful and move up. But we never give him a chance.
Busing doesn't fix this problem, it just means that more white kids are put in that bad situation than minorities.
16
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, gusing is the worst solution to segregation, except for all the others. The better solutions: attracting top teachers to every school, funding all schools to the levels needed to achieve security and strong academic facilities, ensuring that all high school graduates actually have a shot at college if they want, or opportunities to earn a living wage in other ways if college isn't right for them...those are even more difficult to achieve.
Busing did fail; not because it failed to integrate schools, but because it was too difficult to implement and keep in place.
.
It is human nature for parents to want what is best for their kids. Busing expected whites to cast that aside and knowingly send their children to schools everyone talked about as failures: places “with no heat and no textbooks.” It didn’t matter that busing was a powerful tool to end segregation, if it was so difficult to implement and impossible to keep going.
.
The new approach is to use inner city schools as lures. Turn them into magnet schools or charters with curricula or cultures that attract people from all over the city. They may not be as reliable as busing towards integrating schools, but they at least are politically feasible solutions - and that is important.
7
@ZAW, the magnet school approach has been around since the 70’s. Some success but at a small scale.
2
When i was in 5th grade I went to PS125 in uptown Manhattan as my father was in grad school at Columbia. The vast majority of the students were either black or Latino but I never felt left out, threatened or excluded, in fact other than odd things like the teachers asking students if handouts for their parents should be in Spanish the situation seemed perfectly normal. Of course NYC is a single massive school district so apparently the poverty of many student families in Harlem did not impact the school budget. The de facto racial and economic resegregation of America is a tragedy that will be with us forever.
1
It worked to destroy support for public schools.
It worked to persuade people that the government was more interested in social engineering than in educating their children.
It worked to show that Martin Luther King's ideal that people should not be judged on the basis of their skins was dead in public life.
24
The excellent historical research in this article is tarnished by a monolithic portrayal of white attitudes toward desegregation. The racial attitudes of whites, then and now, fall along a very wide spectrum ranging from rabid white supremacists to those who believe deeply in racial justice and are willing to sacrifice for it. By not recognizing that spectrum of opinion, the article misses a unique aspect of court-ordered busing-- that it alienated even racially liberal, pro-civil rights whites from the goal of desegregation.
Think of it this way: Suppose you are a black (or white) family living in a well-off black (white) neighborhood with excellent schools. To reduce economic segregation, a court orders that your children will be bused to a much poorer neighborhood and lower performing school where there are more disciplinary problems and your child may be subject to bullying based on their different class background. Race is not an issue because the racial composition of the neighborhoods are the same, only the socioeconomic level differs.
If you can honestly say that you would not object to your child being bused in that hypothetical, kudos to you. But most parents will chose the welfare of their children over the advancement of their own political beliefs, whatever they may be.
48
Not mentioned in this article, nor in most articles about busing or school integration, is the lack of teachers who are people of color and thus might serve as positive role models for children of color.
I don’t have the exact statistics (they surely exist somewhere), but my impression is that people of color who are academically inclined and motivated to attend and finish college are not likely to take poorly paid positions as teachers when many other, better-paying opportunities are available to those with a college degree.
I do not mean to suggest that having white teachers for students of color is bad, or that white teachers cannot stimulate or inspire students of color, but they are not likely to provide the same degree of identification, motivation and aspiration as teachers who are POC.
Just as there are not enough white schoolkids to achieve integration in urban schools (15% white in NYC schools), there are not enough POC teachers in most urban and suburban schools.
Even as we consider how best to achieve integration of students in schools, we should consider how to attract more POC into teaching at all grade levels.
5
@Mon Ray it's not that they're not choosing to teach, it's that there are (relative to the size of the population) very few POC who are well educated enough that they can teach.
There's a myth out there that teaching is not attracting enough POC because, I don't know, racism? The reality is that well educated POC are very hard to find and so there aren't many who are teachers.
The average African American scores in around the 30th percentile on the SAT, which is probably a number that is skewed higher because a large percentage don't even take the SAT because they aren't going to college. The achievement gap is brutally large.
So the answer isn't to try to find people who don't exist. We have to fix the education problem first so that they do exist, then consider how to attract more of them to teaching.
5
There seems to be some confusion about public school spending. Check out the numbers published by the National Center for Education Statistic at nces.ed.gov. The national median expenditure per-pupil is $11,318.
For Newark, the District of Columbia, and Detroit, for example, the numbers are $20,929, 20,037, and 14,631.
All large underperforming school systems spend far more per-pupil than the median per-pupil expenditure for their respective states.
While many school districts are funded primarily by local property taxes, this is not the case with under-performing school districts. These districts receive substantial amounts of Federal and State funds putting them far ahead of other districts.
For a final comparison, consider the highest median household income jurisdiction with a population over 65,000: Loudoun County VA. Their spending per-pupil is $12,720. Their schools rate very high, while not spending well above the median.
Perhaps our underperforming schools need even more funds. In any case, let us retire the false notion that they do not have as much money per pupil due to limited local funding. In fact, they have much more than other districts in their home state.
17
Thanks, Nikole, for your great article. As a white kid, growing up in the same metropolitan area as you, I wish I would have been old enough to be aware of what was happening then. I remember busing, but that's as far as it goes. My brief stint in W'loo schools, followed by CF, then to an outlying community was typical of the white flight of the era. Who knows, maybe my parents were doing more than just building houses in different communities and moving into them.
My contact with anyone of color during those days was zero, even though east side was not far away at all. I was separated from it by miles of fields and what now seems like thousands of miles of experience. My significant other now is African-American and I have learned so much as they continually tell stories and give accounts of life that sound foreign to me.
Why people continue to believe that the color of skin determines a person's worth, intelligence, strength, or weakness is simply beyond me.
Articles like this one that shed light (to the white population) about the injustices that a persons of color in this country have to experience are necessary. We as a society have progressed in some ways, but oftentimes, schools (and their funding) continue to segregate into the "haves" and "have-nots."
4
Living in the past as so many of people do prevents you from realizing what you are not doing and to correct your course. It's not alway someone else's fault though this is the preferable thought these days.
Placing and continuing the blame on someone else even when it is crystal clear that many problems now are made by the very ones who complain, is nothing more than laying the blame on other peoples' shoulders.
Follow the law, have only children you can afford to raise without public assistance, and stop hating those that appear to be better off. Chances are they make sacrifices to be where they are.
Nothing comes free in life. Not for you, not for everyone else.
15
Thank you to Ms. Hannah-Jones for such a timely piece on this issue.
Many comments are suggesting that the fatal flaw of bussing is that it forces (white) students from better performing schools into (black) lower performing schools, which parents are unwilling to accept.
However, I still believe that a main cause is the racism of the parents, and this other answer is a more socially acceptable excuse. The METCO program in Boston is like the alternative commentators are suggesting, where (mostly minority) Boston Public School students are bussed into the suburbs for high school. The (white) suburban students do not have to leave their towns’ high schools. And yet, even with this seemingly perfect compromise, it was shut down in towns like Milton due to the extreme racism and hostility faced by METCO students.
In this sad reality of separate but vastly unequal, for many BPS students METCO or the slim chance in a city charter school remains the surest way into an elite college. The loss here is the vast majority of BPS students who do not get one of these alternative routes in education and whose post high school opportunities become limited as a result.
@Jen it's quite often not racism.
It's the things that are correlated with race. SAT scores, access to AP classes, pipelines to good colleges, top notch athletic facilities and programs. And just not having to deal with everything that comes with a classroom full of kids who were neglected by their parents.
My parents tried to send me and my sister to public school when we were young, and after several years they switched us to private school because both of us were having problems - mainly because were polite kids who backed away from confrontation, and we were getting eaten alive. I was being bullied and she was having accidents because she was afraid to go into the bathroom.
We left and went to private school until we returned to public school for high school, and both finished basically at the top of our class.
12
@Jen -- no, not racism of the white parents but concerns for their children to receive a quality education. Bussing does not work.
Those who complain, you have schools near you. Insist on quality education. Place emphasis on education and to go ahead rather than place the race card at ever turn. I don't see American Indians complain all the time, but here you are always asking for preferential treatment. How about working hard for what you want rather than expecting yet another handout?
1
I was a white fourth grader voluntarily bused to an underfunded, largely black elementary school in the middle of the projects in Syracuse in the 1960s. The school had been taken over by a visionary educator who realized that if he got young, enthusiastic teachers (many of whom were teaching in order to avoid the draft) into the school, gave elementary school kids different teachers every period with unusual classes for that era (Photography, French, Drama, English classes focusing on Advertising, etc.) he could turn the school around. He did, and things were fascinating and exciting for the first three years. Most of the kids thrived because there were far more resources available to the neighborhood kids and their families than there had been before. The school fell apart after he left the area in the wake of his divorce. The white kids who were there for more than a year were the most profoundly and positively affected - we got something of an understanding of the lives of people who were different from us, and had the experience of being a minority. No one ever followed up on the neighborhood kids and whether the intended beneficiaries of the program actually benefited. I still think about King School and what I got from it 50 years later.
7
It is absurd to believe that black students can only learn in presence of a magic mix of white students. Clearly, some other factors must be at work.
Spending is often cited as the chief reason, but the per student spending of many failing schools grossly exceeds many successful schools.
Another possibility is teacher quality. This logic requires that largely black schools cannot hire competent teachers. This is illogical, but might be explained by the lack of support teachers receive from parents and the poor motivation of the students, i.e. good teacher avoid theses schools.
If this is true, it may point to a possible root cause, the lack of reverence and commitment to the educational process, i.e. a cultural problem, that busing solves but diluting its effects.
12
@Bongo this is absolutely true, and is made tremendously worse by rampant social promotion. Teaching high school math in an inner city school is usually an exercise in futility, as you're trying to teach algebra to students who cannot do addition but were socially promoted. It's crazy to think about - addition is a second grade topic, which means they didn't learn it in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade, but they still passed and kept moving on.
With this background of failure being ignored/rewarded, how is a high school teacher supposed to motivate or even engage the students who haven't learned a topic as simple as addition over the course of 7 years, but have still received passing grades every year?
The answer is they aren't, so they water down the curriculum until most people pass (got to keep that graduation rate up), and after a few years they leave and go to a school were the material is actually taught and they can actually accomplish something.
11
The problem was reverse busing where white children of affluent parents who attended high quality public schools were to be bused into non-performing mainly minority student schools.
The theory was that if affluent white parents were forced to send their children into low performing schools these parents would put pressure to improve these low performing schools.
The theory did not work.
Parents withdrew their children from the public schools and sent them to private schools.
In addition reverse busing was limited.
Imagine the opposition if Scarsdale students were to be bused into low performing schools in the South Bronx or if Chappaqua students were to be bused into low performing schools in lower Westchester.
15
Busing in Berkeley has been going on for over 50 years (since the late 1960's). A recent study shows the 'achievement gap' still exists between students that are white and students of color. One can argue that busing has not been the 'silver bullet' that had been promised and that 'new initatives' need to be developed to improve the standing of all students.
I believe we must help all students improve their standing but I don't believe in holding on to ideas that are not backed by solid, concrete data that goes back half a century.
A U.C. Berkeley Grad
23
I am a moderate independent (who is not white). I would vehemently oppose busing my child, as I think most people would regardless of race (only 9% of African Americans supported in a 1973 Gallup Poll).
The kids in my child's school bus can't sit still for a 20-minute ride home; how would they sit still for an hour long commute? And what would it do to the time for study (especially for students with ADHD or other learning disabilities)?
I strongly believe in equal opportunity; I would support other rational well thought out ways of achieving high quality schools for all. Busing is not the way to go about this.
21
As a graduate student in history who has written on the issue of desegregation and the response thereto in New York City I would like to commend Ms. Hannah-Jones for this comprehensive and accurate piece. As a voter I would like to ask her one simple question, if schools are resegregated and bussing works to respond to that very problem why has Snator Harris come out with a position that is indistinguishable from Vice President Biden's? I think to ask that question is to answer it. We all know that any candidate who advocated the widespread use of bussing to integrate today's schools would have no chance of winning the nomination let alone the general election. Moreover, we know that Senator Harris knows this. She brought up this great moral failure of America's white population not to inject it into the agenda but rather as an attack on the Vice President. In actuality what your essay so effectively shows is that all candidates in both parties have failed to provide leadership in the face of white hositility. When you say bussing did not fail, we did, you are correct. But that pronoun includes Senator Harris.
12
@Greg Jones
Harris brought it up not to say she wanted a different position, but to bring up what fond memories of working with segregationists means to many people. What they were doing, who they were fighting against is not value neutral.
3
In much of the country, it's tempting to think of school integration as involving two races, white and black. In a growing number of places, however, other races or ethnicities are involved, and they may not have the enthusiasm that many African-Americans (or some progressive whites) feel toward busing. In San Francisco, for example, a growing Asian-American population and diminishing numbers of African-Americans has greatly complicated school integration efforts that began decades ago. By the way, my thanks to the Times staffer who found the early, charming, Kamala Harris photo.
5
@Mike McGuire
I agree that it's a charming photo but a Times staffer didn't find it. Her campaign tweeted at least one photo of her as a school child as she was making her case against Biden (Matthews called it an "ambush," but he meant it in a good way -- he was very moved by her performance).
https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/chris-matthews-kamala-harris-hit-joe-biden-with-something-he-wasn-t-ready-for-62846533945
Thank you for sharing this. What's lost in these discussions is how our cultural foundations inform are notions of rightness and wrongness. I've consistently found (based on innumerable discussions on the matter and on all matters of race) that what hinders any understanding of "brown" people's perspectives is strict adherence to a Eurocentric view of the world. This is not inherently bad of course, yet lacking awareness that it informs one's logic system will hinder ones attempt to "understand" alternative perspectives. I place that in quotes because I see and hear people frequently justify their dismissals by saying they do not "understand" the logic of the arguments highlighting racism or in this case the benefits of busing. The opposite applies where it concerns "brown' individuals being unable to see the human face behind racist sentiments, causing one to respond out of emotion instead of empathizing and moving towards appeals for common ground. When people are accused of "playing the race card" it represents a failure of communication and understanding, plain and not-so-simple.
3
Busing would be only the start of the solution to reintegrating schools. It is the best of intentions, but as usual, is not presented with the shades of gray that come with such a blanket solution.
As a long time public school teacher who has watched my school become majority-minority, I have seen that there are practical hurdles to overcome when students from another culture--i.e. poor inner city schools--come to a white school.
To begin, what about the culture shock of poor black/brown kids coming into an affluent white school? What will the supports be for them to adapt? Behavior and speech norms for students and parents will be very different.
What about trauma? If the "white" or affluent school doesn't have many students who've experienced trauma, it may not be prepared to best serve students who come from a totally different background.
How will teachers be supported in this? In my experience, there's no extra financial support given as the school population has shifted.
Busing is a start-- but let's implement it with wraparound services for social emotional learning, behavior expectations for kids and adults, and adequate intervention for kids who may be behind in their studies. Without adequately funding these supports, busing will be doomed to fail.
3
Good points, sharing teachers would help bring the needed perspectives and diversity, along with the students.
1
The irony I remember from the bussing years is that judges who imposed bussing on others would often move their own kids to private schools. If bussing is such an unalloyed good, then let some senator write a bill mandating universal bussing for racial balancing purposes in every urban school district (and across districts) in America. She (or he) would be unlikely to get even a single cosponsor.
15
My first take to this article is that Biden need not earn the Dem. nomination.
I was then pleased to see the paragraph about how the negative side of busing left the black neighborhood schools with the non-bussed students shuttered, or left to low achievement.
I believe bussing was important and a great start to equality, but should have been a short term (even if it took 100 years) solution to catch blacks up to whites. The larger societal question here is: why are neighborhoods so segregated? Why are whites afraid of blacks?
I am a W/M who teaches in a majority black inner city school in the south with all levels of students. I can attest that black students are equally capable, but the ones who succeed need some luck unfortunately, especially the males. Being black in this century still means being followed around a drug/grocery store. It means being pulled over multiple times by police officers and asked to step out of the car so a search can be performed. It means that a certain look, such as dreadlocks, can be the cause for suspicion. It means that a certain sounding name can be the reason you are overlooked. Our society, not just schools, needs to recognize these realities.
This is a great article. It is an important conversation. From many comments it seems too many people have a strong opinion based on little more than a preconceived notion. BLM.
And finally, all one need to do is drive up I-75. Multiple giant confederate flags fly disgracefully :(
5
Lots of good historical information in this article, on an important topic, but also some false assumptions and angry conclusions that seem to be based on flawed reasoning. The fact that (1) the situation was clearly unjust prior to Brown and the busing orders, and (2) racists opposed busing, does not mean that (a) busing was a good or even a fair solution to the injustice of the Jim Crow era, or (b) that all, or even most, opponents of mandatory busing were racists. Those elements in the argument in this piece undermine its persuasive force. Generalizations implying that all or most "whites" who opposed busing were racists (and presumably still are, given the segregation that still exists) are examples of the kind of racial stereotyping that minorities appropriately object to when they are the target of such insulting insinuations. There are plenty of non-racist reasons to regard the busing experiment as ill-conceived and heavy-handed. The author's argument seems to boil down to this: "it was the only solution available." At the end of the day, she fails to adduce the evidence to adequately support that argument, and in the process engages in the kind of name-calling that creates social division rather than unity.
17
I'm a highly educated person who expects to have high performing kids. If I send them to school in my hometown, I am doing them a disservice. My hometown doesn't even offer the top tier AP classes (and beyond) that are offered in surrounding districts as a matter of course.
There's no real tracking until high school outside math classes. In social studies and science, my kids would be put in the same classroom as the kids who are barely literate. They'll get straight As for breathing in those classes, putting them at a significant disadvantage when they try to take AP US History in high school.
That said, I don't believe the solution is busing. To me, the solution is tracking and real standards. It is literally impossible for the best students to get the same education in my district that they can get next door because the best students are mostly sprinkled in among the lower performing students, taking a watered down curriculum.
My kids would never know they are falling behind the kids in the town next door; they'll think they are awesome, because my district socially promotes everyone and has a graduation rate well over 90% and they have no way to know that the district's curriculum is mostly a joke.
We need tracking and real standards to improve opportunities for high performing students in under performing schools. We need to fix the problem where it is. Busing fixes the issue for the lucky kids who benefit from it. We need to fix this problem for everyone.
27
@Kevin, yes!
Getting rid of automatic promotion does wonders for student engagement, even in the lowest ranking schools. I’ve seen it happen. I had a 4th grade class the year after the district imposed promotion standards on third graders - if you were more than one year below grade level, you had to attend summer school. That class, some of whom had had to do summer school, were the most attentive, hard-working group I ever had. They had learned that success required effort and focus, that rewards were not automatic. No fights all year, no real discipline problems at all. They were too busy actually doing their schoolwork so they wouldn’t fail again. Unfortunately, automatic promotion quickly returned because parents got mad and summer school for so many was expensive.
12
It's not that a 'white-higher income' school does better. It's also about the environment; it's about things that relate to historical racism.
When your kids are in a school where most of the other kids are taught in their homes that their education is important, where their parents careers and history of going to college illustrate that this isn't just words - that's what their "normal" is. That's what their friends are raised with. That's what they hear in high school - "Which college are you going to?" - not if you might go to college.
On the other hand - to consider my niece's example - in her school, education is not a priority for the vast majority of the other kids. Drug use is normal, dating and sex is an assumed norm at an early age, and pregnancy is common. Community college is a high aspiration of a few.
All of this is outside of differences in the amount of money spent on the schools and teachers. And it's a massive impact.
It's related to historical racism affecting the families of poorer people and minorities, to a belief that does have basis that jobs won't be so likely to hire them - a belief that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Busing helps when it provides a strong majority of students whose families support and exemplify what education is for, to help normalize this for students whose parents do not. It's not polite, it's not so easy to resolve, and the real issues of racism remain, but the issue is not just so simple as money.
8
The title of this article, “The Truth About Busing: It Works” is misleading. That title, and the author’s assertions that busing works, seem to be based on one study which, while linked in the article, can only be read by purchasing a book to which the link leads and which presumably generates a commission for the NYT. (Having been in this business, I assume that the research on which the book is based was federally or foundation funded, which makes me wonder why the research report is not in the public domain and freely available to the public.)
In any case, if there is only one research study, or one book, that says that busing may help improve some black students’ high school graduation rates, earn more, stay out of jail, and live longer (!), that is very scant evidence on which to base the bold assertion that busing works and to warrant a federally-mandated system of busing and re-districting.
Since segregated schools are largely a function of the residence of the children involved, the solution to this problem is to ensure that all urban, suburban and rural schools offer a quality education.
15
Claiming that opposition to mandatory busing was just a tool of racist whites is misguided and unnecessarily inflammatory. Busing worked for some. For many, it did not because it cut many of those students off from extracurricular activities with the kids they spent their days with. The position that local communities were better-suited to figure out when busing could work and when it could not was not an unreasonable position to take in a situation with no perfect answers.
Last week Harris herself backtracked on busing, claiming that it should be an option available to school districts if they need it. So, after all of this, Harris flip-flopped to Biden’s position.
28
I would be interested to know the effects of the parallel private school growth in the South and elsewhere during this time.
3
What a terrific story. I lived through those years, and although I spoke up for integration, I did not do enough to bring it about. My shame, and the nation’s.
1
If we only knew how hard national and state governments, banks and white communities have worked to keep blacks from having the freedom just to buy or rent in a white neighborhood!
Isn't this the place where we should address the school issue? Redlining, discriminatory rental policies? Bussing is a second tier artificial solution, which moves kids away from their neighborhoods. So make neighborhoods more accessible! Banks and developers would be adversely affected in their bottom line, and should be tightly regulated and fined for discriminating in loans and contracts. Fortunately we have a new political class willing to confront the finance sector.
Fundamentally the right to live where you choose is not controversial and should be the foundation approach for having integrated schools.
1
@jim guerin -- yes, of course everyone has the right to live where they want to, AS LONG as they can afford to live there. Many people would prefer a fancier neighborhood but can't afford to rent or purchase a home.
Emphasis from parents on the importance of a great education is so important yet it is rarely mentioned. Again, it is easier to blame someone else than working hard to achieve!
7
Thank you to the author for accurately using “caste” to describe the nature of public education in the U.S. I write this because well-educated, highly skilled migrants from India who began arriving in large numbers in the U.S. only in the post-Jim Crow era appear to have understood quite well what they saw. Coming from the most intensely hierarchical and socially stratified country on earth, they soon realized that decamping to American suburbia and having their own children attend school in overwhelmingly white-majority environments was crucial.
Indian-Americans are the highest-earning, most well-educated group of people in the U.S. Comprising no more than 1.5% or so of the U.S. population, they are actually sometimes called “the other one percent.” Coming to America from a caste-based society clearly has served them well, along with being an elite immigrant community by design (i.e. the U.S. government has always limited migration from India to the well-educated and highly skilled).
9
I (white) attended a public elementary school in the suburbs of Saint Louis, MO in the mid eighties. I remember one of my teachers making a negative comment when explaining to the white students that city students (black) would be coming to our schools. Busing seemed to work for some students (excellent family support) but there were others who came from some rougher urban neighborhoods who still had issues. I would be interested in seeing data from this time and success rates (did student eventually graduate & find suitable employment?)
1
All this talk about busing seems to overlook some fairly simple truths:
1. Forcing kids to be bussed -- rather than attend their neighborhood school -- is going to ruffle feathers. Many parents want the convenience of a local school, school friends who live nearby, and a shorter commute for their kid.
2. Busing -- otherwise known as attending a non-neighborhood school -- could be made *optional* and available to anyone who would add racial diversity in either direction (white kids attending predominantly black schools, black kids attending predominantly white schools).
3. I have seen some districts attract white kids to predominantly black neighborhoods by creating interesting public (not charter) magnet schools. It's a great way to get whites to voluntarily agree to busing, and a way to build great schools in non-white neighborhoods.
4. Whatever you do, avoid the path that Seattle once took of forcing kids to go to non-neighborhood schools but then NOT providing bus service. It was the worst of all worlds.
2
@Rose Seattle has already tried your #2 solution. “In June 2007, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, where they rejected Seattle Public Schools longstanding use of "racial tie-breakers" in assigning students to schools. The decision prohibited assigning students to public schools solely for the purpose of achieving racial integration and declined to recognize racial balancing as a compelling state interest.“
@Lynn in Seattle: In 2009, when we had kids in the public school system in Seattle, they were *not* allowing kids to go to their neighborhood schools. It wasn't about race (I don't believe there was any racial priority). It was just a crazy, crazy system that assigned kids to distant schools and DIDN'T provide bus service.
We saw families torn apart by it, because they couldn't be driving their multiple kids all over this huge and traffic-bound city. It became so intense, some parents literally couldn't hold a job because of it. One of my daughter's friends had to send her eldest to live with her grandparents in Arizona because the school she got assigned to was so far away, it precluded even part-time work for mom, who spent her days shuttling the kids around.
So what I was saying here is DON'T follow Seattle's model of NOT providing busing.
3
I live in northeast PA and the subject of student achievement is often shrouded behind the cloak of "diversity." Whenever a fight erupts in a school or a minority child is accused and convicted of a crime, the discussion often centers around "how diversity is destroying our neighborhoods." The ills of both forced and de facto segregation need to be dealt with in more areas than just the schools.
2
@MarathonRunner -- Schools are for learning, not for fighting. Those who fight need to be ruthlessly kicked out of school.
7
I was such a fan of Harris until she acted like Trump and went for Biden's jugular. I had hoped for a Biden/Harris ticket, but after that debate, I'v decided I'll never vote for her for anything (she is my neighbor) and her dad is a retired Stanford professor where I am also retired.
23
Demographic change is making a mockery out of school integration. This especially true in our most populous states. Only 23.2 percent of California students and 27.9 percent of Texas students are white. There are no longer enough white students to go around. If students of color can only learn when seated next to blue-eyed blond students, we need to change our immigration quotas.
26
I grew up in the 1950s in a smallish town which now would be regarded as a bastion of the elite. It was not quite so "elite" then but could certainly have been called upper middle class. The grade school I attended for several years served a district that included one of the fancy neighborhoods (large Victorian houses with huge yards and lots of trees) and also the downtown area, where families lived in rental apartments above retail stores (me). Needless to say, there was a mixture of races at that quite good grammar school, and I don't recall any real issues. There was only one high school, so it was integrated. Of course, and unfortunately, races didn't really mix much, but everyone at least had the chance for a good education. A few of the "rich kids" did go to private school, but usually not until after eighth grade. I look back and wonder what made it work--I still don't know.
1
Amen.
I, white, went to public school in Lake Charles, Louisiana (a racially relatively civilized area, for the South) during the 1950's and 1960's. During high school I was active (and by far the youngest member) in the local human relations council, and I saw inside black schools. The school board spent lots less per pupil at black schools. But not as much less as William F Buckley wanted. From the 1950's to the 1970's he kept telling us that the education of Blacks in the South cost a fraction of that of Whites, and that Blacks wanted an equal education which would cause taxes to rise. And that he supported those who wanted to keep their taxes low. My senior year my class of 550 students was "integrated" with three black honors students.
Everything this article says is true, but I would especially emphasize one thing that was seared into my brain. The black schools were within the city, but blacks mainly lived outside the city limits. Most black students were bussed RIGHT PAST one or more white schools to get to black schools.
Real integration reduced bussing.
8
I grew up as a white kid in a rather ordinary district in NJ where busing was introduced at the same time it was introduced into Berkeley California. Yes, I know it wasn't all about me, but my experience with busing was 100% positive. I met some lovely kids, and for the first time in my life met kids whose backgrounds were different than my own.
I know that the Black kids faced the bus rides, and that their parents had to fight very hard to get their kids the resources they deserved (like placement in the higher classes) and I know this story is about them and not me. I know that they dealt with racism at our schools in subtle ways lost on naive little me.
Let us not minimize the ways we reinforce segregation within our schools when multiple ethnic groups are represented.
3
No parent wants to be forced to bus their children., but they are willing to do so if it is their choice - e.g., witness the students in the premier NYC high schools.
Long Beach, NY creatively found a solution for their elementary schools when faced with a lack of integration in the 1970s. Each of the city's elementary schools developed a different philosophy. One remained traditional; one became a multi-grade school, and one became an open school; I cannot remember the forth.
As a result, most parents chose their children's schools based on philosophy, not on distance. They now had a reason to now put their children on a bus.
4
I grew up in super duper liberal Cambridge Mass. In sixth grade, my public school was integrated, when a mostly black and latino school closed and its students were bused to my mostly white school (we had some black and latino children of visiting academics). By seventh grade half the white parents had moved their children to private school. That year, sixth grade, was bad. The new black and latino kids caused a large amount of disruption in class. They seemed to have no idea how to be students. Bear in ind, this was zip code 02138, which is left of left. It's the most lefty zip code in the USA (outside of Berkeley CA). After a year of integration, most of the very, very liberal white parents wanted de-integration.
28
Moving to a specific neighborhood for better schools is a fact of life in America - AOC's family did it when they moved to Yorktown Heights.
Your classmates are as much a part - maybe more - of the educational experience as the teacher. Kids from high achieving, highly educated families will almost certainly do OK no matter what school they are in, because they will learn as much or more from their family environment as from the classroom.
The social aspect of school is important. Did the busing take into account the individual needs of the kids who were being sent to new schools? Their social skills, their ability to adapt to change?
To suggest that everyone who objected to having their kid moved to a different (i.e. less academically successful) school in a possibly rougher neighborhood was racist is not helpful. Barack Obama chose not to put his children in the DC public schools despite the fact that they had so many opportunities to supplement their education outside the classroom.
16
An enlightening article. I always felt that integrating neighborhoods was far superior to simply busing children from one neighborhood to another. I now see that the situation was far more complex. And that housing integration would have been very problematic. I suppose I may have always been naive about the depths of racism. I thought that Obama's election was ushering in a post-racial America. Instead, it created a backlash that revealed the shocking depths of racism that I thought were history, but are clearly still very powerful in this country.
4
Rather than bus kids across town to achieve racial parity in Jacksonville, Florida, in the early 1970s, the Duval County School Board swapping out low tenured white teachers with low tenured black teachers in predominately white schools and vis-a-versa for predominately black schools. The impact on me was the end of my education in math and science, especially math as the teacher who replaced the one I had was simply awful. I passed the class (wrote an excellent paper on the Newton’s contribution to the development of calculus) but I lost a year of education in pre-algebra and was unable to progress to the next level. My father, an accountant, tried to his best to tutor me, to make up for the teachers deficiencies, but I lost interest in the subject, and focused my interest toward to the social sciences, history, literature, and writing. I’d score high on the verbal section of standardized tests, but no so well on the quantitative section. In the end, however I did OK, I earned a bachelor’s degree and two advanced degrees and earn a six-figure income. I wonder what I could have done if I had had better math skills. So, I guess in order to achieve social justice, trade-offs have to be made, and some have to win and some have to loose. I hope those who won made the best of what they got. Cheers!
10
@Southern Boy -- tradeoffs where education is concerned are NOT acceptable. Every child (pushed by the parent) has the right to an education that will send it onward to college and beyond.
The parents who have child after child that they cannot afford to raise and that society pays for, now that is a different story.
Unfortunately these kids are raised in a hostile environment that does not favor education. Time for this to change!!!
4
Senator Harris was right when she put busing front and center of the debate as it has always a metaphor for race relations. I live in Milwaukee. Our racism is in flux without ambition. Its expression is found in a 10-mile drive around one’s city (not through it). Raised with enough privilege that my parents saw fit to put me on a bus as a test case and not to receive the best possible education, I was the embodiment of White Guilt. They did little to make themselves vulnerable to the experience of difference. Yet they did not want to risk their standing as White, liberals against racism. My experience accorded me the chance to understand people who were different from me and to be seen by them as someone different from them. Narcissism determines we are not different but they are. What remains for me is an enduring faith that busing was not in vain. I believe that soon we will fashion a nuanced understanding that we are different from one another and that difference is not sinful but redemptive. The rhetoric of change is not a slip of the tongue but a deliberative refrain of 2nd class, 2nd class that Senator Harris wove into her answer to the question of busing that was never asked. I’m voting for her because she will answer questions never asked. The shroud over America’s history is combusting, and a relentless xenophobia is the tinder that ignited it. I have never given up on the idea of peaceful coexistence but it takes political will and a willful politician
8
It's really disheartening for the NYT to continually publish articles insisting that busing worked. It's undoubtedly true that there were people who were racist and put up a fight, but I would argue that this is not a very deep analysis of the problem and we are never going to make any progress on this issue if we fail to dig deeper. This was mostly about socioeconomic divisions and rich people not wanting their kids to be bused into poor neighborhoods or poor people into their neighborhoods. You would get just as much resistance from rich people if a bunch of poor white people are brought into their neighborhood.
31
@Ben -- perhaps there will be another article (though I doubt it (that delves into the lives of black families, or rather the non-existence of it), the need on government assistance; the lack of focus on education. No bussing is going to cure this.
This segment of society can help itself out of this terrible mess.
Rather than all everyone and everything racist stop and look what you are doing: having lots of children out of wedlock that you cannot afford; bringing them into a environment of drugs and deprivation.
Bussing is not going to help you. Making you realize that you are doing this to yourself and worse, to the children you bring into this world, hopefully you will change.
5
Five thousand thank yous for this article. Most american white people never, ever acknowledged the truth on desegregation and busing. I grew up in the South and was in grade school when integration began. It wasn’t until several years later that integration became mandatory. That busing had to occur is a reflection on the recalcitrant white population and just how systematic segregation was since white people would never tolerate black families living anywhere except the other side of the tracks. And I’m not blind as even today I see the disparity in the quality of schools in the heavily black populated areas versus the predominantly white schools. It disgusts me the manner in which the inequities are perpetuated by the tax system. I am also not fooled by the many so called “christian” schools used for segregation purposes by white families.
A few years ago I searched for the student who was the only black student in my grade in 1966. There she was still living on the “black side of town” in this now miserably depressing little town. When I asked her about her experience that year from her point of view, she couldn’t remember it at all.....anything about it. What does that tell you? It spoke volumes to me.
5
No matter the merits of busing, the attack politics of Kamala Harris ought to be recognized for what they are. She is a lightweight who uses trick questions and staged confrontations to make a splash on television. Look at substance rather than style and there is not much there.
She was raised by two professional parents in Berkeley, California and Montreal. Her upbringing was anything but underprivileged. Kamala Harris got her start in politics with two patronage jobs from her lover, machine-politician Willie Brown. She has built up a fortune and a career from playing on race and sex.
Can you imagine someone like Kamala Harris negotiating with Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin? Her tricks would get her nowhere with them.
Joe Biden has his faults, but at least he has shown through a long career that he lives in the real world instead of telling fairy-tale stories to pander to voters. "I was that little girl" is not exactly an impressive tagline for a presidential candidate.
27
I think that she would dance circles around Trump and his heads of states that he admires.
I donor agree that the 2020 campaign should focus on Race. But she demonstrated that she will not be a push over.
Busing had no appreciable impact on education. What it did do, however, was tear kids away from their communities.
But if you think it was a good thing, ask yourself this: how many elected officials allowed their kids to be in the busing program?
.... (crickets) ... I'm waiting ... (crickets) ...
15
Good schools require funding and other resources, majority minority schools have far less money and resources, so they end up a fair deal worse.
Whenever anything at all is suggested to change this situation, the same old excuses are trotted out and we’re all supposed to pretend that they’re valid.
The unfortunate truth is that this country is still staggeringly racist. It’s still strenuously opposed to anything that would reduce segregation or give equal funding and resources to majority minority schools. Judge people by what they do, not what they say. What does the country actually do about this situation? What is the direction of travel?
The mental contortions required to support continued segregation combined with a system of separate and unequal, yet insist that one isn’t racist? Mind-boggling!
1
Rather than kick around the 1970s some more, here's a July 2019 story from Benton Harbor MI, a poor and primarily African-American city. First, in MI, property taxes are not the main source of school funding. Instead, since 1995, state sales taxes make up most of school budgets and are equalized across all districts. Thus, in 2015-16, the statewide per-pupil spending average was $10,209, of which about 75% came from state equalized funding. Benton Harbor's per-pupil funding was $11,523, i.e., about $1,300 above average. In the prosperous suburb where my kids went to school, per-pupil was $9,925, or about $300 below average. Those numbers aren't the whole story -- a lot of things come out of other budgets (primarily capital spending), and fees, contributions, and volunteerism can add a lot. Benton Harbor's schools unfortunately are an academic and financial disaster. For example, only 1% of 8th graders tested on-grade-level in math last year, and the district is $12M in the red. Last month, Gov Whitmer (a Democrat) proposed closing the Benton Harbor schools and busing students to the whiter schools in nearby suburbs. Many BH residents objected strenuously, and the situation is being discussed. So: busing to seek a better education among relative strangers, or stay in a familiar but failing district? Sure, BH has deep problems that need to be solved, but school starts in 9 weeks -- must today's students wait for that long-term fix? What would you do?
6
"It wasn't about busing, it's always been about racism."
In 1973 Gallup polled Americans on the issue. 4 percent of white respondents supported busing. Only 9 percent of of black respondents were also in support of busing.
"Schools are more segregated today."
Only if you buy into the study's definition of segregated. According to the study, any school that is more than 50% non-white is 'segregated." According to the study, a school made up of 25% white, 25% black, 25% asian, and 25% hispanic is 'segregated.'
In a public school system where 40% is hispanic, 26% is black, 16 percent is asian and 15% is black, it is literally impossible to integrate these schools to the study's satisfaction unless we bus minorities out to the white suburbs or bus white kids into the city. Is this what we are proposing here? Is this a serious policy discussion?
"It's all about income/money/socio-economic opportunity/test prep and high-priced tutors"
In 2015 lower-income white students outperformed higher-income black students on the NAEP. In general, the 'race gap' is wider than the income gap. Have you ever heard of NAEP test prep? I don't think you have.
18
What a great article!
It should be required reading for every politician, educator, and voter in the U.S.
Growing up in a low income very mixed neighborhood in Queens in the 1970’s, my parents couldn’t afford the housing prices or property taxes of Long Island. When I was ten, I was beaten up for being white and walking down a street I didn’t live on. In high school, I was robbed at gun point on the subway. So I didn’t get the life, education or opportunities that some of my family members did. My career choices were driving a truck at JFK or the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines. My cousins attended SUNY colleges and became a doctor and three engineers. But that’s how capitalism is SUPPOSED to work. If you cannot afford something, you do not get it.
16
I am sorry, the Scandinavian model is often used as a guiding beacon for the US. They do not bus kids in Scandinavian countries. They work on improving the equality of inputs, which leads to better equality of outcomes. Everything else has and will fail.
17
A solution that is already being put to practice across the United States is called 2-Gen (two generations) programs. These programs provide enrichment for both children and their parents, in different realms (literacy, mental health, social services). Some of these programs have been studied by researchers and show promising results.
How can you expect a child from a poor household to perform well when their parent(s) are working more than one job, likely live with untreated childhood/adult trauma, and are possibly using drugs and/or alcohol to self-medicate their poverty- and trauma-related anxiety/depression? Some parents of poor households are disabled (physically/mentally) and may need support in raising their children.
Lastly, intergenerational trauma is a major issue for many Americans, and especially for people of low-income and people of color. If parents are traumatized by their past and/or by poverty, how can you expect them to help their children with their school work?
Two-Gen programs (and there are even some 3-Gen programs) are the future. We need to help parents heal (and learn to read, and learn to do arithmetic, etc.) at the same time that we support their children.
4
@Leah -- I am sorry, parents need to heal themselves or not get into the situation in the first place. They can also ask church and community to help.
It's time people stood on their own two feet and did what is necessary.
No more blaming others. Blame yourself, because in the final analysis, you are charting your course and picking the wrong direction.
5
40 minutes on a school bus is like 40 minutes per day of Lord of the Flies . Budget cuts equal no adult chaperons. A small piece of a tangled long hard day and story for bused children.
17
It’s not the school, it’s the students and their families. The NY Times recently ran an article about a school in Africa with no electricity, but whose students all go on to college. Learn from this, please.
26
@C
Children will go to college if there is no power in the home?
Brown vs Topeka was one of the worst decisions that
the Supreme Court ever made because it was naive.
The court should have ruled that all schools in a State
must be equally funded and the quality of the teachers
and the ratio of students to teachers be equalized
as far as possible.
It should have also ruled that every child had a right to
attend their neighborhood school or any school that had
an open seat.
No need to bring "racial classifications" into the ruling,
as if there is some method based on legal reasoning that
can ascertain what race someone is.
The article is rather inconsistent and should have examined
how schools are divided by economic segregation.
It is odd, is it not, that New York City and Washington, D.C.
have the most segregated Public Schools in the United States.
As for Boston and other de-segregation plans, the
simple fact that the Federal Judge in charge, Judge Garrity,
behaved like a tyrant and refused to listen to the complaints of
the parents and had children who were not effected by his
imperious orders, says all you need to know about
Court Ordered Busing.
8
Thank you very much for your article. You have educated me and this is what’s missing in our country and culture. Not only do children need to be educated and held responsible, we adults of all ages need to know our real history and how it continues to play out in the present and take full responsibility for correcting what is wrong. This is or work as Americans.
1
Thank you for writing this. It was very on point, informative, and powerful.
3
I remember busing in the 1970s in Los Angeles, when I was a little kid. All the discussion was about families losing the ability to send their kids to a local school, a few blocks away, to instead spend 2 hours on daily bus rides. When we eventually got busing, it was more or less voluntary with black kids riding to white neighborhood schools and white kids either staying put or going to new private schools. Nowadays the LA public school system has become a joke of mediocrity. Busing never made sense and anyone making an issue of it today will just give Trump more votes in response.
35
I would have LOVED busing!
I grew up in the - de facto - segregated San Fernando Valley in the '50s and '60. I had NO interactions with African Americans. There were the half dozen or so Spanish speaking children of farmworkers who nearly always moved on. In junior high, there were two ethnically Japanese girls who were regarded as novelties, though not exactly "people."
Some may recall the pejorative term "culturally deprived," often used then to express pity - and disdain - for people of color.
Clearly, it described ME!
Imagine my astonishment when I went to live in the dorms at UCLA; much less, after I transferred to Berkeley! Who WERE these people?! And where, on earth, had they BEEN all my life...???
Fortunately, I always read widely and Billie Holiday and Richard Wright had forewarned me. (I recall vividly how I had pictured Richard Wright in "Black Boy" as a WHITE boy - the only kind of boy I knew.) And my parents, though born at the beginning of the century, weren't overt racists so I didn't have any active prodding to be racist, nevertheless, I WAS; how could I help it? I didn't recognize it in myself for decades, and still need to check my reactions.
Now, in my 70s - with an African American husband of 43 years and a magnificent African American son - I know that racism lurks within me still, despite my loathing of it. It's hard to rid oneself of something which has surrounded one throughout one's whole life; busing could have helped.
5
I don’t like Biden, but Harris’s ambush was out of line. She implied insidious, terrible things — suggesting an ugly motivation behind Biden’s opposition to federally mandated integration, instead of addressing his true reasoning. It’s a prosecutor’s trick, and an acceptable tactic in an aggressive debate where winning the argument is the object. But it’s dirty pool in a political debate for the benefit of the voting public. My opinion of Harris went down a few pegs that night. I don’t trust her to be a forthright, magnanimous leader. She’s a fierce fighter who might be better employed as a senator. She would be very effective!
Harris was not straightforward about her own history, either. Her time in Berkeley schools (and her experience with busing) was very short, as most of their education was in Canada. I think she is massaging the point for some street cred. It’s not as if she came from poverty. She had a privileged upbringing.
I was already in private school when mandatory busing was imposed. It was a mess, in my city. The other side of a poor, black child from the inner city being bused to a more affluent part of town is the child from a more affluent family who takes the bus the other way — bypassing the neighborhood school he or she could walk to. Parents had trouble getting across town for parent-teacher meetings, school events, emergencies. The result was an increase in private school enrollment, and the across-the-board decline of public schools.
42
What an articulate and, yes, restrained piece of writing which ultimately breaks the heart. This piece will stick with me, and keep making me think. Thank you, Nikole and The (Succeeding) New York Times.
3
Biden miscalculated the longterm consequences of his alliances in a different era, long, long ago - what do you want, a political virgin? Please note who chose him to be VP and the diverse support he has today. Bearing eternal grudges is unwise. Warren/Biden or Biden/Warren 2020.
10
"We should question why in the narrative of busing we remember Boston but not Charlotte." I agree. I am from Charlotte and grew up during the Swann v. Mecklenburg busing years. Years later, Swann was pretty much over-ruled in Charlotte and that is one reason why Charlotte is now so segregated. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant cert and so the case that pretty much overruled Swann stands now as law. Why didn't Kamala Harris talk about that? She is a lawyer, after all. She should throw that in Biden's face...:-)
I was raised in a military family and attended US military-run elementary schools in the 1950's where minority children were well-represented. I don't consider myself a racist. We moved to Virginia with a six-year old daughter at the height of the enforced busing. It was a nightmare having her endure what was sometimes an hour-long transit to a school that we as parents couldn't even locate. Long story short, we enrolled her in the local parochial school. I understand that in the Trump era it's trendy to play the racist card, but it's a ruse: if you want to diminish inequality work to get replace local property taxes with state-wide schemes...
35
My family lived through forced busing and this article is very misleading. My junior & high schools were fully integrated. We had no problems with it, everyone was happy. Forced busing changed that equation forever. Forced busing although a noble idea was a disaster for public schools. That point can't be emphasized enough. It wasn't about making all schools better. It was about trying to make all schools the same in terms of racial balance. What is wrong with working to bring up under-performing schools to the same standards? Nothing. When the best we can do is put kids on a bus adding an extra two hours to their day then something is dreadfully wrong. Instead of fixing the schools nearest to the students politicians decided it was cheaper to bus them. Insane. Mind you this was more of a burden on black students who were bused more often and further to achieve some magical racial balance. Any parent that could afford to pulled their kids out and put them in neighborhood private schools. All parents...black or white, rich or poor want quality education for their children. That's it. All deserve it. Forced busing isn't the way to achieve this. Truthfully forced busing isn't what black America is or was asking for either. They just want their schools on par with suburban academies....and they should be. Bottom line all parents with the means to bail on busing did bail on busing. Shuffling around an ever-diminishing pool of lower income black and white kids wasn't the answer.
38
@Bill Brown
Forced busing was terrible policy. I happily attended integrated schools in S Florida. Forced busing meant waiting every summer for the school board to announce new lines only to find out that you missed the border for your old school by 3 blocks. Then you're off to a new school in August where you don't know anyone. It stunk.
3
This problem can be solved with each state providing equal funding for each pupil in the state regardless of which town or section of a city they live. Right now, rich school districts fund their pupils at higher rates than poor school districts. That should stop. The state needs to pool all the tax money and dole it out equally to each pupil, regardless of where they live.
But even if that is done, whites and Asians are still going to self segregate from blacks and Latinos. At least, however, there will not be a cry of inferior vs. superior schools based on funding.
6
@Sirlar Actually, nearby majority-minority school district gets almost double ( they get state funds) of our tiny town funding. Our school is much better (it's not without problems or challenges)
4
@Maria -- where we live, richer districts have to give to poorer districts.
Not sure whether the money reaches the schools or ends in someone's pocket.
Schools should be equal without the insane notion of bussing.
Having said that, the will to learn and to improve yourself has to be instilled by the parents. If the parents don't get it how can they pass it on to their kids? Living hand-to-mouth, on government assistance, without the father for each child present/paying, how do you think each child is going to thrive in such a situation? Busing wouldn't help one iota. Look to your community to see how they can develop a knack for learning, rather than blaming someone else.
5
One of the people I would trade a year of life to get twenty minutes with is Thurgood Marshall. His legal strategy of getting institutions to desegregate by actually ENFORCING Plessy v. Ferguson was a brilliant hat trick that made him the greatest jurist of the 20th Century.
If I had twenty minutes with Justice Marshall, I’d ask him if, in retrospect, he regretted that strategy, because it was predicated on the quaint notion that Whites valued their institutions over segregation. For example, the basic assumption of Brown v. Board was that certainly the whites would value the best educational system in the world above their need to keep Blacks as second class citizens.
Time, however, has shown that Whites value segregation above all else. Is that realization what drove Justice Marshall to retire in disgusted fatigue during the first Bush administration? Forget Brett Kavanaugh. What really fundamentally altered the Supreme Court was the resignation of Thurgood Marshall less than one year before the election of Bill Clinton.
I’d ask him why? Did he realize that integration was impossible, especially after he witnessed the indignity of seeing his holy seat on the court handed to the execrable Clarence Thomas? Did he know his dream was dead before he, himself, was called home? I hope the Lord spared him that knowledge before he received his just reward in paradise.
1
Busing, despite the good intentions, wound up as an inadvertent tool to pit poor black folks against poor white folks. It was no big deal for rich white kids who could go to private schools. What was urgently needed - then and now - were more resources for schools in black neighborhoods whose neglect was appalling. In the end, right resources and supportive environment are more important than all racial factors - check out the continuing success of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges & Universities). If education is to be a route to equality we need to provide funding at the federal level to equalize all schools. Neighborhood funding as the main support for schools perpetuates great inequalities in our society. It is a national disgrace that few politicians seem inclined to tackle.
10
Absolutely, when we have politicians who are willing to grin and hover around the wealthy for favors, I.e. see Epstein et.al., there will never be justice and equality for the unwealthy, the poor.
So, we are shuffled around to find a decent school, and there is no justice for the unconnected.
1
One of the best articles I've read in a long time. Thanks Ms. Hannah-Jones.
3
America needs another push for school desegregation. Ms. Harris was right. Mr. Biden like many others have not completely accepted all consequences of equality, specially in the domain of education. Many have opposed parts of desegregation policies in the past and now on the fig leaf of local/state rights.Soft racism persists and many hearts have not changed. A country based on law must enforce all laws however inconvenient.
2
One would think forward thinking NYC would lead the way in that push for desegregation.But they haven't.
Anyway, back to hammering on Trump supporters in flyover country.
7
I would love to hear what the young people featured in the photographs have to say today. The photo of David Patterson, 8, and Chris Russell, 7, on the first day of school as they ride from McKay School in East Boston in 1979 was especially evocative.
Equally poignant are the photos of Elizabeth Eckford and Valerie Banks.
Looking at the crowd jeering Elizabeth Eckford reminds me of something I tell my daughter repeatedly - prejudice is ugly.
1
I was in public school in Lansing, MI from 1974-1987, and always attended very racially diverse schools. sometimes I was bussed, sometimes kids were bussed to my neighborhood school. full disclosure-I am white, so cannot speak to the difficulties my non-white friends had. But, I developed great and lasting (to this day) friendships with people from different racial, socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, and many of us from a variety pack f backgrounds went on to college. I wouldn't change being in school during this time for ANYTHING, and am angered beyond belief at the resegregation of our schools. we all benefitted-and I guess that's the problem resegregationists have with it all.
4
The simple fact is, making kids sit on a bus for longer than necessary is bad for them. Time on a bus is time not spent learning or playing--time not spent riding bikes or playing the flute or shooting hoops with friends. Sedentary time predicts obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer. It hurts learning and may even be a factor in mental illness. Sitting in traffic inhaling exhaust hurts kids' hearts and lungs and stunts their brains. It's not "awkward and inconvenient"--it is actual, literal, physical and mental harm. For kids who are being bused from an inadequate school to a better one, their parents may decide that it's worth it. But for kids to be subjected to real, measurable harm to bus them away from a good school they already live next to is not okay. And to paint parents who object as racist is not a solution.
Instead of demonizing parents who care about their kids, we should be bettering all schools through consistent funding and support, and in the long term attacking neighborhood segregation at a structural level. It's absurd that we can accept in so rich a country that some schools are bad, and just shuffle kids between them like a game of three-card monte. And neighborhood schools are segregated because neighborhoods are segregated--and not by chance, but largely by policy. We should be attacking discriminatory lending, the legacy of redlining, and underfunded, under-supported schools, not parents who don't want their kids sitting in traffic for hours a day.
12
Harris was very careful to explain what hurt about Biden's history. It was representing segregationists Senators as normal people with who he disagreed. It was opposing busing and asserting that offering equal educational opportunities was a better fix. The better fix was the segregationist's argument for segregated schools which were separate but equal. All in all, she was offended by the depiction of segregationists as human, and by Biden's lame arguments to justify opposing busing to integrate.
But the real issue is that a crucial block of voters for any Democratic candidate shares Harris' feelings about these issues. Biden has supported legislation and policies to help that block of voters but his perceptions are simply unlike those of the people in that block but Harris' is like them. She made use of that to help her candidacy.
The sad fact today is that a lot of white people are still unable to understand how African Americans experience their lives in this country nor why they still have not overcome the racial barriers which were supposed to have come down half a century, ago. They also do not see that they focus upon race unduly because they retain stereotyped attitudes towards African Americans. A lot of African Americans do not understand how European American people are not all the same as they were a century, ago, and retain the mistrust of them all, as did most African Americans a century, ago. They retain stereotyped attitudes, too.
3
Stereotyping is not a sound kind of reasoning. It produces false perceptions from generalizing from specifics without fair testing to confirm that it’s reasonable.
President and Michelle Obama did not send their girls to public schools in Washington, DC.
Was their goal to help integrate elite, largely white, private schools? I don’t think so.
I think the truth is that the Obamas wanted a quality education for their girls, didn’t think the DC public schools could provide a quality education, and could afford the big bucks necessary to pay for a quality education at a private school.
The idea of a establishing a federal mandate to bus kids to and from urban and suburban schools, which is what Kamala Harris really was talking about during the debates, is politically toxic.
No one who has scrimped and save to rent or buy a home in good school district will tolerate having his/her children bused or re-districted to a lower-quality school. This fear is what caused white flight from the cities decades ago, and will lead to Trump’s re-election in 2020 if the Democrats keep bringing up busing.
The answer to this pressing problem is to ensure that all public schools—urban, suburban and rural—are brought up to the highest standards.
35
@Mon Ray agreed on you post... and in addition...
Thurgood Marshall, who is most notably known for his success with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, also sent his oldest son to private schools! Not just any private schools either... the most elite in the country: Georgetown Day School and the Dalton School. However, Jr. eventually graduated from The Phillips Exeter Academy.
The demonizing parents for making critical educational choices for their children is absurd. It also would be unfair and unjust to call Judge Marshall as an "Uncle Tom." His civil rights advocacy and record would definitely say otherwise, but the bottom line... he was still a parent and made choices.
26
You leave out a major issue: security. Aside from Jimmy Carter, I cannot think of a single major recent politician in DC who has had their kid in a DC public school. Why pick on the Obama family only? Schools like Sidwell Friends and St. Albans have restricted campuses and are familiar to Secret Service agents. It is not simply about being "down with the people." (I am a public school attendee myself.)
2
@Mon Ray
Isn't this exactly what Biden is talking about?
I find it stunning – if not intellectually dishonest – that the first mention of party affiliation is that of Lee Atwater while the author blithely labels the odious James Eastland and his Southern acolytes as “practicing segregationists” but fails to note their political party (hint – they weren’t Republicans.) While modern-day bigots have certainly found a foot-hold in the GOP, the Democratic party for much of the 20th century was home to some of the most vile racists to ever serve in office, both at the state level and in Congress. As someone once said, if blacks are looking for reparations from organizations with a history of upholding white supremacy, look no further than the Democratic party.
13
@jim
It is notable that whenever the press bring up the names of the segregationist senators Biden was talking about, they never mention that they were Democrat senators, not even Biden mentions it!
9
I was bussed to a black school in 6th grade. The black students resented us white kids being in their school.
I was bullied and harassed.
Racism cuts both ways.
48
I was a newspaper reporter in suburban Detroit when the federal court ordered a desegregation plan that required busing between the mostly white suburbs and mostly black Detroit. I shall never forget covering an anti-busing rally in autumn in one suburb. The anger expressed by the all-white crowd was extraordinary. Neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan sold their hateful newspapers to ready buyers. School busing was a normal part of life in that town.
Ms. Hannah-Jones has done a tremendous public service with her essay.
254
And yet you live in a city that has racially segregated public schools. But yeah, flyover country.
11
@Alan Mass I am a former Detroit educator. The Detroit Public Schools did not have any agreements with outside districts to bus kids between the suburbs and the city. After busing was introduced into the Detroit Public Schools, many white families who had previously been living in the city (some in integrated neighborhoods) left for the suburbs, where the racial makeup was more homogeneous or put their kids into parochial schools . The city slowly bled off many professional blacks after that which further eroded the tax base. I sincerely doubt there was an anti-busing rally in any of the suburbs unless it was to protest the plan for government mandated busing, which failed in congress. None of the suburbs in the metropolitan area had any kind of busing for the sake of integration.
We need to have honest conversations here.
24
@Alan Mass
And what newspaper would that be? I'm from the area and I keep up with the news more than most. I remember nothing of the sort.
10
America's racial problems will never be solved as long as tens of millions of white people essentially want everyone else to just go away. White conservatives have no interest in equality. They have an interest in declaring the playing field level when it isn't even a tiny bit that way.
2
White racism? The nerve of this writer. Perhaps she could tell us why it is that black kids do better when they are around white kids? Writers like this all assume that this is true, but they never tell us what quality it is about "white kids" that make black kids do so much better when they are around them. What is it? This is where the conversation should begin.
27
@No big deal -- that won't make news nor be politically correct. Why does it take white students for black students to succeed?
Why don't we demand from black parents to insist their children study as hard as, Asian students?
3
It's worth making really explicit that segregation wasn't just about keeping the races separate: here in Boston is was absolutely proved, A: that the schools were deliberately segregated by race, and B: that the designated Black schools were deliberately defunded and ignored in every way. It wasn't about wanting to have the kids educated with white kids, it was about wanting basic maintenance, textbooks, and other normal resources that the local White power structure wouldn't provide, as long as they could separate out the minority kids and forget about them.
The saddest part was that the suburbs were able to stay aloof from the whole problem: the way the law was written, they couldn't be made part of any plan. That might have been what made it essentially a failure...
2
Excellent piece. Thank you. I was "forced bussed" to an inner-city school from the suburbs my eighth grade year in Louisville, KY, 1979. It was the best year of my K-12 experience--a year I often think about to this day. I learned about myself, entitlement, privilege and most importantly, not to fear the unknown (leading to a life of low uncertainty avoidance which has helped me immensely in life and I'm grateful for the experience). My parents--suburban white liberals (god love 'em) refused to buy into the redneck narrative of "forced bussing." When appalled relatives from out of state inquired about the decision to "force bus" their kids, my parents would say, "They have to ride a bus to school--nothing is forced--what difference does it make which bus takes them there as long as it gets to the school?"
3
@Eric (pardon the gaffe...bused and busing...one 's'!)
In the 80s, most of the black kids bussed into my school beat up the white and Asian kids and disrupted classes. The black kids who lived in our neighborhood were fine students. Schools should comprise the neighborhood, not kids from outside communities even if they’re the same color. It’s an idiotic idea that only fosters conflict and hatred. Human beings are tribal. That’s the inconvenient truth being stubbornly ignored.
27
There was no mention of that sort of violence in the article. In fact in all the pieces about busing I've never seen it mentioned. The bottom line is self professed forward thinking folks don't want an open dialog on race including all its numerous subtleties. They want to avoid a case of cognizant dissonance.
7
@Jp -- It's unavoidable to have clashes by those who join who have not been taught to be civil.
Having said that, the curriculum should have been what turned people around unless they were not interested in learning.
@Don Juan:" It's unavoidable to have clashes by those who join who have not been taught to be civil"
And there's no reason anyone's child should be thrust into that situation.
It was and is avoidable.
Unfortunately they are considered just so much collateral damage in the trampling out the vintage were the grapes of wrath are stored.
3
Integration/segregation in itself has a nasty legacy, and busing adds a complication. For example, a Gallup poll in 1973 indicated that busing was highly unpopular with both whites and blacks. And whereas the South saw busing as principally an integration issue, as a blow to "our very way of life", in many other areas, such as Kamala Harris's Berkeley neighborhood ("the flats", not incidentally, where I grew up), virtually all "segregation" had to do with neighborhood makeup (kids went to neighborhood schools), which affected chiefly the lower grades. Berkeley High was always integrated.
In the 1960s I recall reflecting on the issue of neighborhood schools (mainly outside the South) and busing for purposes of integration. I saw them as two competing Goods, but decided that integration was the higher priority. That's still my position, but it's a compromise I make with the ideal which we've yet to achieve.
Let's also not forget, that besides "busing," "school choice," "school vouchers," and "charter schools," are also dog whistles used to oppose the integration of schools.
Here in Connecticut, as the state talks about consolidating school districts, the word "busing," has already been used by people in wealthy towns who oppose having to share their money with towns that have poor people living there.
The worst part is that people refuse to admit that using property tax to fund local schools is specifically designed to keep things segregated and unequal. "You want a better education? Oh well. i guess you should have chose to be born to rich parents."
3
Speaking from experience, I was "bused" to junior high school in Jamaica, New York in the late 60's and I was the minority. In my school picture there were exactly 3 white people, one boy, two girls (of which I was one).
I never gave it a 2nd thought. It was school. You went to the school you were assigned to. My parents didn't object. We were white but we didn't have any notions of wanting to go to a school that was all white.
Perhaps there were places in the country that felt this way, particularly when this "busing" experiment began, but I can tell you from my own experience, it made no difference the racial makeup of my schooling.
2
The "racist" minority victim strategy has long been played out. By saying that I don't mean that it's not still possible to gain power, consideration and even financial gain by alleging that you or a long time dead relative are/was a victim. Although it's been finished for many years People like AOC and Illhan Omar have made certain that everyone is reminded that for some, only the pursuit of victimhood is worthwhile. It's normal too. We see people in life who are almost completely balanced and we see people who are almost completely unbalanced and the variations in between. These people come from different racial/cultural backgrounds. Kamala Harris confronted Biden for only one reason, and it's name is "political game".
15
I feel that you didn't read this piece.
Devil's bargain. If Biden didn't flip on support for busing he probably would't have been elected in '72, and wouldn't now be a possible candidate for president. One does thing to survive that may come back to haunt you; but if you didn't do them, you wouldn't have survived.
3
Why even talk about busing? It was an attempt to integrate school districts, but I think anyone could that overall it not achieve the desired results. The families who were concerned about their children's education and had the means moved out of the city into the suburbs, which was devastating for those left behind, or they enrolled their children in private schools. What we have now is de facto segregation based on socioeconomic status, which often lines up with race.
Quality education is equal parts funding, parental involvement and teaching skills. People send their kids to schools that have these going for them. To call parents who seek the best education for their children racists is really not fair.
11
This article would have been so much more interesting if you had the contrast of the white student being bused also.
I feel that district consolidation can fix this problem to some extent. You are also dealing with the poverty issue is as well. Many subarian districts are also middle or middle upper class. They look at children in poverty as being at risk of not graduating and then there is the cultural friction. All of this has to be worked out in the classroom, in hall- ways, in the cafeterias and yes on the bus.
3
There was a big resistance to racial integration in the opposition to busing. Busing made the numbers to prove that de facto segregation was being overcome. But what did it really accomplish?
What was it suppose to accomplish besides show numbers that indicated integrated schools? It was to overcome the separate but unequal reality of segregated schools, where white schools were well funded and black ones were not. It was to offer black and white children the opportunity to grow up together and to not stereotype people according to race.
How successful? The children bused are grandparents. Their grandchildren still do not receive equally good educations when race is considered. Many of their grandchildren still react to social issues with racial stereotyping.
2
This article would have been so much more interesting if you had the contrast of the white student being bused also.
I feel that district consolidation can fix this problem to some extent. You are also dealing with the poverty issue is as well. Many subarian districts are also middle or middle upper class. They look at children in poverty as being at risk of not graduating and then there is the cultural friction. All of this has to be worked out in the classroom, in hall- ways, in the cafeterias and yes on the bus.
1
I have to disagree that it worked in Boston although I agree that it was racism that caused it not to. I lived in a suburb of Boston in the 70s and I remember well the violent protests that occurred in South Boston that will forever be a stain on that city. What happened was that whites who could afford it fled the City and moved to the suburbs, or moved their children to private schools. I remember having at least 5 students transferring into my High School that moved from Boston. This left poor white children, black and hispanic children to be bussed around a city that ultimately failed them all. It was hatred and rampant racism that caused the failure of the Boston School System. White parents were afraid that the quality of their schools would diminish, but were more opposed to mixing black children with white children. The impact was tragic. As whites left the city, the desire to fund the public schools went with them so what you had were children being bussed to marginal schools wherever the went. No federal judge was more despised than Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. who ended forced bussing in 1983. but now the population of white student in public schools is less than 20 percent. So although I will not vote for him, I do understand why he took the position he did. He was in favor of desegregation but not mandating that students be forcibly bussed under the belief that it would improve the schools in traditionally non-white neighborhoods. It didn't.
10
Remember the Civil Rights Era freedomriders who came south to help desegregate the South?
Sounds like it's time to turn the tables and send some liberal freedom riders to Boston and other northern states to help desegregate the schools.
2
Superb article, thank you, NYT.
Well, Ms. Hannah-Jones if you read some of these comments you will want to tear your hair out. White folks will use any reason to deny that they simply do not want their kids going to a “bad” school, e.g. “they” are really the racist ones, “they” just don’t know how to act, being near whites isn’t going to make “them” smarter. Not much in the way of comments about denial of resources to black people and schools though, or even about Mr. Brown’s fight to get his kid into the local school - no busing involved. That’s something I just learned.
3
Wow. Devastating. Thank you.
I have to disagree. In my area, people didn't seem to have an issue with black students busing into our local high school. What people didn't want was their own children busing an hour away to a school on the other side of town. Maybe some had racist motives, but it seemed that the majority just wanted their kids nearby. In any event, this is a loser issue for all who want Trump to lose in 2020. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
19
Democrats 2020: Make Busing Great Again
Good luck with that.
24
The author can try as hard as she wants to paint all parents as simply racist for opposing busing but its not that simple. Sure some parents are racist. Other parents aren't interested in having their kids spend 2 hours on a bus to get to school. They really aren't interested in doing that when it involves sending their kid to a school that they perceive as academically inferior or in an unsafe neighborhood.
35
A majority of African Americans opposed mandatory busing.
14
On the front page of today's NYT we have a pic of a black billionaire worth more than 13 billion dollars. We have many more like him in this country, not to mention an army of immigrants who came to US and became successful.
But the talk of phantom racism continues by those who would love to live in a country where there is only one race. They can't live with people of different races. They hide behind people of color routine, but their racism against whites is an open secret.
17
"But if there is a black school nearby, it is almost always worse."
But that's the rub, isn't it? Asking white parents to sacrifice their children by having them sent to inferior schools for the cause of racial integration was always going to be a tall order. That's always going to be hugely unpopular.
Busing was a disaster because it was explicitly based on the theory that the only way to achieve equality was to force white students into inferior schools on the theory that would create pressure to improve them. If busing had only been about sending black kids to white schools, and didn't also involve sending white kids the other way, the opposition would have been 10x or 100x less. So clearly it isn't solely about race. It was about parents not wanting their kids sent to far-away inferior schools in the name of racial justice. You can make of that what you will, but to not even address it makes the author appear to not really be taking things seriously.
31
Gee, what about all those pictures of angry white people protesting vociferously when black children tried to attend white schools? How did that work out?
3
When we spend resources on our public elementary and secondary schools like we do on our universities, maybe we will really be on a par with other systems in the world. That is to say, spend in the poorest schools what we spend in affluent neighborhoods. We also have to make teacher education a priority, and take only the upper percentile of graduates, not the bottom percentile. Then pay them as true professionals. Moving children around via busing did work to expose children to other classes and cultures, and improved academic results for many. But other schools, other districts languished, and certainly still do for lack of resources, i.e., money.
Thank you Ms. Hannah-Jones for your your hard work in laying out the history of busing and the hypocrisy of politicians like Joe Biden when explaining their words and actions in an effort to kill busing as a tool for integration in our country. To politicians like Joe Biden I say — bless your heart. Which I learned late in life is a southern insult made with a politician's smile.
I was ignorant about many of the issues swirling around segregation until joining the military in1966. After flying over a burned down Detroit in 1968 I made it a point to learn what I could over the years about segregation in this country. I remember asking myself one day how segregation in US differed from apartheid in South Africa. Answer, the difference was in style not substance.
That said, I support reparations, not because of slavery, but because of all the government sponsored words and actions taken since slavery was abolished to punish and hold down a people because of the color of their skin. Shame on Joe Biden and all the other big smile, slap on the back, story telling politicians who use semantics to hide their real motives and intentions.
Finally, a big "bless your hearts" to Trump, Mitch McConnell, and all the MAGA hats around the country.
3
Better integration of schools is a noble and worthy goal but bussing is a messy workaround. Better to change the way schools are financed so that the amount of money spent per child is equal. Bussing as a bogeyman is too easy a target for closet racists to vilify, address the real issue equalize funding. Vast numbers of our younger generations will voluntarily opt for diversity and neighborhoods over time will naturally become more integrated.
5
Equal funding is the first step toward the better education for all, but integration is important as well because it let children to see different level of lives and understand the problem of society as a whole
@Alan, unequal funding is a 20th century problem. High poverty schools now get more money than most others.
3
@Z97 Not true in CT, everything is tied to local property taxes, recent movements to equalize have met with a lot of resistance as even wealthy communities are feeling budget pressure due to a declining local economy.
1
Harris is given credit here for supporting busing when she explicitly opposed it for her entire professional career up until the moment she cynically used it against Joe Biden. Less than 48 hours after she exploited it, Harris was back to opposing busing again.
You can't accuse someone of being a racist because he opposed busing at a time when an overwhelming number of blacks, whites, Asians, and Latinos did. What this author entirely fails to even mention is that every fact-based analysis has shown that 94 percent of blacks opposed busing during the period Joe Biden did. As Biden has rightful stated with total consternation, how was he supposed to force busing on blacks when, (no matter what rulings this author cites), they totally opposed it?
The author can pretend it was just white racism which made busing hard to accept as she simply ignores massive black opposition. Harris was the child of highly educated middle class immigrant parents, and was bused not because of anything the federal government did or failed to do, but rather because all the communities in Harris' area of California, white, black, and brown, agreed to it and implemented it locally.
This is exactly what Biden argued for at the time, so Harris was only bused because her community adopted Biden's approach. How's that for irony.
This author, like Harris, weaves a tale with white villains and black victims. It plays into stereotypes of race perfectly, the only problem is that it’s patently untrue.
36
@Robert B
This is hogwash. Most polling data showed blacks far more likely than whites to support busing, and when they opposed it they did so because busing programs tended to close schools in black neighborhoods, fire black teachers, and subject black students to violence. Nonetheless most blacks supported school integration. I lived in Boston during busing and I remember how powerfully the entire black community mobilized in support of it. Not to mention, the entire black establishment supported busing; would they have done so if their constituents opposed it?
No, this argument simply tries to mask the fact that opposition to busing arose out of white racism, something not lost upon blacks at the time. It's pathetic that people are still trying to sell that racist bag of goods.
1
@Justice
How do call yourself "Justice" if you dismiss facts you don't agree with? You speciously label facts you don't like "Hogwash" while fabricating that "most polling data" showed blacks supported busing, when All Polling Data showed blacks only marginally more supportive than whites, with over 90 percent opposing it.
Tellingly, you cite not a single statistic. It was never said that busing did not benefit black and Latino students, but rather that you and the author exploit a highly simplistic and blatantly false narrative.
I defended Biden and questioned the author not because I question the value of busing, but because misrepresenting facts is unacceptable. Labeling every single white person a racist who opposed busing no matter what their reason while misrepresenting the fact that whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians opposed it is wrong.
Joe Biden's position was largely indistinguishable from Deval Patrick's. Patrick stated after Harris attacked Biden: "The fact is … there are lots of progressive Democrats and liberal-minded people who are uncomfortable with busing and were at the time. In many respects we sent the kids in to do what the adults wouldn't do. We sent the kids in to integrate the schools because the adults wouldn't integrate the neighborhood."
Finally, Brett Gadsden, professor of history at Northwestern University and an expert on desegregation noted the absurdity of these attacks as: "No one has come forward as the pro-busing candidate. No one."
5
@Justice
How do call yourself "Justice" if you dismiss facts you don't agree with? You speciously label facts you don't like "Hogwash" while fabricating that "most polling data" showed blacks supported busing, when All Polling Data showed blacks only marginally more supportive than whites, with over 90 percent opposing it.
Tellingly, you cite not a single statistic. It was never said that busing did not benefit black and Latino students, but rather that you and the author exploit a highly simplistic and blatantly false narrative.
I defended Biden and questioned the author not because I question the value of busing, but because misrepresenting facts is unacceptable. Labeling every single white person a racist who opposed busing no matter what their reason while misrepresenting the fact that whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians opposed it is wrong.
Joe Biden's position was largely indistinguishable from Deval Patrick's. Patrick stated after Harris attacked Biden: "The fact is … there are lots of progressive Democrats and liberal-minded people who are uncomfortable with busing and were at the time. In many respects we sent the kids in to do what the adults wouldn't do. We sent the kids in to integrate the schools because the adults wouldn't integrate the neighborhood."
Finally, Brett Gadsden, professor of history at Northwestern University and an expert on desegregation noted the absurdity of these attacks as: "No one has come forward as the pro-busing candidate. No one."
1
I think we can all agree it used to be about racism. But now it’s about culture.
Cabrini Green was one of the worst housing projects in history. It’s concentration of poverty led to some of the most decrepit conditions in which the residents were conditioned to accept drugs and violence as part of their everyday life.
When it closed and residents were resettled, other predominantly black neighborhoods didn’t want Cabrini Green residents in their neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, most of the bad inner city schools result in children who are disruptive, and people of any race do not want them in their schools.
Do you honesty think people would oppose Sasha and Malia Obama being bused into their neighborhood schools because of their race?
15
People could, because they have stereotypes. People protested not because particular black kid was disruptive, but because they thought ALL black kids were disruptive. I agree disruptive kids are problem for educators, but there should be better way than just confine them to poor school.
Race is often conflated for class in the US. School districts may be most hotly contested boundries in the US. In some places it may be color based but go to any totally white area with a class divide. I will guarantee you the upper class kids go to an academy or some kind of religious school. We fear class mixing more than any kind of racial mixing.
6
The disparity between budgets for individual neighborhood schools begs the question:
Why are local property taxes the major source of funding for public schools in the U.S.?
1
I am black and I think we need to stop trying to force integration in the schools and community. Just make sure that the schools are of sufficient quality that kids can succeed were ever they are. Of course their are other issues that have to be dealt with over time, including employment, and large number of single family black homes
8
I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina in the late 1960s and early 1970s. My high school was Needham Broughton, which was essentially segregated when I first attended in 1969. (They did allow a handful of black male students to attend, mostly because they enhanced the performance of the football team.)
There were three other high schools in the Wake County school system at that time, three were 'white' and one was exclusively African-American. When integration was mandated, the first proposal was to allow white students who lived near the black high school to attend their 'neighborhood' school, but the white parents flew into a rage and many threatened to pull their children from the public school system. The only solution that the white parents grudgingly accepted was to close the black high school and bus the black students to the three white high schools. Naturally, the students who had lost their school were resentful, and there was a lot of hostility as a result. But, god forbid any white child should be tainted with the identity of attending the 'black school'.
Fifty years later, Broughton is now a prestigious school, but the Wake County public school system is still largely segregated.
Pulitzer Prize-worthy. Excellent, excellent.
I signed my child up for voluntary busing to an elementary school in a minority neighborhood in San Diego primarily because a kindergarten teacher at our local school told me I should do anything I could to avoid sending my child there, and because many children in our neighborhood had chosen it. The district’s incentives to white parents were less important to me though it did seem the school’s teachers were excellent. The district must also have given better teachers incentives to be there. It turned out to be a very good decision. My daughter loved socializing with her friends on the long bus ride and I didn’t have to find child care for the gap between the end of school and when I would get home from work. Minority students were bused by choice to the high school my daughter went to in a white neighborhood so it was also diverse, but less so than her grammar school. She ended up going to Penn and Harvard Law and has friends of all ethnicities so I would say busing worked out well for her. I hope it was an equally good experience for minority students who attended her schools. From the chart in the article, it does not appear voluntary busing has worked all that well to integrate schools in California. I hope the state makes a greater effort to achieve a better result in the future. Spending more money on minority schools to achieve parity should, of course, be a given but is not a complete answer.
1
To write this article is in and of itself a sad commentary on the ignorance of humanity. Racism is alive and well in America. It runs deep into our thinking. To talk about it is a good beginning, but we have been talking about it for over 160 years! The time for talking should be over by now. It’s time for action in the form of real educational assistance to black students. Job training and housing allowances should be considered. Schools should have mandatory courses on human rights and equality.
Journalism at its most powerful.
I recall the televised anger of whites in S. Boston against busing of kids; I didn't recall the concomitant anger of whites in New York.
I now recall it, and am devastated at past events, and worse still, the ongoing calamity of wasted lives.
I am the 1970’s product of “busing” or desegregation or whatever you want to call it. I distinctly remember being so confused as to why I couldn’t go my beloved Starmount Elementary for 4th Grade. Instead I had to ride a bus for 40 minutes each way to a school on the other side of town. It was exhausting and pointless. Thank goodness Charlotte went back to the idea of neighborhood schools before my own child entered the nightmare called Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. Even so, I remember how horrified I was when my daughter’s 5th Grade teacher said she placed a troubled, disadvantaged child’s desk next to my child’s, hoping somehow my child’s good behavior would rub off on the troublemaker. The teacher actually called my daughter “a buffer child”. I found this out after my daughter came home from school crying.
I’m so tired of the idea of using children as social guinea pigs.
34
How did bussing, and the other efforts at school integration, work with groups such as migrant California farmworkers, Native Americans on reservations, the Vietnamese "Boat People" of the 1970s, Appalachians, the Amish, Hawaiian natives, sons and daughters of Ivy League schools, French-speaking people in far-northern Vermont, Armenian communities in the California Central Valley, Syrian enclaves in Texas...and on, and on, and on?
This country is more than, as we used to say of newspapers, black and white and read all over. Let's treat it like that in any discussion of education.
3
Busing failed because it was a court-ordered fiat that circumvented a political resolution.
I well remember friends of mine--both of the Northwest Liberal variety--who had to decide whether or not to have their adolescent kids bused across Seattle and into a school that had been selected for "desegregation." They were in no sense of the word racist--in fact the husband later devoted the balance of his life getting wrongfully-accused prisoners out of jail, most of them black.
They hated two ideas: that their kids were pawns in a social engineering project mandated by a judge; and they hated the idea of not being reasonably close to their school. And, Ms. Hannah-Jones may find this hard to believe, they were concerned for the parents of thhe black kids who would face long drives at inconvenient hours to participate in their kids' education.
They put their kids in a nearby Catholic school.
Accusations of "white racism" are easy to apply; facing the nuances of individual human choice and its myriad reasons are tough. This article proves it.
19
I was in the first group of kids to be bused from the mainly white hills in Berkeley to the mainly black flats. At the school in the flats I got beat up a lot by black kids. I don't remember the white kids as racist, but black kids took pleasure in threatening and beating us and calling us various racially charged names.
That experience was obviously painful. it also seemed futile as there was little social integration between blacks and whites in the Berkeley schools and the academic difference was persistently large. It is somewhat of a relief to learn that busing helped some people.
As a parent today, I could not in good conscience allow my child to be exposed to what I went through. A large part of the problem was that the teachers and administrators did little to foster a climate of mutual respect between blacks and whites. Had they done so, the experience may have been better.
55
the logic in this editorial is extremely logically warped. of course busing created some black and white integration, but more importantly, this editorial evades to mention it failed to enhance educational attainment for white and blacks overall On the white perspective, it must have had a very detrimental impact on educational success and later attainment due to the wasted time sitting on a bus. If busing was successful where it mattered, this author would have been able to cite studies showing it had an overall enhancement of educational success of all children involved irrespective of race. It was a costly and misguided mistake and a very irresponsible politically motivated failure. K Harris poll rating should have sunk as a stone after she postured on it in the debate.
8
This is a solution in search of a problem. Schools are not segregated. Anyone can move into any neighborhood they want, and you will be granted admission to your local public school. It's as simple as that.
You think you can dictate where people live? That you can magically make people afford to live in neighborhoods beyond their means, or to expect them to live in neighborhoods that are beneath their means? You think that if you succeed in forcing these ridiculous social experiments on families that they won't do everything they can to find a way around the damage you're inflicting upon them?
The fact that progressives ignore the animosity that bussing generated, and think it would make race relations better rather than worse, shows just how out of touch with reality you are.
17
Busing may have worked in some places, but not in Boston. The city became a symbol for forced busing, riots, white flight, poorer schools, and more. And it may be remembered that Judge J. Paul Garrity, who enforced the order, and Senator Ted Kennedy, who supported busing, were both criticized for supporting busing while sending their kids to private schools. We needed better schools then and now. But even the best intentions sometimes fail. Forced busing, at least in Boston, was a failure.
8
“We cannot be naïve about how this country works”— a brilliant summary of this long and worthy article. And as a naïve, 9th-grade, white beneficiary of 1970 school desegregation in Richmond, Virginia—its first year, buses galore—I learned first-hand “how this country works” in a very positive way.
It was very hard. There were fights. But we became friends, saw each other clearly, fell in love, shared resources, learned calculus from each other, argued. Motivated to struggle to understand, I read John Howard Griffin and Malcolm X and Franz Fanon and—reaching—Dee Brown and Angela Y. Davis. We saw together what it takes for this country to work.
It was painful for all of us. And we made it work.
I know you want to suggest something negative with your phrase. And it’s not wrong that way. But on the other side of the line, when you cross over, you see that willingness to confront, face to face, to be honest and not sneaky with each other—is also “how this country works.” We can do it.
Yes, we can.
Whose job is it today to integrate New York schools? Isn’t that a project the mayor could bless with his energy instead of wasting time pursuing his presidential interest?
2
I would argue/hope the quality of the schools would improve if they are not funded by local property taxes, but by some state tax designed in such a way that the same amount of $$$ are spent on _each_ and _every_ child.
1
Hving been there in that time - whites hated busing simply and solely because it brought children of color to their lily-white schools & neighborhoods. That was the bottom line. While it was disadvantageous for black children to have to be on buses for hours and leave their neighborhoods, it provided the opportunities for education that cities refused to offer in neighborhoods of color. It's always about the racism - never forget that!
4
To me, making sure that all schools are properly funded and staffed is far more important than bussing children around to meet quotas. Unlike prior segregation where the government mandated that people of different races be separated, what is currently called segregation is primarily free market based and within individuals rights. It may be morally wrong to have racist ideals but the act of showing preference towards living in a predominantly homogeneous neighborhood isn’t illegal or unconstitutional in and of itself. Intimidation and discrimination in housing and employment are justifiably illegal but preferences are not. I think people miss out when they do not experience a diverse world but I also think it’s a choice to some degree.
7
I am so grateful to read this article today. Ms. Hannah-Jones and editors of the New York Times, keep writing on the topics of racism and segregation in its various toxic forms. Our country needs the education writers like you provide now as much as it did in past decades. Your article here is the most informative I have read to date and I learned facts about school integration efforts that I didn't know and should have ! Citizens need to learn and relearn the truths of the past and present. Racism is the most pernicious characteristic of our modern age and we all need to be informed and continue the fight to eradicate it.
3
My take away is that you can’t force/legislate people to live together. People tend to stick with people like them. And there is nothing wrong with that if that’s their free choice.
I like the idea of focusing instead on making sure EVERY school has the same resources and quality, so every child can walk to their own neighborhood school, parents can be involved in that school and classmates will have neighborhood friends to play with after school.
Stop trying to force things - pushing people together when they may not want to integrate, whether they be black, white or any grouping. We gay guys oftentimes like to live in neighborhoods together. It’s OK. It’s a free country.
Hopefully over time people will appreciate diversity is a contribution. But it has to be each person’s choice, not forced on them.
13
NY Times should do an anonymous poll of what readers think about busing including an item about whether they were actually in a busing program or had a child in a busing program (vs. just opinion with no basis in experience), socioeconomic status as a child and as an adult, ethnic background, and which years they were bused. It would also be interesting to measure attitudes toward other ethnicities in the same poll (although, being a survey designer, I can see there might be a large degree of social desireability bias).
A lot of these comments contend that "both" races were not happy with busing but I have a sense these feelings are mostly one-sided, from the privileged side, and not so much from the other side. Also, it was more than about black vs. white: kids of other backgrounds were also bused.
3
For much of my childhood in the 1980s, I attended all-black schools in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. I worked hard, and my mother stayed on my back, so I performed well. In 1988, I enrolled at the fully integrated Columbus High School — the oldest and best school in the city. I was amazed by the resources and attention that CHS received. I took full advantage, graduated, and went on to college and a professional career.
Was I better or smarter than my friends who attended the majority black high schools? No.
Was my mother harder on me than the parents of my friends at the majority back schools? No.
Was CHS fundamentally better resourced than those schools that my friends attended? Absolutely.
As long as zip codes determine school quality, then things won’t change.
9
I think that many of us forget that busing when both ways. And I agree heartily that integration worked.
I was a white student who was bused into predominantly black schools in the early 1980s. All of the kids on Andrews AFB were bused into various schools in or near D.C. My freshman year of high school, I was bused to Central High School in Capitol Heights, MD. At the time, it was 98% African American, 2% other.
Central was a rough school at that time. There was a lot of violence and a lot of drug crime. I am so grateful that my parents sent me anyway. I learned more about life and how things worked than I ever would have learned at the private school alternative some of our neighbors took. And I still got an academic education. My mother simply told me, "You can learn anything from anyone at any time if you choose to. You might have to work hard to make sure they give you what you need, but you can get it."
She was right. And I learned other things besides. I learned what it is like to be the only person who looks like you in a room. I learned that you need at least one person in your life to believe in you to graduate. I learned the joys of tutoring and seeing someone's "Aha" moment. I learned how to deal with people who were trying to intimidate me. I learned that friends and allies may be found in unlikely places.
Public schools allow our children to interact with people different from themselves. That is important and what is currently missing.
8
My experience exactly, 10 years before you in Richmond, Va. Thanks for this.
When Kamela Harris attacked Biden on the bussing issue, I wish he asked her if she was in favor of reinstating mandatory bussing. Her response would have been interesting. People forget that mandatory bussing was highly unpopular among both white and black families back in the 60's and 70's.
I can't speak to bussing from personal experience, but I can speak to integration. I attended parochial and public schools in Berkeley, CA during the 1960's and early 70's (same as Harris). It's a liberal area, and the schools had been integrated from middle school onwards even before the Federal mandates. My experience at that time was that, aside from a few black kids who moved well in both worlds, the black kids hung out mostly with each other and white/asian kids did likewise, and the two didn't really effect each other much. Their academic performances didn't change much. I think the causes of the racial achievement gap lie deep within early childhood experiences and family attitudes, and simply putting kids in physical proximity to each other in school doesn't compensate for that.
However, my (biracial) nephews attended the same schools, and I'm happy to report that things have improved a lot in the intervening years. Race hardly seems a factor in who the kids hang out with these days. My take is, true integration does work and it will happen, but at the timescale of generations.
9
The continuously over-looked factor here is that old community schools used to have a coterie of neighbors monitoring children and reporting to their parents.
The end of neighborhood schools was also the end of order in the schools, and it was the end of 60 years of where you went to school (the rigor and discipline) being more important than your family life for predicting educational success.
Yes, there was racism, but forced integration through busing threw a lot of baby out with the bathwater.
Until the problem of discipline and order is addressed, beyond this dichotomous racial narrative, we cannot move on, and we cannot improve education for all students.
10
@Craig Mason -- every child should have a good education.
Busing to achieve that? I am not so sure.The child's educate is it really pushed by his parents, or just a racial agenda?
You can't throw two different classes together and expect harmony.
Again, where are the parents of these children?
Unfortunately, the parents will do nothing to support the educational well-being of their child (hint:read articles where teachers demanded a black teacher for their black children!)
Saying busing succeeded, or, for that matter, that it failed, is naive.
It was back then-I was in Boston at the time, and favored busing-and is now. I'm less enthusiastic in retrospect, but can still see it either way. What I don't understand is wishing to reignite the controversy.
3
This article implies, intentional or not, that school desegregation was opposed by White communities and supported by Black communities. In the West coast state that I grew up in other than Portland there were no significantly Black neighborhoods or schools.
After college my wife and I moved to Portland in the 70's. My wife grew up in Chicago and came to Oregon as a VISTA volunteer. When we bought our house in Portland my wife specifically picked an integrated neighborhood with an integrated neighborhood school.
Shortly after moving in the local newspaper ran an article on inner city neighborhoods seeing a resurgence of White families moving back. In the article the Head start director was bemoaned the "gentrification" of the neighborhoods.
Over the next twenty years the Black community strived to use the neighborhood schools as a way to teach Black culture and community cohesion.
Based on my experience, the Black community did not strive for integration but rather strived for.an environment that primarily encouraged segregation.
My point is that support for neighborhood schools is not driven by racism but by a desire by families to send their children to schools that reflect the makeup of their local communities whether they be White, Black or integrated. Busing was a wrong headed solution to a problem that ultimately saw progress by more fair distribution of school funding and emphasis on neighborhood input.
11
Not sure if the incessant calling whites Racists is serving a useful purpose. There is no question parents have always wanted their children to attend schools with other children of similar race and class. As whites dwindle as a share of the nation's population, especially in already minority/majority areas, it will simply not be possible to have black and brown kids sitting next to white kids in public schools. There are however, millions of black/brown success stories that have to be acknowledged by race-obsessed progressives.
65
@TMart pretty disturbed by how often I see comments like these labeled as "Times Pick". Do you really think poor parents are happy with their children attending underfunded, overcrowded schools, where their kids are less likely to graduate high school, let alone go to college?
8
@TMart
So you are not sure if calling racists racists is useful?
It is.
And this "There are however, millions of black/brown success stories that have to be acknowledged by race-obsessed progressives."
What? What does this even mean, and how exactly is it related to segregated schools?
3
“Like Kamala Harris, I was one of those kids bused to white schools. Busing was part of a desegregation plan Waterloo, Iowa adopted using federal desegregation funds after being sued by the NAACP. Starting in second grade and all the way through high school, I rode a bus two hours a day. It was not always easy, but I am perplexed by the audacity of people who argue that the hardship of a long bus ride somehow outweighs the hardship of being deprived of a good education.”
So the key to a good life and education is being near white kids. Am I the only one who reads this and says ‘really’?
11
My oldest child was ready for first grade when bussing was implemented in Boston. We stayed in town to see it through but after his teacher admitted that there was no controlling the behavior of the class we up and moved to the next bedroom community where education was excellent and the students did not relieve themselves in the coat closet. Now this scenario may have little to do with race but it underlines the terrible way in which city public schools were, and still are in some places, run. The overwhelming corruption of a school system like Boston’s insured a bad education for most, a terrible time for many.
15
Thank you for this excellent article. Your research, historical information and analysis elevates this conversation to new levels. We need more journalist and journalism like yours.
5
This article missed an important point.
That point is contained in the photograph the Times chose to run with this piece. In it, thousands of people of no color from South Boston are protesting "busing."
People of no color who are working class did protest the forced busing of their kids out of their neighborhoods or the forced busing into their schools of children of color. They knew that stable schools were being sacrificed for wealthy liberal ideals.
The wealthy people of no color never did have to participate in "busing," cause they sent their kids to private schools. And still do.
But I , as a child of no color, was bused to achieve "equality."
Yes, "I was that little boy!"
During my high school years, "equality" was achieved by children of color electing to "self-segregate" by picking a school door "through which children of no color" could not enter and by "reserving" cafeteria tables just for children of color. If a child of color cooperated with the teacher, he or she was accused of "acting white."
Teachers were intimidated and discipline was right out the window. Learning was a challenge, but the library was always open, and for that I am grateful.
But one of the few real men I've met in my life, before or after the army, was my black football coach. He didn't favor anyone or care about "victim narratives." He demanded sacrifice and success without excuses. He was a role model for all us kids.
I sure do miss him.
32
I can see the reason for protesting busing of no color students to color school, but why would you protest busing of color students to no color school, unless you want to deny them good education. Did these parents protest bussing the white kids in the white school? According to the article, not. So, all these protesting was about race.
4
Wow, thank you for this article.
What a tragedy that busing and integration efforts have fallen by the wayside. If they had been embraced and implemented decades ago, perhaps we would no longer see such glaring disparities between schools just twenty-minute bus rides apart.
I feel we need to decouple the real estate market from public schools. We bought our house knowing that we were paying a premium to be able to send our children to good public schools in the area. Truth be told, I would be somewhat upset if someone now came up to me and told me we had to send our children to a school in a neighboring town with far lower test scores. On the other hand, I would really love my kids to go to a thoroughly racially integrated public school. I don’t know how to solve this problem. We need to make sure all schools are ones we’d feel happy having our kids attend, and that means making sure all schools have adequate resources— not just the ones in districts with high revenue from property taxes.
4
"White parents in suburban Detroit had also couched their resistance in antibusing terms."
Yes busing is a part of student life but it's a different case when it's planned and by choice. It completely destructive when it's part of some grand liberal scheme.
And you completely gloss over the impact busing had on white students who lived within the city.
The scheme called for all schools to reflect the racial make up of the city wide student body. At that time white students made up 29% of the overall student population. So the few remaining majority white schools had its students bused to majority Black schools.
I suggest you talk to some of those white students who were bused and ask them how their day to day interaction went. Then write back to tell how that went.
And there's not dog whistle or southern strategy to it.
24
Were they blocked from entering schools? Were there huge crowd protesting these white students attending black school?
@yulia Did they learn as much as they could have? Or did they learn more about violence?
1
Amazingly written and well-research piece. I worked as a school photographer for several years and got to see first hand how various schools differ within various states. The New York school system is not only the most segregated school system I ever witness, it is the most segregated anything I've ever personally seen, anywhere. Perhaps only churches are more segregated than NYC schools. To this day, I don't truly belive that anyone's "not racist" until I see them get married, start a family and decide where to send their kids for school. Parental instincts can be very revealing about people's prejudices. Everyone "wants the best for their children". Schools reveal deep, possibly unconscious beliefs by telegraphing through action what often ostensibly liberal people think of as "fitting" for their children. We need to tear down this wall, this barrier dividing our children by race and depriving people of potential. Without equal education which in America likely means integrated education, there can be no equal opportunity.
4
The notion of busing seems racist, that "white" schools are better, and that being in a classroom with whites will make brown people smarter.
8
I believe the issue is more socioeconomic. White schools tend to be richer and have more resources at school and also at home for students. I teach in a very good school district in Texas and the differences in scores among our multiple high schools still show an association with the percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. It has been said that most of the students at our richest school have private tutors and that is one of many reasons they do so well.
I believe access to a quality education continues to be one of our biggest civil rights issues.
1
Did you read the article? Activists tried to get equal funding and bussing was the last resort when they realized that the only way children of color would get the same quality of education was by being in better funded schools. Which happened to be schools with white children in them.
Actually, they are better funded, it is not racist, it is a fact.
I am simply amazed that Biden tried to split hairs on this with Harris. Was he simply ignorant of the facts? Or was he being reflexively defensive? And his argument that he only opposed federal intervention was so bogus that it barely stands up to scrutiny. And all things considered, Biden generally has a positive record on civil rights, so his being defensive was just inexplicable. If he ends up on the debate stage with Trump, he is going to have to face completely fact free, nonsensical accusation and if he going to try and reason his way out of them, we are toast.
This is a very enlightening article. I have lived in the US for the last 21 years, and them more I learn about its history, the more I realize the centrality of race in American life, and the very ardent attempts by a lot of white people to pretend otherwise.
2
There is no bus that will ever fix the bigotry of low expectations the enabling liberal mind has towards minority students.
16
@EGD== this "low expectation" could be easily fixed if those accused of it actually prove their accusers wrong?
I grew up in Boston before busing. Even then many families avoided Boston public schools, a school system already in decline Unlike now, Boston was in economic decline. It could not afford to upgrade its school infrastructure.
Boston had a parallel educational system run by the Catholic Church built in the day when Boston public schools made catholics less than welcome. Classes were large, but discipline was maintained often at the end of a ruler or a call home. The parish was committed to their school and their kids.
The suburbs had relatively new well-funded schools. Classes were relatively small by comparison. These schools had all the bells and whistles that could make a difference in a kid's life.
Then came busing where poor white and black kids were bused and the better off moved to the "burbs" or sent their kids to catholic schools.
At the same time, hundreds of young men were returning from Vietnam, where they fought side by side with blacks, back to their familiar white "ethnic "enclaves now under siege by white suburban liberals who called those opposed to busing "racists" and those who served in Vietnam "fools' when their kids neither rode a school bus to Boston or fought in Vietnam.
White working class, with justification, saw that they fought the war and they paid the price for "integration". Unfortunately they often took their anger out on the closest target, bus loads of black kids.
8
Quality comment- thank you.
In 1989, I took part in a student exchange that brought about a dozen Europeans to a famous and highly selective public high school in a Northern State.
We were distributed among host families of different races, but quickly learned that students from different ethnic backgrounds didn't talk to each other. When we went to the party of a black or Latino student, us Europeans were the only whites.
With a few exceptions, the whites were obnoxious racists. One even had South African flag for a license plate (apartheid was not yet over). "Jokes" about members of other races were common.
You can imagine my surprise when Obama was elected - and my lack of surprise when Trump made it.
2
What a great topic. It must be wonderful to be an African-American journalist in 21st century America. There's always a topic to write about. It's only one topic, but it's always there and can always be written about, ad infinitum. I wonder if these African-Americans ever get tired of writing about one topic and maybe consider moving on to another topic. As far as I can tell that's not even an option - ask TaNehisi Coates. Or the woman who wrote this piece.
15
@Joe I wish I could "like" your comment 100 times.
2
This "outstanding" article is a disservice to the black community.
If a black kid tries to excel academically and/or just generally behave in a well mannered fashion, he or she gets immediately accused of "acting white" by black peers and becomes a social pariah. This attitude is being reinforced by such articles for years and years by conveniently switching focus.
Black community should put all of it's energy into changing this. "Acting white" won't take your racial identity from you but will raise your chances of becoming successful - this should be the message to the black kids from day one.
I can assure you that these days a white mother doesn't care if the kid sitting next to her kid is black what she cares about if that kid is "acting black". It's been dozens of years since this is not anymore about being black or white - this is about "acting black" or "acting white".
32
"So Ms. Harris, I know that your not in favor of the mass incarceration of poor black and brown men, but . . . "
9
Is it any wonder that to members of my early baby boomer generation we Black Americans saw "moderate" Democrats like Joe Biden and southern segregationists as two sides of the same coin and their so-called "civil" behavior as collusion and just another example of their failure to commit to true desegregation? Lord, spare me from the actions self described well meaning liberals,
3
Busing was an issue that forced middle class white "progressives" and white bigots to confront their prejudices and racism. of course they didn't like it. It's laughable for people to pretend that white flight and racism didn't and still does have much to do with shaping education. All this talk if "local funding" and "local rule" are just ways for white communities to keep out non-whites. Most suburbs, including those surrounding NYC, are majority white. There is a clear, racial reason that schools in mostly white communities are considered "good" even when neighboring communities are not even though they have similar test scores but more black and Latino students. And white people would rather send their kids to a mediocre private school than to a good local school with a lot of minorities, which shows you that the issue IS about race.
4
If the Democrat candidates and the news media try to make 1970's era desegregation and reparations for slavery campaign issues, they might as well go ahead and write their concession speeches and prepare for four more years of Trump. Trump has been such a disaster that the 2020 presidential election is the Democrats to lose and I have every confidence that they will figure out how to do so.
11
This should be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
1
So since white people who engaged in white flight never had to interact with minorities as youngsters they can use that excuse for not hiring minorities for positions at their corporations. We only hire people who are like us no matter that they are not qualified for anything
White only boards, white only corporations, white only CEO's, white only goes on for everything. The foundations of this country is racism, manifested in our schools, sports hospitals ,corporations you name it. Nothing will ever change till we address the institutionalized racism in this country . Keep pretending that it doesn't exist, its just like climate change its going to continue to destroy the country
1
White supremacists had things just how they wanted them: white neighborhoods, white schools, basically as little contact with black people as possible. Of course they were going to push back when this was challenged. The underlying racism was never fixed, so of course things have gone back to how they were before desegregation.
1
Integration was that very brief interlude between the arrival of the first black African American Protestant person into a neighborhood and/or or school and the flight of the last while European American Judeo-Christian person.
It was always about the color aka race aka ethnicity aka national origin of the people on the buses and the porches in stark physically visible historical identifiable contrast to those who had enslaved and made their ancestors separate and unequal.
Neither condescending paternalistic liberal white pity nor condescending paternalistic conservative white contempt ever accepted the diverse individual accountable humanity of black African Americans as divinely naturally created equal persons with certain unalienable rights of life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness accorded to the likes of the Czech Ivana and the Slovenian Melania Trump.
2
I began school in Upstate NY in '54. There were no black kids in my school. We lived in public housing which was all white. It was really nice as was the school. All the black kids lived down on the East Side in their own public housing and schools. I am sure their schools and housing were not as nice as mine. I was delighted that LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Bills, but I knew no black people at that point. When in '70 I began an apprenticeship in the Pipe Trades I was in the last all white class of apprentices and saw Affirmative Action take hold. In '76 I worked in E TX on a refinery build. It was a big job. Each Gen Forman was given an Affirmative Action placed black apprentice. They were not allowed to touch the tools. As my GF said, "Every GF needs a Boy." There was a very heavy KKK presence there. Brown vs BE, Civil/Voting Rights, Affirmative Action, Busing all were positive programs. all it took to screw them up was people. I read history and biographies mostly, but have only recently taken on the post Civil War era. To Depressing, but some excellent scholarship. It is difficult to read and contemplate how small we can make ourselves. Indeed as HL Gates put it in his new book, "Stony is the Road."
2
Every integrated Dallas school is absolute garbage. Crime, graffiti, kids who are so ADD it’s a carnival atmosphere. And parents who are wholly absent or might as well be they’re so uninvolved.
Decent white parents do the obvious thing. Send kids to private or move to a suburban district.
Inner city schools all across America (pick a city) = child abuse for your kid.
Call me racist everyone knows it’s true. My child is priority #1, not phony social engineering that fails.
24
That is what you get for years of public education neglect. Tell the truth, I never understood why parents should be involved in school activities. It is nice when parents encourage their kids to study, but many parents do not have time to get involve in schooling. They have to work to put the good on the table and roof over the heads. I always thought it is duty of school to educate children, to get them interested in education, to encourage their curiosity and so on.
Race became a weapon instead of letting nature take its course. America is a capitalistic society. Money talks. Have lots you when. Have none you loose. Thats simply the nature of money. Race doesn't work in free markets. Self determination does.
3
Free market is a game, and money allows to rig this game to benefit people with money. Because there is unequal distribution of the wealth among races, races is very much part of the game.
Hannah-Jones tells a true story. Busing didn't fail. We failed to build and run high quality schools for everyone. The fact is, the inner city schools I knew in Los Angeles were hell holes that should have been shut down and scraped. All the children should have been bussed out, and none in. But that would have required increasing budgets at a time when they were being slashed. Nothing is simple. It's all connected. but this article is one of the best I've read in 50 years of education research and practice. Thank you Hannah-Jones.
3
I'm so glad you wrote "white racism".
Racists of all colors exist, much as some people would like to think otherwise.
3
Why not just require funding of public schools be spent equally, from a general fund, and not be based on local property values? It is a system that is designed to fund schools purely based on wealth. I was bused when I was a kid. It sucked. It had nothing to do with race. I was sent to a high school away from all my friends in junior high school - people who would remain my friends for life. I hated and we ended up moving.
5
Even as an old man, I didn't realize how racist the average American was till I read this long article.
The mindset back then was, by and large, "My (white) kid ain't going to school with your black kid, and if you want a fight, you got one!"
I grew up in an all-white Texas town, and, yes, our parents were quietly racist, even our high school teachers used the N-word while teaching, but we kids weren't. We were fascinated by other races, Mexican, black, whatever, like, I'm told, Chinese are enamored of foreigners: It's a refreshing change.
So, like most myopic ignoramuses living in a projected world, I thought that racism was overblown. Our new generation would fix all that, and maybe to some extent it did.
But as this superb article shows, it was a heck of a social war, still not won, of course. We are now, sadly, witnessing a resurgence of racism with the Trump administration, which is doing exactly what his voters want: a white America.
It is natural, I guess, to fear the Other, and birds of a feather do flock together, but we can rise up and out of that vicious circle. This article shows it. Therefore, I predict that after this last ditch effort by racists, this Battle of the Buffoons, the war will be won, but racism will never be fully exterminated. Haters gotta hate.
3
THANK YOU
1
I detected a certain, almost gleeful spite when the author described black students being bussed to the superior white schools. What she doesn’t say is that the white students were being bussed to inferior black schools. What parent, regardless of race, wants their kids to attend an inferior school? It wasn’t all about race. The problem is using property taxes to fund schools. ALL schools should be superior than desegregation will work. I speak as a person who went to desegregated schools—the military—and I’m a better person because of it.
18
Best article on this topic I have ever read. This should be required reading and especially for all educators!
2
Had segregated,white-controlled schools complied with desegregation orders, or noticed that they would be enforced and acted accordingly, there would have been no busing. Busing in Boston was a last resort that came about as a result of over a decade of denial, stalling, resistance and "MAKE ME DO IT". Busing was a direct result of racism. Full stop.
1
I learned a lot from this article. But I agree with the commenters who point out that the state funding systems for schools should be changed to improve equality. I remember in the 1980's that I had friends in another town who got a variety of language classes and sports that our school didn't offer. Yet our school was considered superior enough to a majority-black school in a nearby town that students there were bused to us. It didn't work out as well as one would hope. I don't think the school administration wanted to deal with the new kids, and there was some racism on their part, which was terrible because they were in charge of decisions that affected every kid's future. There were also many problems between the kids themselves. In hindsight, the administration could have set up ways to improve communication, and help each set of kids adjust, but it was the 80's and nobody thought of that. I hope schools dealing with integration now work with counselors and therapists to help ease the students' experience.
2
Devastating. Every person who runs for public office should be required to read and state their endorsement or denial, and the reasons why, starting with Joe Biden. I leave Trump out because he can't read.
2
Race has long been used as a tool to demarcate who has access to resources and who does not. It is not a far stretch to say that race has been used in the school system to prevent students of color from accessing the same resources as white students.
Integration of school was a way to narrow the gap in resources because the greatest determinant of educational outcomes for students is their socioeconomic status. But this country still sees students of color, namely Black and Latinx students, as tainting predominately white schools.
I don't know what the long term solutions may be but I do know this country has to grapple with racism in much more complex and subtle ways. It is easy to admonish the skinhead wearing a swastika jacket but how does one tear down an entire racist system. There is space for both types of criticism. But anyone serious about tackling racism looks at the system as a whole. And education, for better or worse, seems to be viewed as the panacea for inequality.
In 1965, 66 and 67 (corresponding to 4th, 5th and 6th grade my white school was integrated with bused in students and the experience was superb and excellent for me (I’m white) to this day. One of the best policies of the sixties.
2
The journalist needs to visit PBS.org for an explanation of the causes of The Civil War. It was not a single issue war, was there ever a war fought over a single issue?
6
@person of interest The only complaint in the first declaration of secession (South Carolina's) is about "non-slaveholding states" not sending escaped slaves back to SC. The confederate states supported this declaration. Any other reasons for the war outside of slavery were secondary.
As I read this I see in the back of my mind the seething racism consistently demonstrated at the President’s “rallies.” As apparently at least a third of the U.S. population still buy into this racism, I do not foresee real integration or equality happening in the near future in education or other areas despite any policy efforts to promote it.
Judie,
Each generation carries some of the cultural habits of the prior one. Unfortunately, we are only 50 years from dejure segregation.
Maybe in another 75 years will the future generations get beyond this prehistoric/medieval way of looking at race, ethnicity, environmental and religion.
Born too soon.
2
Hard to believe the South is more integrated. My wife taught in schools there. In the Atlanta school district her school was mostly black, meaning there were a couple of white kids. Ironically, both (literally, "both") were immigrants from eastern europe! Another school in another district she taught at, just inside the east-side of the ring road was 90% "minority but included over 50 ethnic groups - asian, mexican, central and south america, african, etc. Where were the white people? Well, go north about 40 miles up GA 400 and you will find them and their all-white schools. And out of the reach of the MARTA train system (which they rejected, for obvious reasons).
And in the rural areas the whites set up "private" schools for their kids and relegated the black kids to the public schools. In those areas they are so segregated that they cannot handle having "mixed" proms. Sad.
3
@Joe Rock bottom
Many whites attended those mixed, public schools (like myself). You're stereotyping of southerners as hick, racists needs to stop. The schools are black in ATL because the areas are almost entirely black. That is changing now a little in the ATL city limits though.
2
I think opposition to bussing among whites was driven by pure racism and, secondarily, a desire for children to attend more convenient, higher-performing schools, but I also think opposition to bussing was much more intense because it was only something WORKING CLASS WHITES had to participate in.
Affluent whites could move across the city line to the suburbs or enroll their kids in private schools. Judge Arthur Garrity, the judge who ordered Boston bussing, was seen as an egregious hypocrite because he lived in Wellesley. Ted Kennedy was seen as a hypocrite too because he sent his kids to St. Albans and Phillips Andover. Even affluent blacks, like Thurgood Marshall himself, sent their kids to elite private schools.
Although it would have still left Ted Kennedy's kids their private school escape route, The tragedy of the Milliken vs Bradley decision is that it exempted more affluent suburban whites from bussing, not just that it fostered segregation itself.
The not all whites had to participate in integration, and then that some of those affluent whites had the gall to call working class whites "racist," was a nail in the coffin of white acceptance of bussing.
20
@In NJ Jimmy Carter had the guts to send Amy to D.C. public schools. Clinton and Obama? Nope.
4
I might be more supportive of busing as it was originally designed in the 70s if the data actually showed that it moved the needle in closing the persistent educational performance gaps. It did't. It ended up putting many white students into hostile learning environments and it did not foster goodwill between blacks and whites. Even today, with the tremendous pressure and resources to close the performance gaps, not a single school district in the US, integrated or segregated, do black students perform at least at the level of white students, let alone East Asian students who outperform both groups. Perhaps IQ really does predict something tangible with one's ability to grasp mathematical concepts and to reason in abstractions, i.e., the skills being taught in school.
Anyone who has taught, coached, or worked at schools that are more than 50% black will understand the extraordinary challenge it is to control, establish a positive learning environment, and to educate them. To pretend that all races can behave the same and learn the same is being willfully ignorant. Articles such as this feed the white urban elitist's morally righteous sensibilities that perpetually keep them both out of touch with reality and from confronting the uncomfortable truths about race.
22
The facts named in this observation has more to do with how children are treated at home (being read to when they’re little, for example, and learning to trust authority) than with race. Your experience is your experience, but you’re not thinking very clearly yourself if you stop at race as an explanation for what you’ve seen.
2
@Paul
I highly recommend reading "Blueprint" by Robert Plomin along with "The Neuroscience of Intelligence" by Richard Haier. They present the latest research in intelligence and behavior and the degree of which these traits are heritable. Reading to children early in life, having more smart toys in the home, and so-on has no lasting effect on IQ, and IQ is the single best predictor of educational performance for students regardless of race.
4
Quote from Reardon, “The Geography of Racial/Ethnic Score Gaps” :
“In other words, there is no school district in the United States which serves a moderately large number of black or Hispanic students in which achievement is even moderately high and achievement gaps are near zero.”
That is pretty damning data, despite Dr. Reardon’s single sentence denial of the possibility of “large innate differences in academic potential”.
2
Interesting. So "busing" is analogous to "states' rights." The names change, but the game remains the same.
The writer talks about busing and the Southern and Northern states as though that was the WHOLE country, COMPLETELY ignoring the MidWest, Southwest and Western states. She also conveniently left out Harris living in Berkeley CA one of the most liberal cities in the country. And again Biden has a history since then AND was VP to THE first Black POTUS. That Harris or any of her supporters think they can get her elected on this issue shows delusion.
13
I was a white kid bussed in Chattanooga, TN from 1974-1976. We were the “Bicentennial” class of elementary school kids. One very important point left out of this story and many others was the integration of the first wave of South East Asian refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam after the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon. If there was one thing that united white, black and yellow kids it was the realization that the adults had no clue about how to handle us. I came from a military family that had lived on Okinawa. So when the terrified Cambodian girl was introduced to our 6th grade class in the autumn of 1975, the black teachers were huddled around trying to figure out what to give her for lunch. I tried to say that most Asian kids liked white rice and pickled vegetables. For that I was told to sit down and shut up. I sat down because I was no fool. And I stole my education from almost all the other teachers and professors I encountered in the following years.
I agree with the author about white racism being the root cause. But the full flowering of that noxious period of American history ensnared so many others.
2
Busing wasn't just about sending black kids to previously white schools and white racism. Many black parents opposed it, too. It was governmental social engineering that only made those parents who could afford it to send their kids to private schools. So many of the commenters here weren't actually living at the time when this policy was forced down people's throats. For them it's abstract. It was politically divisive, and resurrecting it now can only be divisive, which is the last thing Democrats need if they are going to defeat the worst president in the history of this country.
13
I guess Democrats are DETERMINED to lose next year.
BUSSING? the most hated government interaction of all time? that gutted major US cities and hollowed out urban areas? that drove white flight? that pushed people into parochial and private schools?
Bussing was/is dead as the proverbial doornail. By the end of it, they were bussing black kids across town to attend...all black schools and vice versa. All the white families had long since FLED.
IT FAILED, Ms. Jones! it was a stupid, social engineering failure and you want to bring that BACK as a Democratic issue? NOW?
52
I am so glad to know that busing did work. I am sick to my stomach at northern whites resisting integration and insult to great injury is that tax money from blacks often paid for white kids better education. I have a good friend whose boy friend is black and though he is very intelligent, he reads very slowly. My friend mentioned that it was caused by a terrible public school education and until I read this opinion piece I did not fully understand. We whites owe reparation to black people for slavery before and after the Civil war period.
1
@cheerful dramatist: there was no slavery after the Civil War.
2
I saw busing first hand. It was voluntary. It failed. Once more white racism is to blame for the country's ills. This narrative is very old and very pathetic.
16
Poor Ms Harris, she got bused to school.
So did I, one of about 50 white kids among 800 black and Hispanic kids.
every day I walked past a middle school two blocks from my home to catch a city bus for a seven mile ride that culminated with a three block walk. That was the Denver solution to the Brown v Board decision.
I was lucky, I was big for my age and had been lifting weights since the fifth grade. I was attacked from behind in the cafeteria and sent my attacker to the hospital. A second attack, while waiting for the city bus to go home, resulted in some broken ribs, lost teeth and a missing ear. Both incidents were witnessed by teachers who verified I was attacked and not the instigator - I still got expelled and as a result my parents were forced to sell their home and move.
So, Ms. Brown, how many white kids attacked you in the cafeteria? How many jumped you while waiting for a city bus to take you home?
I was an early supporter. Your attack on Mr. Biden was uncalled for and the kind of ambush tactics used by the current President.
I'm not now. You're nothing more than a Black Trump.
87
I had similar experiences as a little white kid in a new, mostly-black school in 1970. Scared to go to school, have my lunch money taken, etc. Gangs. Until I saw the bigger picture: I was headed to college. They were getting minimum-wage jobs or going to jail. No wonder they were mad. Fighting was all they had. And in the end the white kid who couldn’t fight turned out to win. Not fair, right?
What’s your solution, looking back on it now? Where do we go from here?
160
@Paul I went to fully integrated schools in jr. and high schools. Busing didn't start until I graduated. But what William says about the violence between black & white students has the ring of truth to it. Forced busing increased tension between students while making segregation paradoxically worse. The clumsy way it was implemented was a complete disaster. That is beyond dispute. The solution then and the solution now is very simple. Public school funding in most districts was and is based on proper taxes. If you live in a poorer district your school will get less funding. That's wrong. First, all schools have to get the same yearly funding done to the penny. Second, the schools that are falling apart need to be brought up to spec. An inner city school should be indistinguishable from a suburban school. Third, we need magnet schools for those kids that excel in STEM subjects. Fourth any child should be able to attend any school in their district if they have room. This would solve most of the problems that forced busing promised to do but in the end never did.
11
@William I think you missed the point of Harris' exchange with Biden. You say "poor Ms. Harris she got bused to school," you seem to have the impression that Harris is criticizing busing or claiming it to have been a hardship. Actually, she is claimed that bussing was a blessing for her and just bemoans the fact that it took 20 years and pressure from the federal government to achieve the desegregation that Brown vs. B of E promised.
Your story makes it clear that you oppose bussing, but it's hard to tell whether you oppose integrated schools as well. You attended a school where you as a white student was in the minority. As a result you had some fights in which black students were the instigators and you got punished. Assuming your descriptions are accurate these incidents would seem to show that not just busing but integration as a whole was to blame. And would I be wrong to assume that your rhetorical question to Ms. Brown (I think you meant Harris) would seem to indicate that you don't think that black students where not typically targeted for interracial violence in the way you were.
I think Sen Harris face-off with Biden was opportunistic and somewhat disingenuous, but it's fairly run-of-the-mill campaigning, notable more for Biden's lack of a cogent response than for any dishonesty or unfairness on Harris' part. How can you equate a tactic like that with Trump's non-stop assault on the truth?
1
"It Was Never About Busing." I'm white and attended a newly integrated middle school in the deep South in the early 1970s. Desgregation where I lived was a fairly smooth process, I think, because our town was relatively small at the time and busing wasn't onerous because the distances were minuscule. But as other readers have noted, plenty of people who fully supported integration just didn't want their kids cooped up in a bus for a long time. It's Occam's Razor: Sometimes the most obvious explanation is a correct one.
16
Excellent article! Sadly, many commentators are still missing the point.
2
@professor For the past 20 years every white in America has heard the point. "You're all racist" isn't exactly subtle.
17
@Blair
As a fellow member of the long-suffering tribe which has been called "racist" for decades even before we say anything, I'm happy to tell you how I finally put a stop to it: I now freely admit to being a white nationalist, while friends of mine announce themselves as "neo-fascists". None of us has been called "racist" since we adopted this method. It works.
3
Forced busing was a noble but flawed remedy for the real social ills of inequality and racism. It polled in the single digits among both white and black families for a reason. As others here point out, rich whites simply sent their children to private schools, while working class whites felt that their own right to community and geographic self-determination was being usurped by ivory tower social engineers and "limousine liberals." Ms. Hannah-Jones has written a powerful history of the period, but the assumed premise remains unanswered: was forced busing the right remedy for inequality?
12
Re: the town that was forced to reopen a school after 5 years of no school: "What happened there is perhaps the most glaring example of the absurdity of Mr. Biden arguing on the debate stage that he did not oppose busing, just federal intervention": Biden specifically said "federal intervention _regarding busing_, not in general. Are you saying he was against Brown vs board of education? That to me is pretty unfair to him. And would busing have helped that school in P. E. county stay open? I don't get it.
3
A well written and documented article. However, Democrats need to focus on better schools for all and eliminating and prosecuting cases casuing dis-advantaged kids to walk past good schools. Desegregation is essential, busing provides too many other social issues to be a pervasive solution.
6
I do love someone obviously not old enough to have been alive in the 1970's telling us who were alive then what we thought and the reasons we thought it. Wish I could be alive 50 years from now to hear people tell Ms. Hannah- Jones what she thought in 2019 and why she thought that way.
37
Great article. But it didn't address the central conundrum that so many young families in the 1970's faced. Why would you stretch your resources to live in an expensive neighborhood, when it had no bearing on the kind of school system your children were raised in?
Hypothetically, assuming everyone were the same race, why would anyone pay high property taxes for an expensive home near the city center, if from 7am to 6pm your child were sent to a school at random, where the safety and quality of education varied widely?
Is it not conceivable that there were many middle class families eager for integration but couldn't justify the expense of living in the city when there were affordable homes in the suburbs?
8
Schools are segregated, or become re-segregated, because our country is largely segregated by race and income on a local level. Integrated/balanced middle or upper middle income communities are the exception, not the norm.
Thus current busing efforts involve translocating students from majority minority areas to "whiter" ones (and the opposite direction, too, of course, although parents will take their kids out of public schools to prevent this.) Which costs unbelievable amounts of money that could otherwise be used to improve neighborhood schools.
We can't separate educational opportunity from the broader issues of income and racial injustice in the US.
4
An excellent compilation of statistical and anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of educational desegregation by Ms Hannah-Jones. Sad that some of the respondents are still missing the point of what she says.
2
Thank you for that. I did not know the whole story of busing and desegregation. I am educated by your article and I appreciate it.
3
The fact that bussing is even a topic today explains why Democrats are unlikely to win the Presidency in 2020. Trump is running on a strong economy, while Democrats are competing to become the heir to George McGovern.
27
Thank you for this wonderful article. It educated me.
3
Forced busing was good in this way: it got parents to be savvy about things like school quality, teacher quality, crime in schools, drugs in schools, pregnancy rates in schools, and the influence of peers on each other. If you offer me the chance to bus my white child to an all-black school with a higher rating, better teachers, lower drug and pregnancy and crime rates, and higher college acceptance rates than his current school? Sign me up. Force me to bus him to a lower quality school that has even more white students than the one he currently attends? I'd home-school him first before I sent him to that super-majority white school, and so would tens of millions of Americans like me.
18
As a "participant" in school busing, I had a half hour bus ride to school every day to an inner city school. As we drove past a nearby school, I wondered why I had to get up early and get home late when another school was "right there".
23
Very convincing article which cleared up some of my false beliefs regarding busing. The re-segregation numbers reflect the persistent vicious white racism in the U.S. that I grew up with in white suburban Chicago in the 70s.
Here in Canada parents can easily send their kids to affordable private schools but many do not because there are good public schools even in lower income neighborhoods. The public schools have more diverse student bodies, due to the large, lower income immigrant population here, but the quality of education is not lower.
2
@science prof
That's the dirty secret of a lot of American school "rankings". It has less to do with how good the instruction is and more to do with who's attending the school.
4
@science prof: And yet you fled further into the great white north.
A real firebrand you are.
3
@science prof
Hooray for Canada!. I have visited Toronto and found Toronto remarkably clean. I guess the Canadians put the same effort in their educational system
Thank you for an incredibly well-written and thorough analysis of the issue. Thank you for the courage of telling the whole story, which a lot of people conveniently leave out.
6
In 1957 a Columbia law professor wrote that Brown reached the right conclusion but with the wrong reasoning.
He argued that legally enforced segregation violated both black students and white students right to freedom of association. Of course there is no right to free association in the text of the constitution. But legal theorists were toying with the idea of implied rights.
These are rights that were needed for the other rights and freedoms to have meaning. So what good would free speech be in a classroom if the state could limit who you could talk to by race?
Brown took a different course but the result was organized massive resistance in the south and white flight in the north.
So now what is left of "integration" is exactly as that law review argued, a voluntary association that we call diversity.
The direction we take in the future will in all likelihood depend less on the court and more on the choices of the millennial's. Data tells us that this generation is more open and less affected by racial bias than their peers.
But the progress is slow and because it's so slow this is another reason for reparations.
I was a student at Old Providence Elementary School in Charlotte, NC in the early 1970’s when busing began. My classmates went from all white, as best I can remember, to a mix of black and white students. It was a wonderful educational and perhaps life changing experience for me. In my all white neighborhood bordering the school (I walked to school every day) I did not know black children. The first year in an integrated school, Janet, who was bused in, became my best friend. After 3 years of having only white teachers, my favorite teacher became Mrs. Patterson, who was black. This enriching environment changed me at an early age and I thank God I had it.
12
A school where the majority of kids have reasonably good parents is a good school. A school where most kids have parents who should absolutely not have children is a bad school. Budgets and teachers have been the scapegoats of liberal reformers for decades. Is it the government's job to raise children? If you really care about kids instead of your pet theory on social justice, you want to address this problem head on. Relentless messaging about family planning and free and easy access to it. A solid minimum wage and access to health care. A criminal justice system that gets incorrigible or violent criminals out of neighborhoods for good. What decent parent would want to bus their kids to a school in a bad neighborhood with children who have not been taught how to behave? The suggestion is both offensive and absurd.
105
Yes, children have always ridden buses to school. Farm kids were bused into towns. City kids rode buses to get to schools offering advantages the neighborhood schools lacked. And, yes, some kids were bused for nasty, racist reasons. But mandatory busing for racial balance was something else. Children were essentially held hostage, used as tools to remedy the past discrimination of others, albeit often the children's ancestors. Many parents would not accept that. The result was White flight, leaving the disadvantaged schools worse off than before, and leaving entire cities more segregated than before.
Most people will prioritize the welfare of their immediate family above some abstract notion of social equity, and those with skills and resources will tend to do something about it. It does no good to rage about this. Overall, busing was a failure and its unanticipated consequences should have been anticipated.
26
I grew up in Florida and experienced desegregation as a kid in the 60's and 70's. It was often violent, with students fighting each other, and any preparation for the change was completely absent; partly because my white family was working class and wasn't very aware or open to talking. I just went to school and tried to keep my head down. Yet I'm glad I was part of the initial wave of integration. I just wish America could begin to look more squarely into the eyes of our history of slavery, racism and mistreatment/preference based on skin color. I see the U.S as often being a cowardly society in many ways.
7
Busing is not integration and Harris is no Rosa Parks. Busing is avoidance, kicking the can down the road. The answer is appropriately funding inner city schools. Funding should include teachers pay, equipment, computers, current text books, sports facilities and security. Young people are returning to the cities, we need the infrastructure in place to provide the type of environment that attracts and retains a diversified student population. Diverse Ms. Harris, not divisive.
11
Thank you for this. I was hoping and praying that Ms. Hannah-Jones would weigh in after the debate with historical perspective that’s been missing, as she has done in other contexts. She is, to me, the leading journalist as it relates to matters of race and education.
I refer all readers to her excellent coverage of Ferguson Missouri’s recent educational turnover as it relates to a neighboring (white) school system’s reaction at state mandated integration as a modern day example of her point.
2
American schools are funded by local taxes. This allows people to cluster into "good school" communities, with higher real estate values (and taxes), leaving those outside with worse schools. It also encourages de facto segregation into white schools and black schools.
.
Busing was a way to try to equalize education opportunity without changing the formula for funding education. It did not address the root cause of the problem, which was cemented into state constitutions. By approaching the school funding problem in an oblique way, it allowed opponents to ignore the true disparity. It allowed opponents of busing to claim (with a good deal of truth) that their children were being used as pawns in a political game.
.
The real problem is unequal funding of schools within states. Busing was never a solution; it was always a side show which, at best, might convince most whites to change funding formulas to create equal education opportunity throughout states. It totally failed in that mission; busing became about coercing parents and children.
.
Don't ask parents to sacrifice family to principle. 99% will choose their children over any higher purpose. With busing, we've wasted 50 years rarely even talking about what the real goal should be: State constitutions that guarantee equal education funding for every child.
9
Thank u so veru much for these comments. i never realized until today what an impact being bused across Chicago starting in 1969 has had on my life. I've received and nenefited from receiving the best education the world has to offer. My two children were educated in Atlanta. We switched them back and forth between Woodward Academy and Westminster private schools, back to Grady and Northside HS.......1380 and 1430 on their SATs respectively. All thos was acheivef due to busing and forced integration.
1
Kudos on a truly excellent article. Yet, unfortunately, the myth that busing failed is so totally ingrained that this issue is a political land mine for Dems. They need to avoid it and talk instead about inequality, health care and climate change.
2
Excellent article with impressive detailed history of desegregation law and politics but too bad this author pretends that opposition to busing was primarily by whites for racial reasons. Unlike this well-educated, literate, author, those of us who lived though the busing era, when one Federal Judge was given the power to redraw district lines and draw bus routes himself/herself, unanswerable to anyone, know that the primary and most vocal and deeply-held opposition to busing was NOT based on race. Rather, it was a visceral reaction to the radical remedy, resulting in having one's family life upended and children's education made more difficult, when the benefits were always tangential and unlikely to occur. Again, you far away government in action, dominated by Left/Liberals who don't care a bit about your life or mine, as long as their partisan, race-baiting show can stay on its stage.
13
Instead of shuttling kids around how about putting our money our mouths are.
All children should receive high quality public school education regardless of race and zip code.
This can be accomplished by raising education standards, paying ALL teachers a living wage and ensuring all public schools receive the same levels of funding.
The fact that teachers have to buy classroom supplies is a problem itself and a clear indicator of institutional rot and decay.
The issue of segregation is merely a symptom of a much bigger problem.
7
WaPo had a much more honest article about the effects of busing.
The author claims that Biden was wrong to oppose mandatory integration, that busing was a success, and then says that schools are more segregated than ever. Yet Harris does not support mandatory busing, despite the fact that it’s apparently needed.
You don’t get to have it both ways.
I understand why people tried busing. Nothing else was working. But busing also failed.
9
The author states that white flight began before school busing. This begs the question of whether or not busing accelerated that flight.
In my own home city of Chicago, the schools with the highest level of safety issues were those in poor African-American neighborhoods and for that reason, I would not have wanted to attend one. The parents in my community shared that sentiment.
16
I believe you have to integrate neighborhoods with all races. It isn't just about building low income housing in wealthier neighborhoods. That helps but it scratches the surface.
Why can't you integrate poorer, minority neighborhoods by offering enticements to wealthier young families to move there but, at the same time, mitigating gentrification's negatives by using rent control and controlling real estate taxes for low income people?
I've watched busing as a white parent and a teacher in Seattle. The success is spotty. Lousy schools in the south end remain lousy, even with an infusion of millions of dollars. Black kids don't graduate from integrated schools and all end up as doctors who buy houses in white neighborhoods.
But for students in a district just north of Seattle integrating neighborhoods worked. The district had been formed by parents in the '70s who wanted to escape busing -- the most racist of the racist -- but when churches started sponsoring refugee families in the 80s and beyond, that neighborhood was transformed and so was the schools. The kids mingled happily and everyone benefitted.
The success came about because the families lived in the neighborhood and could be involved in the school. Simply busing people of different races from one place to another (on long bus rides) doesn't work. Of course, these weren't homegrown minority families but Seattle has changed and racism isn't as raw.
2
This the greatest analysis of the history of school busing and intergration that has been presented in the press. It underscores the weakness and fallacy of discussing the issue in debate sound bites, and 5 minute, “both sides” of the issue TV segments.
What does the op-ed mean for the Presidential campaign and for Joe Biden in particular?Biden can be considered a decent person, and on balance, a civil rights advocate. But throughout his career he has established that he is a politician, succinctly referred to as a “pol”. (Actually Trump called Biden a “Pol” in a recent tweet)?
Biden’s opposition to what he referred to as Federal Department of Education ordered busing is not a matter of Federalism or any other considered principle. As Ms.Hanna-Jones notes the forces that opposed integration, particularly north of the Mason-Dixon Line, rhetorically and tactically changed the argument to opposition to busing. Whether arguing the case against busing to satisfy his individual constituents’ desire to keep the status quo as to racial composition of public schools or advocating for bankruptcy reform limiting consumers’ bankruptcy options to advance the interests of his banking constituents, Biden is a follower, not a leader.
Many may say that it is his job to represent and advocate for the policies of the voters who elected him.
To address the issues which have polarized our citizenry and to confront the special interests that have captured policy, we need a principled leader.
1
No, no and no.
The issue was about *forced* busing, foisted by fiat upon the great unwashed by affluent judges and politicians who overwhelmingly avoided the consequences for their own children of their social-engineering experiment while treating their inferiors as lab rats.
This was seen at the time, justifiably, as the rawest, rankest hypocrisy.
I've no doubt that numerous anecdotes relating positive outcomes, from both black and white people, could be assembled nor that white racism contributed significantly to the backlash.
But neither of those realities is adequate to justify applying such a draconian, ethically problematic approach of dubious efficacy to the populace at large.
I won't belabor the many alternatives possible regarding moving toward a more heterogeneous, universally well educated society, but any approach not leavened by a reasonable circumspection concerning the consent of the governed, whether one agrees with their attitudes or not, will result in more anger, not less, more chaos, not less, and more disunity and injustice, not less.
The stakes have never been higher in terms of staving off the incipient fascism being fomented by Trump and his Republican cohorts. Being willing to hold unpopular positions is certainly ethically respectable, but the notion that we can win by placing issues like busing, reparations & socially advanced gender policies front and center, thus energizing "the base" into massive turnout, is sheerest fantasy.
26
"...the whiter the school, the more resources it has..." Washington DC spends $29,349 per student in it's overwhelmingly black school system where 83% of students are not proficient in reading. Utah spends about a third of that amount and its (mostly white) students consistently are among the highest achieving in the nation. Money and desegregation are not a two-pronged magic wand that will somehow wondrously bring academic equality across the land as the author implies. Forgive my phraseology but the issue is hardly that black and white.
62
Actually, the Court in Brown considered scientific and empirical evidence that “separation” itself cannot be “equal”. Racial segregation fostered beliefs of inferiority of black kids, not only held by whites, but by black kids as well. Furthermore, Ms.Hannah-Jones notes that separate was never intended to be equal.
1
@me
As your reply is framed as a question, my answer is that you are posing a non- sequitur. Young adults,chose to attend Howard University as it is a prestigious institution; career minded mature adults chose the school for further education at it’s professional and graduate programs.Historically, African Americans may have chosen Howard as their choices were limited by discrimination.
The issue of school desegregation and busing involves children in the formative years of their intellect, self esteem and self image and role in our society. In addition to the deficiencies in academic learning, the Supreme Court in Brown considered evidence that segregation had negative effect on the positive maturation of minority students. (I believe white students ,and our society has been damaged as well).
The black kids in segregated schools learned in addition to math, science, reading etc. that they were not wanted in white society, not worth of such participation. That means not merely as school,kids, but as teachers, doctors, lawyers and others.
The Supreme Court addressed the long term affects of segregation on society in Brown, not merely it’s academic failings.
The only reason we are discussing this is because Kamala Harris disingenuously brought it up in the debate.
Despite stating that she didn't think Joe Biden was a racist, the implication was that he was a racist because he was at the forefront of stopping a horrible busing plan that was being imposed by the court on the largest county in Delaware.
Later, one of her aids must have gotten to her. She did a double back-flip and said she was only for voluntary busing that was decided by school boards, not court-ordered forced busing. Then why did she attack Biden in the first place?
The good news is Biden is crushing her in the poll of African Americans in South Carolina. Her attack did not work.
17
Forcing children to spend 2 hours a day on a bus was a disaster and trying to rewrite history is ridiculous. Both black and white parents hated busing. Look at the lack of parental involvement in education and value placed in obtaining an education as the reason for the disparities.
22
But Kamala gets to attend and attends a segregated private college, join a segregated sorority once done with public schooling.
Only certain groups should have this choice? ?
19
I worked in Louisville when busing came to Kentucky. The KKK used it as a recruiting tool and lead riots against integration. People who think the political support for Trump is an aberration of American history, can learn a lot from this article.
1
Parents want good education for their kids, they do not want them to be pawns in a social engineering scheme. Even the most progressive liberal elites choose private schools.
25
Forced integration is dead. The only way it can work is by stopping whites from moving. Time to move on from discussing busing.
8
Busing certainly got wealthy whites to put their kids in private school and not so wealthy whites demand school vouchers.
5
Thank you for this excellent article. One note: Segregation in the north was not “de jure” as stated in the text. “De jure” segregation was segregation “by law,” such as the Jim Crow laws in the south. Northern segregation is “de facto,” segregation in fact.
1
So, segregation increased the entire time in the Northeast? What's wrong with you Yankees?
4
If your goal was to drive Whites out of American cities, then you would agree that busing and forced integration worked. Today in NYC, most Blacks and Hispanics attend schools with extremely very low numbers of Whites. A few attend schools with maybe 25% Whites. Fewer still attend schools with majorities of Whites and Asians. Of the Whites who are attending those schools, the vast majority are children of immigrants. American Whites have generally been driven out of NYC. Of course the Black children attending NYC schools are almost universally decedents of West Indian or African immigrants. Cities like Newark, Kansas City, and Detroit are as segregated as ever. The only thing busing did was create racial hostility and break up communities. The destruction of those former communities may explain how a politician like DeBlasio was elected and re-elected.
22
That is a lot of column inches to tell us that there’s nothing inherently wrong with school buses and that people were racist in the 60’s.
3
Yea it worked so great it's barely done anymore and hasn't for a long long time. And just as many Black parents hated it as well the children.... Just more revisionist history.
10
Let’s be clear about Kamala Harris and busing. Harris’s parents: a Stanford doctor and a researcher.
If busing was the exchange of differently colored and cultured children of Stanford doctors, it would have had a different reception altogether, especially in more progressive locales.
It wasn’t, by a long shot.
13
You can't move forward if you keep looking back. And hopefully America wants to move forward because forward means change. Arguing about an issue/historical event makes no difference to a society that has changed - however bumpy that change has been. Harris was so desperate to find an issue to show her anger/separate her from the pack that she had to go back 60 years to find one.
7
Education is a partnership among teachers, parents, students. Each has to work hard and do their part ... yes, even the student.
But the problem of achievement is not simple, and was not solved across the US by busing.
From one compilation of data:
Data from 1972--2012 showed that SAT scores go up in tandem with $20k family income amounts. A clear correlation between socioeconomic status and achievement.
Family Income Critical Reading Mathematics
0$ – $20,000 433 461
$20,000 – $40,000 463 481
$40,000 – $60,000 485 500
$60,000 – $80,000 499 512
$80,000 – $100,000 511 525
$100,000 – $120,000 523 539
$120,000 – $140,000 527 543
$140,000 – $160,000 534 551
$160,000 – $200,000 540 557
More than $200,000 567 589
“On average, kids from wealthy families do significantly better... Household wealth is associated with higher IQ, math & reading scores ... throughout the world."
But most experts would say it is not just due to higher family income.
Most say the obvious: poverty, 1 parent homes, value placed on educ, can lead to more stress and typically less academic support from parents.
Quality of teaching is important too, as is doing homework.
It's a complicated problem, and busing was not the answer.
https://www.teachthought.com/learning/10-theories-on-the-relationship-between-socioeconomic-status-and-academic-achievement/
153
@dre
If this is true, it does not speak well for IQ tests, which are, or at least originally were, supposed to measure innate intelligence, not something that a privileged environment can significantly alter. Clearly, what they actually measure is not innate capacity.
19
@dre
In more than 30 years in education, I too have observed the direct correlation between family income and the mother's education level, on the one hand, and SAT scores on the other hand. This certainly points to income and educational inequality of parents as being a critical issue. But I have also observed that busing and neighborhood integration that results in more integrated schools has many benefits, academic and social. You say "busing is not the answer." I say there is no one answer but busing could be part of the answer.
33
@dre
Higher family income and test scores have a strong positive correlation, not causation (but close).
All one has to do is examine why families have high income. Parents are highly educated, intelligent, professionals who value education and provide their kids with all the privileges and expectations that lead to being successful students/test takers. Smart parents tend to produce smart kids. Its not rocket science. The percs of being well connected don't hurt either.
36
To dismiss all the destruction busing wreaked on previously good school systems and chalk up opposition to it as a matter of inconvenience, as the author does, singularly demonstrates the author’s distance from reality. It’s also offensive to families that had to move because they watched busing destroy their child’s chance for a good education - after having worked hard enough and saved enough to live in a community with previously good schools.
Ask any teacher what parental involvement means to an education and you’ll immediately hear that having schools located in the same community as where the family lives is hardly just a case of convenience. Family involvement is integral to success. Busing across town makes that a challenge for working people.
Secondly, I challenge this author to show any empirical evidence of school systems that got better from busing, the goal of diversity for the sake of diversity aside. Busing destroys schools. Whether that’s a racist sentiment to some people I don’t know. Show me otherwise. I’ve never seen it.
Third, racism is not the reason for everything, though it seems to be the excuse for it.
Introspection please?!!
23
I grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut in the 1970s, which had an aggressive bussing program to integrate its four elementary schools (all students attended the same upper schools). I rode the bus 45 minutes across town each way. Was it a pain? Yes, though I used the time to do homework. The results were on full display at my 30th high school reunion, where not only was our comfort with persons of different backgrounds still evident, a large number of us work in education and other service fields. I have no patience with those who say the burden of bussing is too great: if the structure is as well thought out as it was in Bloomfield, both the short- and long-term benefits far outweigh a few years of inconvenience.
2
Good article. I was looking for the punchline, Milliken v. Bradley, was glad to see that you included it. That was the 1974 decision of the Rehnquist Supreme Court overturning the earlier ruling of Judge Stephen J. Roth. Roth was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Roth confronted circumstances where significant segregation had occurred as a result of "white flight" from Detroit to the surrounding suburbs. This was a phenomenon that enriched the realtors and others who stood to gain in many urban areas from whites selling cheap and African-Americans buying dear.
Roth ruled that Brown (desegregation) could only be implemented by considering Detroit and the nearby 53 public school districts as a single area that required busing. The KKK started blowing up buses in Pontiac.
When the Rehnquist court overturned Roth's decision, that was the nail in the coffin for Detroit. Detroit went from the finest public school system in the country (U of M study) in the 1950's to the worst by the end of the century. Combine that with the impact of the plant closings and the collapse of tax revenue needed to sustain public services (including education) and Detroit (outside of the downtown area) became something of a cross between a war zone and a ghost town.
When it comes to the legacy of racism and slavery in the United States I am reminded of William Faulkner's observation, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
2
Thank you for an excellent article. In the 70's, I worked in a northern school district (a suburb of Chicago) that had court ordered busing. The educational program improved (for both black and white children), and the schools ran smoothly.
Immediately after school desegregation was decided, about one third of white students left the schools. A survey by the University of Illinois Survey Research Lab showed that 45% of those students were bused - to private religious schools. The racial venom distributed throughout this district is shocking. No, it was never about busing.
2
I just learned so much reading this. Thank you. There is always so much more to the narrative that we thought we knew, including who the good and bad guys were/are. And then the truth gets buried so we don’t move forward. And that was the goal all along! So thank you for unburying it.
2
Thank you for writing this article. I knew the basics of busing and admit I was sympathetic to familes wanting to send their kids to local schools - now I understand that "busing" was used as a code word in the same way that "test scores" are used by white parents today.
1
Education is the great equalizer. Every student should have the same opportunity of access. We can never achieve equality in outcome. Students will always be the primary driver of their own educational success. Expensive stuff is not education- it is stuff. Most students, if they don't succeed, need only look in the mirror to see why.
5
School desegregation is a concept most people support. In this world, busing "worked" until resegregation. Where you and your children go to school was a real world choice in Seventies and Eighties. Busing failed in the real world.
2
The Senate makeup of powerful segregationists that controlled committee assignments and important votes in Committee aligned with the adage to the victor go the spoils.
This adage is as true today as it was in the Jim Crowe era.
Against terrific challenges and high hurdles Senators like Mike Mansfield, Phil Hart, Hubert Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale had to overcome an exceedingly high cloture vote (67) to pass meaningful civil rights legislation often opposed by powerful committee chairman. Yet, with great care and effort civil rights laws were finally passed. It was not a zero sum game victory. Concessions had to be made to get past the the James Eastlands, Strom Thurmonds, Herman Talmadges and other powerful Chairman.
But hard work and compromise (yes liberals working with segregationists) to get major civil rights legislation accomplished. It took the assassination of President Kennedy to get the stalled bill through Congress and signed by Johnson. It took the assassination of MLK to get the final compromise on the ‘68 Fair Housing Act across the finish line.
Today in this zero sum game of politics we are accomplishing nothing. And when we get the lower threshold (60) votes to pass meaningful legislation (Obama Care) it gets challenged by the opposition — over 60 House votes to repeal and court filings to make illegal.
I am tired of this zero sum game. Relitigating busing isn’t the answer.
The answer lies in building trust on both sides to achieve better results.
1
Sounds great, but how do you achieve this wonderful compromise? What are you willing to sacrifice for this compromise? Equal rights? Educational opportunities for black kids? And what do you want to get in return? Empty laws that sounds great but could not be enforced? Before I rally for 'compromise' I want to see how this compromise looks like, and that is the problem, because the compromise very often looks like complete surrender.
(many) Parents, of all races, want the best education for their children. Unfortunately the quality of education, in any given class, is based on the least proficient student in that class. Busing didn't result in low achieving students doing better- it resulted in high achieving students doing worse. Public schools are now very expensive day-cares- full of foreign students who don't speak the language and students who don't care. Just like the saying 'the solution to pollution is dilution' the plan for 'improving' education seems to be spreading failing students into schools that are still functioning. The results are that disruptive students are not getting a better education- and they are preventing good students from getting one too.
Instead of social engineering why don't we let kids go where they want to be: a good off school for the kids, and families, that don't care and real school for those that do. Sometimes students fail due to a lack of public resources. Most students fail due to a lack of effort or care on their, and their parents, part. Let's stop wasting resources on those that don't care.
11
Before make the assumptions, shouldn't we make sure that all schools get exactly same resources? And how without busing, kids from the far corner of a City will get in the good school on the other side of the City?
1
This was very much about busing.
It was complex. It was about a lot of things at the same time. Busing was a big part of it, for the opposition.
Yes, some of that was racism. Keep them out, and stay away from them.
However, opposition was also about sending off your own kids to some distant and inferior schools, perhaps even unsafe.
Voluntary busing was generally about sending your own kids to better schools. Opposition to that was about keeping them away, and not paying for better schools for them either.
Forced busing was another group of issues.
Today we see a lot of kids coming into our better schools, and that does not generate controversy around here.
If we saw our own kids getting sent away, it would be quite different.
In the longer term, sending privileged kids to inferior schools was meant to force improvement of those schools. It didn't, but that was the idea. However, parents and kids were living in the day, not in the longer term, and much of what they felt so strongly was just about the day.
I think the school choice programs are a far better system.
To that we need to add more improvement in the schools left behind. That means facing the quite deliberate crippling of the funding for them. Property taxes on low value property cannot support good schools, and everyone always knew that. They did it anyway.
The excuse was that those local taxes would be supplemented by the state general fund. That promise either was unfulfilled, nor didn't last.
6
I can see value in proposal to central financing of public schools, to make sure that all schools get equal resources, although I very much suspect that it will face a stiff resistance from the wealthy neighborhoods.
2
I started teaching in a large inner school district in 1978. We had 50,000+ students. I retired in 2005 and our student population was 16,000 and dropping each year. The district I started with was primarily white, the district I left was primarily minority and special ed.
The cause was busing the effect was white flight.
The conundrum? This city, Grand Rapids, Michigan has been and continues to be regaled by the WSJ and various other prestigious venues as one of America's most progressive and successful cities.
14
I attended public schools in Charlotte, NC for my entire childhood, starting in 1980. Busing was a fact but as I child, I didn't understand it.
Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg resulted in mixing race and economics. While the school that I was bused to in a black neighborhood obtained air-conditioning (because my parents fought hard for it), my academically gifted classes were still very white, all the way through high school. Sometimes the bus ride was long. I gazed out the window at the "black side" of town. That might have been my only exposure to the real world in my middle-class public school experience.
I wish I had better understood what I now know both as a lawyer and a human being - race and economics are intertwined in the south. I am ashamed that it wan't until college that I learned that I had erroneously attributed the effects of poverty to an entire race of people. It wasn't until I read the Swann case in law school that I began to see the city that I grew up in.
In the south, many people confuse poverty and race. John Lewis is entirely accurate when he comments that poverty is the new racism. Nonetheless, to have meaningful conversations about racism we also have to talk about economic equality.
I learned more about human side of life from a school bus than a classroom. My children attend public schools and ride the bus in Atlanta for good reason. It's not perfect, but it's better than the alternative.
4
@Karen. Well. If poverty is the "new racism" explain Spokane WA and most of the state. Explain Idaho. Where the minimum wage is $6.50 per hour. Thats RIGHT. This generalization about race as though individual or certain states behaving a certain way means 250,000,000 others are also really needs to stop
1
The problem about school resources cannot be solved only with busing. School funding must be made independent of property taxes. Until that is done, even if schools are completely integrated, there will always be an underclass with an inferior education and at a professional disadvantage for life as a result, with all the social problems that logically follow.
5
I guess there is no teacher like experience, because by 1995, the data is clear that blacks and whites both wanted integrated schools by massive majorities, but opposed mandatory busing to achieve it. At that point, America had several decades of practice with forced busing. The country -- both blacks and whites -- generally hated it.
(See Christine Rossell's 1995 law review article at William and Mary for survey results. "The Convergence of Black and White Attitudes on School Desegregation Issues During the Four Decade Evolution of the Plans.")
14
What measure did this majority support to integrate the schools?
Excellent article with many good points. However, it is disingenuous in one respect. The left always argues that desegregation is necessary solely because of the unfair allocation of resources. This seems false from the many unsuccessful attempts to fix schools by throwing money at poor, black schools. Money alone will not do it. Parents need to care about and to emphasize the value of education and deferred gratification. Segregated schools with mostly poor Asian students don’t seem to have the same problems as black schools. Latino schools are in-between, depending on how many middle- and upper-class Latino parents send kids to the school. To me, it seems that the wealth of the schools is less important than the attitude and wealth (which affects attitude) of the parents. If the author were really honest, she would admit that the poverty and poor attitude of black parents is why desegregation is needed. In other words, blacks do need to sit next to whites and others to learn how to take advantage of education. By the way, I am Mexican-American and attended a Catholic high school in Texas that was majority Latino and wealthy. Although my family was poor and largely ignorant of the value of an education, I learned how to be a good student from sitting next to rich Latinos who all went on to 4-year colleges. Their values became mine because I sat next to more civilized people in a classroom.
20
Actually, it is important. In mixed schools, children from poor neighborhoods got exposed to value of education. if you assume that the black students are doing worse because their community doesn't value education, the mixing will greatly mitigate that because now they will be expose to the community who does value education.
1
Please stop the myth-making. We can oppose racism in education, but admit that busing did not work because most, not all, of the black children were not given the proper education, due to white racism (Brown v. Bd. of Ed), by the time they were integrated with white students, and so, the white parents worried that their children’s education would suffer while the schools brought the black children up to their children’s level. And as proof, that achievement gap still exists today. Putting children in the same class who are functioning at different scholastic levels is a very frustrating experience for both sets of children. It’s not the fault of the children, but the we know that institutional racism, white middle-class racism and poor black parenting by some who failed to instill the value of a good education in their children, contributed to this.
4
I think we need to see. how different the gap between students of the same school, and between students of different schools, correlate that with the level of integration before we can make the conclusion what works and what didn't.
@yulia You will not likely find reliable data from that time period for poor schools.
@Isle But we can compare the data for now, considering that there are still school segregation.
Oops! The author forgot to mention the disaster of white flight from cities to the suburbs which largely hollowed put urban areas and deprived them of the more affluent white tax base. Sure, racism and “discomfort” with integration was responsible for this. Busing & forced integration of schools supercharged this.
10
Brown v. Board of Education was about a black girl not being able to attend the closest school to her home because it was limited to whites. Outrageous.
So let's assume that school today is still overwhelmingly white. The writer wants a white girl who lives within walking distance of this school to be bused to a school that is miles away. Just as outrageous.
Think about that for a moment.
19
Please stop the myth-making. We can oppose racism in education, but admit that busing did not work because most, not all, of the black children were not given the proper education, due to white racism (Brown v. Bd. of Ed), by the time they were integrated with white students, and so, the white parents worried that their children’s education would suffer while the schools brought the black children up to their children’s level. And as proof, that achievement gap still exists today. Putting children in the same class who are functioning at different scholastic levels is a very frustrating experience for both sets of children. It’s not the fault of the children, but the we know that institutional racism, white middle-class racism and poor black parenting by some who failed to instill the value of a good education in their children, contributed to this.
3
As in this fine article, much of the value of integration is based on the assumption that White schools are better financed than Black schools. New York’s Mayor and schools Chancellor stress integration, even above academics; yet the New York Times never tells us how much is spent per pupil by race, even though those stats are readily available.
13
The Democrats are defending busing now??? Oh my gosh, this is getting hilarious.
21
This is exactly the kind of historical perspective needed if we are to discuss racisim and reparartions. It's not just about the period when black people were enslaved. It's all of things - redlining, education, how black vets could spend their GI BIll money.,... It's such a long list which some may not know and other need to be re-educated on.
I went to high school in Dallas in the early-ish years of busing. Court ordered busing destroyed our school and the black community it was inflicted upon. When it became apparent that it was a disaster and no one could learn, THEN white flight kicked in--not before. Don't give me that stuff about 'racism'--I was THERE.
23
You are beating a dead horse here.
Most white Americans are not racists they just didn't want forced busing.
The proof of it is in high schools and colleges. Many of them have black students with whites.
If Harris and other social engineering far out leftist candidates insist on bringing this up, it will put further nails in their national political hopes and help to re elect the ego maniac demagogue Trump.
Learn from history or forever be condemned to repeat its worst mistakes.
Obama did and served two terms, Hillary didn't insisting on identity obsession and social engineering and was regulated to the dust heap of history.
15
NYC is the land of progressive liberal Democrats!!!... To claim that Democrat policies have led to segregation of minorities, trapped them into poverty and into poor segragated school systems just can't be true...They can't be racist, they're progressive!
3
@Lindsey E. Reese-Thank you for your reply. The original progressives were good not the perverters ie blacks will forever be eternally flawed, harmed and we have to keep them on welfare forever and socially engineer society ie forced busing to make the present day white person pay for 300 yrs. of oppression.
Pay homage to the FDRs, MLKs etc. not the limo liberals that almost destroyed NYC circa 1970.
Learn the difference between progressives and perverters.
The right does the same thing.
1
In my lovely part of ‘progressive’ California, the white kids are the minority in the public schools are regularly get hassled and beat up by those non-racist minorities.
One reason among many why we, along with many other white parents we know, put our kids in parochial schools. We had the means to do so after making choices about the other things we would not have.
Would never have subjected my children to a lengthy bus ride just for the privilege of getting a lousy education and a beating.
61
Great article. Desegregate housing....
Happily, this analysis does acknowledge that the most segregated schools in this country continue to be located in the most "liberal" areas of the country. When I arrived at law school in NYC after attending public school in Virginia in the 80s and 90s and UVA until 2005, I met many people who had never had classes with any black people until at least college, if then. I was shocked and perplexed, considering I was from the supposedly "racist" South and all of these students were from the "progressive" Northeast
Unfortunately, this article talks directly past the entire reason busing is even being discussed. As all good grandmothers should, mine taught me to ignore anything that comes before a "but." That's why when Kamala Harris proclaimed to Biden that "I don't think you are a racist... BUT", I knew this entire primary campaign was about to become brutal and ugly. Calling the Vice President of America's first black president, whom he hand picked as his running mate, a racist is quite an interesting strategy, but one she must have felt compelled to take with her sagging poll numbers.
The schadenfreude with which all Republicans in this country will be watching this infighting must be overwhelming.
24
Busing or no busing, Biden praised and supported segregationists because of their “civility”. He may not be a racist but he belongs on the old reruns cable channel, not the democratic ticket.
1
What I find absolutely fascinating is the manner in which black people (such as the author) and mixed-raced (such as the New York superintendent of schools - those unfamiliar can look up that individual here: https://nypost.com/2018/04/27/de-blasio-defends-schools-chiefs-swipe-at-critics-of-diversification-plan/ ) make NO distinction between "whites" and Jewish-progressives (the vast majority).
No genuine European white person would fail to take note of the names cited in the link, e.g.
"“That’s fueling the fire, and that’s a mistake,” said Joshua Goldberg, a parent of a sixth-grader at the Upper West Side’s ...".
Hilariously, some "anti-racism" champions suddenly find religion when their own children are concerned. But I agree with the several posters who wrote that if progressives (of color) persist in forcing "integration" in the schools they will lose the white-passing Democrats (including the Orientals) and succeed in re-electing president Trump. If I may add, that's why nobody hears from actual European whites in this debacle.
5
Thank you for your piece on busing. I learned so much, including that Joe Biden is trying to rewrite his personal history on the issue.
1
I lived in Boston through the busing fiasco. There were no winners. Economically disadvantaged students from Roxbury were bused to mostly white South Boston and Charlestown while students from these two poor and mostly Irish neighborhoods were bused to Roxbury. The affluent white liberal judge and the politicians who forced and applauded busing in Boston lived in white suburbs and their children went to either parochial (i.e. white Catholic) private schools or to all white suburban schools. The results of busing included white flight from the Boston school system and a resentment of the establishment that remains to this day, especially in "Southie".
12
The schools were separate but not equal. No amount of busing would correct that. Instead, it wasted at least 10 hours of children's time per week by riding on school buses past the local schools. I walked to my neighborhood schools so I never rode one. From what I hear from school bus drivers it is a long journey rife with bullying and danger for the students. It was wasted time which could be spent on constructive activities. Ms.Harris would have done well anywhere because she had parental support. Richer kids avoided busing by going to private schools. It would have been cheaper and safer to make sure the schools in poorer areas, not just black areas, were improved enough that busing was not necessary.
12
I attended an all-white elementary school about a mile away from my house and then was bused to a school way across town which was formerly an all-black high school. The building was run down with no central air-conditioning (this was in Florida by the way). Later in life, I found out that the school board went around the law by zoning areas of town so that children from military housing (me) were the ones being bused to this school. This kept their precious local white children protected from “outsiders” and black/brown children while complying with desegregation laws.
I was so angered when I found out about it but was also thankful that I was taken from a hostile white school to one with black teachers who welcomed me along with my Asian heritage. Systematic racism is DEEP, and it is REAL. It’s been over 50 years, and in reading this article and comments, I can only take a deep breath and shake my head.
2
There are 2 points regarding the busing debate often unfairly overlooked. First, there exists a "class-income deficit" which is where poor municipalities, possibly all white, are grossly underfunded and students poorly educated because they live in poor municipalities. When property taxes are used as the touchstone for school funding then EVERYONE is going to be educated better or worse based solely on where you live and how much your home is worth in relation to your fellow citizens. Hempstead Public Schools are clearly not funded the same as Rockville Centre or Garden City. Yonkers students are not receiving the same funding as their neighbors in Scarsdale and race is not the dividing issue. Secondly, I've spoken to many black friends who over the years told me they were very unhappy about having to be bused out of their community. THEY wanted their local schools properly funded rather than being bused into an alien neighborhood and then back home again. IF ALL SCHOOLS were equally funded through general taxation and not property taxes and each student awarded a certain number of dollars for his schooling EQUAL throughout the state then the issue of busing would be irrelevant. NO STUDENTS wants to get on a bus and travel a distance to their school and then back home again when a local school might be down the street from where they live. There are many ways to deal with fairness in education and opposing busing doesn't mean opposing equal opportunities for all.
4
@ManhattanWilliam I agree with you in theory but the reality does not support your (or my) assumption that money equals results. For example, where I live, in a relatively affluent NJ suburb with good schools, our town spends $17446 per student. A few towns over is a working class town, predominantly Latino and working class white in composition, which is known to have poor performing schools. Their expenditures per student? - $21,387. That's 22% more spending (funded by county taxes from wealthier districts, which again, I think is a noble idea).
There must be something more going on...
4
Does anybody really study history anymore? All one would ever have o do is watch a video of how black kids were treated when they dared to attend white schools in the 1950-60`s era. The racial taunts, threats, and violence were as plain as you could ever want. Blacks were NEVER supposed to challenge the status quo of a Jim Crow society; and woe to those who did. The list is legendary of Medgar Evers, Malcomn X, Martin Luther King Jr.; and the Freedom Riders on the bus. Busted heads and murder to make sure they knew their place. Has everyone already forgotten all that? The courts do not tell society how to act and think. Only society can do that. I watched the painful torturous rise of civil rights as a young man in Canada who was coming of age during all this. By the 1970`s it SEEMED that America was finally and painfully coming to grips with racism. Then came the Neo-Cons of the 1980`s; who have moved heaven and earth to reverse all that progress and put those uppity blacks to the back of the bus where they belonged. Pathetic does not even begin to cover the last 40 years that started with the Reagan Revolution; that has put the U.S.A. in reverse for decades now. M.A.G.A. my...
357
@Greg Hodges
This was an excellent article, retelling the history of the struggle against school segregation. I know this because as a reporter I wrote about the terribly inadequate facilities given to Black students across the South, the resistance of white communities that refused to acknowledge or deal with the segregation and the ironical open acknowledgement by some, but not all, Southern communities that they had carried out segregation.
20
@Greg Hodges
"Does anybody really study history anymore? "
If this comment is an example of what studying history does for one, I hope the answer is no. But as a Canadian perhaps your ideological misreading of history can be excused.
In point of fact race relations in America have been on a steady arc of improvement for all of the last seventy years. I'm not going to waste my time listing example after example of that improvement. Media stars, sports stars, C-suiters, mayors, governors, a President -- decade after decade the list grows.
Anyone who cannot see that improvement is blinkered by ideology and, dare I say it, an anti-American hatred.
20
Well said. When we elected Donald Trump president I had a similar thought. What would you expect when Republicans have been systematically disinvesting in public education and race batting for 40 years? As the author concludes the problem really is us.
44
As a white teacher, newly minted, in the 1970’s in New Orleans, a predominately black school district, I witnessed reassignment of teachers based on race. What an enriching and life-changing experience for me. This was partly due to my interactions with students, from whom I differed in race and class and position of power, but more importantly it was due to the relationships that developed over time with my colleagues, men and women of color. We would not have crossed paths and gotten to know each other were it not for mandatory racial “mix” of school staffs.
1
I was born in Louisiana in 1957 and spent my entire childhood on this battlefield. I'm white, and experienced all of it at first hand, as one of the kids who lived it. There's a lot I could talk about, but I'll simply respond that every single word of this article is true.
I know. I was there.
8
My comment is not about busing per se but relevant to why people can resent not having control of where their children attend public school. I am merely relaying what happened in the Bronx in 1969 when my neighborhood high school was rezoned. My neighborhood was a mix of Irish, Italians and Germans. Our high school was overcrowded with kids attending school in shifts because there were so many of us baby boomers at that time. A new school was built in the South Bronx and the neighborhood kids were slated to go to that one. High crime, lousy neighborhood, I'm sure you get the picture on what a school day may have been like for these white kids. For me, I passed the entrance test for Catholic high school and my mother went back to work to cover my tuition. My less fortunate friends who went to that South Bronx school were tormented their freshman year by black kids because they were viewed as interlopers encroaching on their territory and many of my friends dropped out during that school year. Many didn't graduate until a year later because they had to figure out Plan B on what was next. Many of my friends got creative and actually studied Hebrew or Swahili because those were the only two courses offered our original school and not offered at the South Bronx school.
35
Ms. Hannah-Jones writes: "Busing became the literal vehicle of integration because in most places black and white people did not live in the same neighborhoods." Well, duh! That's the primary reason so many children attend schools primarily of the their race. The primary purpose of the Brown vs. Board decision was to eliminate the dual school systems that existed in the South and in northern cities like Topeka. Once that was accomplished, schools were still deemed segregated if they were "racially identifiable" even when there was no policy to segregate students. There's nothing wrong with an all-black school if it has the resources along with committed parents and staff. To believe otherwise shows a tacit belief in white supremacy. And some cities, like Detroit, integrated schools are a demographic impossibility. So we need to focus on school quality and stop with these racial numbers games.
15
While a great deal of the opposition to busing was racial in nature, to be sure, much of it was based on the fact that parents in the better off neighborhoods had made personal sacrifices to live where their children would attend certain schools, and this was being negated by sending them out.
While it is true that many children were already being bussed in that era, they were mostly in the rural districts. Children in the 1960s in Western NY cities, at least, walked to schools in their own neighborhoods. In elementary school, we walked home for lunch and returned for the afternoon sessions. This is what was lost.
I have to wonder if the same money that was spent for creating and enforcing busing solutions had been spent to bring the lower performing, mostly black, schools up to the same standards as the higher performing, mostly white, schools it the problem would have been solved with much less rancor.
17
Well done. I grew up in a small town two miles north of the Mason Dixon Line in Pennsylvania. My school system was always integrated because it was too small for segregation. I went to school with African-American children in every grade. Most of them lived with grandparents and great-aunts/uncles so they didn’t have to be segregated, while their parents worked in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. They would go home in the summer to live with their parents. I wouldn’t call my hometown liberal. It was/is deeply Republican. The street where these kids lived (there was only one) was the only unpaved street in town. We were told that the residents there wanted it that way. I’ve never really believed that.
We must remember how southern the states south or bordering on the MD Line were. In 1972 George Wallace won the Maryland primary. Joe Biden’s constituents in Delaware were hardly different. I am not calling Biden a racist, his record on anti-racism speaks well for itself. But that he knew how to work with racists was an asset and he really doesn’t need to apologize. 2019 hindsight wasn’t in the room in 1968, 1972, etc. Busing did some good, it wasn’t perfect. Kind of like Biden and the rest of the folks who fought for equality and justice.
4
Great article. As a white girl, I was bused to a 75% Black middle school in the 1980s because my parents wouldn't stand/sleep in line for five days to register me for the school my white friends would attend. I was pretty nervous the first day on the bus, but it turned out to be a remarkable, formative and positive experience. A great education academically but, more importantly, it opened me up to a world of different ways of thinking and being. White parents who oppose integration are missing huge opportunities for all children, including their own.
8
@RebekahM maybe 25% is a magic number? my experience varied significantly in the late 70's.
Elementary and middle school was at our local parochial school. My parents did care but could no longer afford private tuition so off to the nearest NYC public high school.
Massive class sizes, diligent teachers but the culture clash? disrespectful classmates the likes of which I've never seen. I never used the high school's bathrooms all four years as doing so was unsafe. There was a fatal stabbing outside our school gates one morning so the next two years we walked through metal detectors.
My only way to feel safe was to make certain I qualified for the honors classes after freshmen year, significantly smaller classes and far more motivated classmates.
My high school experience was not at all positive but it was formative. At best your experience and my experience can be viewed as outliers? neither one of us can claim "The US Social Education Experiment" works.
What got me through was knowing my parents wanted the best for me, could only afford so much, yet set expectations. Those parental expectations made the difference and led to my ultimate success.
My parents never missed a Parents' Night, even in the 70's the hallways were not lined with parents waiting for conferences.
Parental guidance can not be mandated and a child without a strong parental support system is adrift. No amount of bussing or funding can not take the place or an involved parent.
4
@RebekahM
Where did you go to school? I'm also a big believer in integration and also went to middle school in Ann Arbor in the 80s, but to my neighborhood school, which was Clague.
you wrote an entire article about busing without mentioning property taxes even once? How disingenuous. People don't oppose busing because they hate blacks, they oppose busing because they (rightly) think it's unfair that some people can send their kids to the same school for 1/6th the cost because of some social engineering policy conceived by a government apparatchik thousands of miles away who sends their kids to private schools in D.C. Get out of here with this nonsense.
34
Thank you, Nikole Hannah-Jones, for always providing a clear, fact-based view of race and education in America. You were the only one I wanted to hear from after Biden's ridiculous state's rights rebuttal to Harris in the debates. Keep up all your good works, we love you and the truth you present so lucidly.
2
One of the best argued and brilliantly written write ups on the topic of school and societal segregation and desegregation I have ever read. If Kamala Harris did not fully castrate Joe Biden (although she did), this piece effectively finished the job. And it also eviscerated his lame, insincere apology. If I were Biden, I would wrap up and go home upon reading this. He is toast. Finished.
2
"White people would never allow their children to attend the types of inferior schools to which they relegated black children." Quite true, and I wonder whether the author would allow her children to be bused to inferior schools? Would any parents ever allow their children to be bused to inferior schools? If the answer is no, then we approach the nub of the problem. Housing is segregated by class as well as race and schools depend on local funding. All that leads to structural inequality of educational opportunity. The partial solution: equal funding of schools from state coffers and reduction of income inequality. Busing did not deliver this solution.
23
Class is the new segregation codeword. Poor schools fall apart while rich schools thrive. We talk reparations and equality, but we keep our money in our neighborhoods.
1
@Dan Ari
Noble sentiment. Are you willing to send your kids to an underperforming school for the greater good? Or pay more taxes to fund schools outside of your neighborhood?
1
It is frightening to read how anti-integration these comments are, no doubt mostly from readers who think of themselves as well-intentioned white liberals. As a white liberal myself, this only reminds me how few whites understand the privilege we have to only address race on our terms: no people of color can say the same.
1
Kamala Harris has views on busing that are indistinguishable from Biden's. Her behavior during the debate was a blow to the body of the Democratic Party, in an attempt to raise her poll numbers. It worked.
The point of Brown v Board was to provide Black students with an education that was equal to whites. That resources would be spent equally on all students. That students could not be separated because they were of one color or another. The goal was to give kids an equal education. Busing was a tool to aid that goal.
NY city is one giant school district, the biggest in the nation. For the past 50 years, NY has allocated resources equally to all schools. The same can be said for San Francisco and Berkeley, which are much, much smaller school districts. White students are not magical. Sitting next to one does not lead to a better education. Berkeley and SF have gone to extreme lengths to integrate their school racially.
Berkeley scores on statewide CAASPP testing. Proficient or better in math, grades 3-11, 2018:
Asian-American 49%
African-American 19%
Hispanic-American 42%
Caucasian-American 80%
San Francisco scores on that test:
Asian-American 72%
African-American 20%
Hispanic-American 21%
Caucasian-American 70%
NY scores on the state math test, Level 3 and 4
Asian-American 72%
African-American 25%
Hispanic-American 30%
Caucasian-American 64%
Students who value education do well in school. Ask Obama, ask Harris' parents, they know what works.
48
For all the white resistance to integration, the data shows that white students attending integrated schools outperform white students in segregated schools.
The most selective and elite private universities and private schools in the country recognize that a diverse and integrated student and faculty corps advantages their graduates. If integration is highly valued at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Phillips Andover, Choate, and St. Pauls, what the heck is the matter with everyone?
Because I love them and want the best for them, I will not send my white children to segregated schools.
3
@Sam I Am Source to validate your first paragraph please.
2
I object to :"“busing” is a race-neutral euphemism that allows people to pretend white opposition was not about integration but simply about a desire for their children to attend neighborhood schools"
Yes! Neighborhood schools had an Ace card. It was not race. It was proximity, knowing your neighbors for pick-up sports, games, PTA, and much more.
My very first thought was not race, but how long the bus ride would be for an 8 year old.
Commutes of over 45 minutes each way are unhealthy, and unreasonable. Ask any Adult, if it's a positive.
As far as Race, I am open to any number of proposals, but I was not interested in using any kids carrying the burden of a social experiment, at that cost.
Maybe you found nothing valuable in your neighborhood, but when the entire Graduating Class of 1999 chuckled as the Valedictorian mentioned a list of experiences they had together since age as young as 3--- There's value in that which I won't relinquish!
10
Way to completely miss the point.
The anger about busing came from the white working class who saw middle and (especially) upper middle class whites either move to the suburbs or move their kids to private school, thus avoiding any of the fallout of busing, which fell squarely on them.
Then those same whites turned around and called the white working class "racists' and "bigots" because you know, they themselves had only moved to the suburbs so the kids could have a bigger back yard.
That will always be the problem with busing as a solution--the middle and upper middle classes of all races don't need to use public schools and will simply buy their way out of the situation.
483
@ALW515
So those people were angry that wealthy people could get around busing and so that was a reason to get rid of busing?
What?
30
@ALW515 Buy their way out of what "situation"?
17
@ALW515 I grew up white and middle class in the suburbs and was bused during court-ordered desegregation. Yes, my parents preferred that I stay in the neighborhood school which was a little over a mile away, instead of riding the bus for a half an hour. But something good came out of it quite honestly. Unlike other families who moved to different areas without busing, we stayed put and it all turned out fine.
21
Forced busing is terrible policy.
Ask kids if they want to have to wake up an hour earlier everyday so they can catch the bus to a school that is far from their home.
Ask kids if they want to spend their after-school time on a bus rather than outside playing or participating in an organized activity or simply spending unstructured time at home.
Fix the schools. Don't displace large populations of children just to assuage a small population of liberals who will gladly send their kids to private schools if the forced busing thing isn't to their liking.
32
An article that starts out 1/2 correct. Busing was never, and never will be a total solution to equality in education and learning. It has not been time for the full impact of busing to be felt or recognized, not enough generations yet passed.
Neither is white racism the sole villain in the non-solution. How about a change in the home life culture, stability and family respect for education? The solution to the problem is the value of a whole package honestly and continuously addressing the problem.
21
Parents today want safe, quality schools for their children no matter the racial make up of the school. States and the federal governments can facilitate this by offering school vouchers to students. Start making schools compete for tax dollars and students.
5
As an adolescent in 1960’s Milwaukee, I vividly remember the long-running nightly marches for open housing, followed by a court battle to integrate the public schools. Ms. Hannah-Jones’ eloquent account of American history rings true to this now retired white man. I remain thankful that my kids had the benefit of being bused to a newly integrated grade Madison public school during the 1980’s. It dramatically expanded their horizons and the parochial attitudes of their parents.
5
I was lucky I suppose, to have been raised in a very integrated suburb of Cleveland, with well funded excellent schools. This was in the 70's. It was only when I left that bubble that I learned that that wasn't the norm.
There was racism there, though understated, and it was not perfect. But it was through that childhood that I was exposed early to people who weren't exactly like me, and as everyone knows, kids don't care! I never thought anything about it.
Trying to integrate schools is better than doing nothing I'd say.
3
I went through public schools in Oakland CA in the 1950's and early 60's. Our schools were integrated naturally, since they drew from a variety of neighborhoods. The racial mix was white, black and asian (there were few latinos in Oakland in those days). Granted, there were some schools that were largely of one race or another due to their locations. In my high school, Oakland high, nothing was made of the racial mix one way or the other. However, at school, the students mixed socially, almost exclusively within their own race. Whether we like it or not, humans are innately tribal.
6
Busing is a band-aid that doesn't address the underlying issues, which are housing and job discrimination, as well as the lack of living wage jobs.
4
Thank you Ms. Hannah-Jones, and thanks to The Times for publishing your article. We need to be reminded of these points repeatedly. I'd add another point: that white parents aren't against busing their own children when they perceive that their children will go to a better (and by their definition, predominantly white) school. I was bused in the late 1960s to the second-closest high school because it was newer and better equipped with a more elite faculty than the closest school (both were predominantly white). My white parents had no problem with my riding that bus. They would have been willing for me to be bused farther if they'd believed that it would help my education. My mother, in particular, never would have believed that experiencing life with people who didn't look like me could help my education, but it was never even an option in my district at that time. I had to learn to live with a variety of people on my own, later, and at a time when it wasn't as easy to internalize new experiences on the deepest level. I feel cheated, but certainly I wasn't remotely as cheated as the black children who went to run-down facilities, had old textbooks if any, had a limited choice of classes, and in general were given the message of "you're no good" by white society.
4
I am so grateful to read such a comprehensive history of desegregation and busing. I grew up going to a majority white school (I'm African American), living in a middle/upper class, white/Jewish neighborhood. We were the only people of any color for three blocks. While we were minorities, we were welcomed into our neighborhood and remain friends with our neighbors today. At the same time, my parents reminded us daily that we as black folk represented our family, and our race and had to act accordingly (and against stereotype). All that said, I loved where I was raised and am incredibly grateful for the public schooling that I received. I had wonderful teachers (that I am in contact with today) and had amazing opportunities due to their open mindedness and open hearts. It breaks my heart that so many students are thwarted in their desire to learn and their exposure to all that life can offer due to all of the issues outlined in this article.
On the other hand, my mom was raised in a segregated school. And while it might have been underfunded compared to the white schools, she remembers it as a vibrant place of learning. The students marched in lines between classes, singing hymns and other songs. The teaching was rigorous and the students expected to excel. While she is in favor of integration and sees the need (and gets very angry about white flight), she also mourns the teaching of pride and self-esteem that she received from being at a majority black school.
6
Interesting perspective; when we blame discriminatory practices that may be institutionalized,we forget that behind those rigid structures...there are rigid folks, intent in revealing their stupidity by doubling down on their prejudices; otherwise, we cannot explain why, so many years afte slavery was abolished via a costly civil war, and human rights re-established, we still live with segregation; witness the inequities in labor, in housing, education, and health care, and in the pauperish financial predicament of those with the 'wrong' skin color. The barrier in reversing this resides not on the outside, somewhere, but deep within our souls. It's high time to educate ourselves, introspect and recognize our subconscious biases, and change for the better. This, before we shut down our conscience, that 'knows' right from wrong.
3
great article! my daughter was bussed to school as part of desegregation in san francisco in l971, while an 'academy' opened up a few houses away from our rental. it didn't hurt her any, and she had both good and not-so-good teachers there, as in any school.
we need to do better.
3
Brilliant and much-needed analysis; thank you.
3
I was in 5th grade in Topeka when my elementary school was integrated during Brown vs BOE of Topeka. My best friend's father was the Chairman of the BOE. It was a non-event.
When I moved to my town in KY in 1984, busing was in full swing here. It was done on an every other year basis - one year a child was bused, the next year, he was in his neighborhood school. The busing year invariably involved a 45 min - 1 hr bus ride with the neighborhood school 1 mile away. White families left for a neighboring county in droves - no one of any race wants a 5-8 year old on a bus for nearly 2 hrs each day.
It took about 20 years (and the end of this policy), to bring back my county's school system and attract white families back to it. Now, we're having some again - schools that don't meet the guidelines of socio-economic/education of parents (not race, but it often IS race), are turning away children who live with their elementary school in their backyard.
And what about those schools? The principal of the school my grandsons attended said that she felt they did an outstanding job for 90% of their students; 10% were not well-served and these were the ones being bused to the school. That school, the best in the district, did not have the extra federal funding that schools with far poorer children had. Those schools received nearly double the per pupil dollars the outstanding school did.
It's not as simple as the author would have us believe.
7
Bravo.
2
Devastating. Whites should hang their heads in shame. I hang my head in shame. How can we live this way.
5
I remember attending Hale Elementary School in Pasadena, CA in the late sixties.
I distinctly recall the day that all of us stood inside the chain link fence, hanging by our fingers from the little squares, watching as the big yellow busses arrived one after another, dropping-off the black kids at the gate.
Aliens, arriving.
That's what we thought.
They seemed not much happier to be there.
The whole vibe of the place changed that day.
It got - weird.
I remember my bike got stolen from the bike racks like a week later.
I was all of maybe ten or eleven years old, and I remember blaming it on the new kids.
Not the "black" kids, but the "new" ones.
That was the vibe.
We didn't care about race, but about aliens coming in and changing everything.
I remember my bike got stolen from the school bike racks shortly after because I didn't lock it.
I didn't even _have_ a lock.
Never felt like I needed one.
I neve asked myself what it was like for _them_.
No one ever suggested I should.
I see that now, but I didn't back then.
Bad news for everyone involved.
8
Thanks for a superb article. I was born in Detroit and we left when a bullet ricocheted through our picture window in the late 1950s. Detroit today is about as segregated a city as you can find. The poor educational outcomes and loss of industry here have led to extreme poverty (now one of the poorest cities in America), and also the unspoken twin feature - decades of skyrocketing murder, shattered families, drug addiction, unsafe neighborhoods, and few healthy food options.
Just last week it was announced here that each murder costs the governments (mostly state) around 1.6 million dollars and each shooting about 1.1 million. At about 500 murders a year, that is about 800 million dollars per year, every year for the last 4 decades.
If we could only stop the murder, there would be a lot of money to go around for schools, roads, nutrition, health care and elimination of poverty.
7
this is an uncommonly articulate, informed and persuasive contribution.
1
I got so car-sick in 20 minutes on hot, stinky old 1970's diesel buses that, starting in 1st grade, I would often walk home 1.5 miles (after dawdling or even hiding in the bathrooms); by third grade, I was also running the same route to school, after missing the morning bus.
Faced with a possible 2 hour ride to another school, I begged to go to any school that would allow me to walk, bike, or be driven. Since then, I've made it my business to live in diverse areas, so that my access to people of many cultures (and theirs, to me, as well, I suppose) does not depend on any of us breathing more fumes / using more petroleum.
What's shocking is the (ongoing!) history of redlining, followed by the "rinse and repeat" cycle of municipal-neglect-driven urban decay, "redevelopment" and ruthless displacement, that keeps us segregated, forces people of color to move from neighborhoods where they have support networks, and encourages richer, whiter people to believe they're doing a good thing, by moving into those same areas. It takes significant effort to live "someplace "multicultural" without participating in (and providing the economic drive) for dehumanizing displacement.
2
We must acknowledge that public education is mostly funded by local property taxes. This is the most convenient means of keeping the schools "white." It is about money. There are but a handful of black families in my town. They largely can't afford to live here. Poverty is the most crushing form of racism. If we can change the way education is funded, we can have more integrated schools. White privilege is still in full form in most places in the North. It sounds "polite", but it is just cruel.
4
Study the case of Teaneck, NJ, which decided to desegregate its schools voluntarily in 1964 to counteract years of redlining that had segregated its neighborhoods. Among the many who attended Teaneck's integrated public schools in the decades following that momentous decision, the vast majority of both "white" and "black" people will say that the experience gave them a huge advantage in life. You will struggle to find anyone who would call that experience a "failure."
5
Black parents didn’t try to send their kids to those schools just for the sake of desegregation. It was because white schools were still getting more funding and resources, even 20 years after the Brown decision... “Separate But Equal” was still in effect.
And honestly, things haven’t changed much today.
It also shows that you can’t legislate racism away. Laws won’t change people hearts and feelings. The Fair Housing Act didn’t end redlining and residential segregation.
3
It's a pretty difficult sell to ask one group to give up their much better situation so that an "other" group with poorer resources can benefit. It's not as simple as racism. It's hardwired scientific, evolutionary human nature.
9
The article is well summarized at the end (although it is worth reading in its entirety:
The same people who claim they are not against integration, just busing as the means, cannot tell you what tactic they would support that would actually lead to wide-scale desegregation. So, it is an incredible sleight of hand to argue that mandatory school desegregation failed, while ignoring that the past three decades of reforms promising to make separate schools equal have produced dismal results for black children, and I would argue, for our democracy.
Joe Biden's failure to understand this is among the reason why his time has passed and his time is up. When you add in Anita Hill, mass incarceration, Iraq, foot in mouth disease, neoliberalism, etc. Senator Credit Card is not fit.
2
If people had been free to live where they wanted to, none of this would matter.
3
In the mid 1970's, my Dad, was supporting our family as a Teacher at a local high school. He taught Earth Science and Photography in a room he thoughtfully supplied and decorated through the years. Then, The California Board of Education decided to use the social security numbers of white teachers, (the "teacher lottery") to send them to integrate L.A.'s inner city schools. My Dad's number was chosen and he was ordered to drive 2 hours each way to a high school to teach History, while an Asian teacher was assigned to take his place. This upheaval took it's toll on our family, and my Dad's brilliant teaching career never recovered. Since then, forced racial integration has been a sore point for me.
14
Just no.
If Harris is the nominee, Trump will win. End of story.
9
Hope all will read this excellent, factual, history of busing to integrate systemically segregated schools. I was on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education from 1974-78 when we desegregated the city-county schools after the Swann Supreme Court decision. It was “awkward and inconvenient” for some, but it worked. Achievement scores increased. Most of the community worked to make it work. We found that the important thing was what happened in the schools after the bus ride. Both black and white parents wanted a good education for their children. I found that the resistance to busing was based on fear. Leaders at all levels helped the community deal with its fear.
Students from the formerly black West Charlotte High School went to Boston to share their positive experience with “busing.”
“The term “busing” is a race-neutral euphemism that allows people to pretend white opposition was not about integration but simply about a desire for their children to attend neighborhood schools. But the fact is that American children have ridden buses to schools since the 1920s.” I might add, particularly in North Carolina.
Biden did the bidding of Dixiecrat Senators like Eastland in changing the context of busing. “It was the educational version of arguing that the Civil War was about states’ rights rather than slavery — one could uphold racist practices and systems while arguing that race had nothing to do with it.”
3
It is rare for an issue to be completely black or white, for lack of a better term. To state that opposition to busing was due to racism on the part of all whites is an insult. Having grown up in Boston during forced busing ( yes, it was forced, and yes it was done by bus), I attended Catholic school so escaped that fate. But I can tell you, based on the experiences of the kids who lived downstairs from us and their parents, there were white people who just plain didn’t want their children sent into neighborhoods that weren’t their own. The rock throwing and screamed insults, worked both ways BTW, and those kids were terrified. Of course some of it was due to racism, but not all, I would argue not even the majority. Those people simply got the most press.
10
correct me if I am wrong
1) the average black american has 1/10th the wealth as the average white american.
2) America is still pretty segregated - even though not by law
3) public schools in the US are funded based on the tax income of the district in which a school resides.
Black America - WAKE UP - this does not happen in other countries. Public schools around the world are equally funded.
EQUAL FUNDING.
6
The racist cudgel is the most powerful weapon in the United States, and everyone who is not Black is vulnerable.I was brought up in a Jewish Middle Class neighborhood, but I never felt persecuted, because I was persecuted when I left my neighborhood .When busing came along, my parents & Neighbors rose up against this intrusion into our lives.We just didn’t want to integrate with Black people who discriminated against us.Our Neighborhood was between a Black & Italian neighborhoods. In those days each ethic group had their own neighborhoods, and you didn’t dare to cross those lines, especially if you were Jewish.We didn’t complain, or make an issue about it. In Elementary School our teachers were Blue haired Irish Women, who loved to bang our heads against the Blackboard, if we weren’t paying attention.
What was segregation to Black people were self preservation to us.One more thing , Jews were not allowed in certain towns , like Tuxedo , N.Y. who had a sign as you entered Tuxedo that said Jews & Dogs were not allowed.I for one was happy to stay out of there.
8
Court ruled busing worked? I always bring this up to people who say that, particularly in Boston- busing here was a DISMAL FAILURE. You had two communities in the 70s-80s that couldn't care less about each other, and suddenly you're forcing them to squabble over limited government resources in an attempt to create "equality" for the black community. The sheer absurdity of it.
I mean look, it's one thing if you're against school integration from a purely racial standpoint like in the Jim Crow south. But that just means you need to establish laws to prevent anyone from being denied access to a school based on their race. When you're using busing and diversity initiatives in an attempt to resolve economic disparities between groups, it really doesn't work. That's a cultural issue for the affected communities in part (look, most whites and Asians faced discrimination in this country and were equally economically destitute- they rose above it. Other people can't?) And then you have the other issue of your school being tied to your zip code and reflecting the relative affluence of communities.
The problem with school busing is that we treat is a catch all "we have to solve racism" type scenario. That's not how it's applied in many cases though. We have to solve school financing in the current day, not create diversity initiatives and break down alleged Jim Crow style barriers that really don't exist anymore.
10
I am amazed by the criticism of Biden here voiced by so many partisan Democrats. I do not write to defend Biden. I am convinced that nearly all politicians are deceitful and corrupt, both parties, both genders, every race, and every religion.
But imagine if this were some article about blacks with prison records from decades ago being still now subject to rejection by the public due to continuing distrust. In that case, these comments would be filled with castigation of those who defend such distrust. They would be called racists and we would be lectured how ancient errors should not be held against them now.
Yet here we are and all these "liberal" partisan Democrats are focused so intently on disqualifying Biden because of a single vote cast 50 years ago against busing, a program that is certainly something less than definitively proved to be even effective, much less beneficial.
5
It probably to difficult to address what's wrong with this country so why not live in the past?
2
In the southern town where I grew up schools were desegregated in the early 70s, shortly after we moved there. White and black students were bused to achieve racial segregation. My trip took me from a nearly all white suburb (one black family on a street behind ours) to a junior high school close to downtown. I walked to the elementary school near our house but took a bus to junior high. Riding a bus and being in a desegregated school was a nonissue for me and my parents (my dad attended desegregated public schools in Rhode Island during the 50s, played high school base ball with a team of both black and white students, and graduated Parris Island with some of those same classmates). However, I did notice the disparity in treatment between white and black students, particularly by white substitute teachers. I remember reporting it back to my mom, whose concerns about this were dismissed by the school principle. I vividly remember the KKK on the front porch of my elementary school when it let out one day and the terror felt by all students. Finally, I remember that most black students seemed to be locked in remedial classes using the same books year after year, as if they were incapable of progress. Something didn't seem right about that. The segregation continued. I for one think equalized funding is the answer, along with a recommitment with investment in public schools and an elimination for tax incentives that rob funds from public education.
4
This article is so disheartening and a primary reason Trump is President. Busing failed on so many levels. This article author's complete confidence that she knows the "true" reason (racism) whites object to busing is appalling.
"We now know that school desegregation significantly reduced the test-score gap between black and white children — cutting it in half for some black age groups without harming white children." This type of "fact" is fake news. These "tests' do not show there was not harm done to white students. It shows that busing did achieve lifting the academic bottom to a minimal academic standard without causing other students to fall to the bottom. By pursing this aim (which is what is done in many schools now thanks to NCLB) many, many students who are not struggling are also not given any type of work to to help them reach their optimal academic level.
I just spent a weekend in a suburb of Dallas called McKinney TX. It is a middle class white, and to a lesser extent Indian, community whose residents specifically move there to enjoy the excellent schools and family oriented community. In the downtown square people there are hip restaurants, including one that is exclusively operated by people with disabilities. It is the type of place that have many hard working, decent people who do not like Trump and also know when the Democrats are telling them a pack of lies. Please stop!
11
Kamala's "You go girl!" momentum is slowing. Her latest poll numbers fell flat. She can't sustain her campaign on Biden bashing and cliche ridden platitudes. Perhaps a VP spot- But certainly not POTUS.
3
The issue wasnever about busing. It was always about who was on the bus!
4
Busing did not fail, We did.
People of color didn't fail, white people failed! And continue to fail! Primarily over the Belief that they are Superior to everyone else. What a fallacy, yet it remains a corner stone of American culture/belief. It's so sad, to say, much hasn't changed in this beautiful country, a country with so much potential, yet, for the sake of white supremacy, Americans voted for a President like Donald Trump.
White Americans, need to confront their long history of racism, and stop denying the truth of their collective behavior. The future of this great nation depends on it!
3
@Karl A. Brown White people did fail and no amount of confronting the long history of racism in this country is going to change any of it. Every black on black shooting or crime spree reinforces every negative stereotype that's ever been perpetrated on Black America. The contributions to this country made by Black Americans are monumental. Start embracing them. Especially since many young people don't know what or whom they are.
What will work, however, is taking responsibility for your own neighborhoods and the people in them. Continue to reach for the freedoms and liberty in front of you in 2019.
4
@Karl A. Brown
Blather. White supremacy exists as a construct for (i) fringe far right groups, and (ii) an all encompassing scapegoat for personal and societal problems. Oh, I failed my algebra test - must be white supremacy since a white guy wrote the test. Oh, I didn't get the job I wanted - must be white supremacy because the hiring manager was white. Oh, my school is under-performing - must be because of the vast white supremacy conspiracy. Please. White Americans care far far less about race than you suggest. Most white Americans trace their roots to European ancestors who came to America long after slavery and have had nothing to do with Jim Crow, etc. Blaming them for problems that they neither created nor perpetuate is the ultimate scapegoat.
5
@Dean M.
I understand what you're saying, and do appreciate your thoughts. I work hard in my neighborhood with my fellow diverse neighbors, however, this will not be enough to root out racism. It requires genuine conscious work from white people to understand that what they have created, they must dismantle. We people of color cannot do it without effort on their part. I have my doubts that they won't want to do anything of this nature. Why would they,,,,?
Even though, their future and the future of America is inextricably connected to this success.
Thanks for telling the truth, and thanks to The NY Times for publishing it. I was one of those white kids living in a deliberately white suburb of Detroit, caused by white flight, and I heard all the rationales for fighting busing. Unfortunately, I was not old or wise enough at the time to understand that virtually all of those arguments cloaked the underlying racism. My family moved from a soon-to-be integrated neighborhood to Birmingham purportedly because the schools were so good, though the schools were not even built at the time we moved. I was bussed to and from 7 white schools in 7 years as we awaited for ours to be constructed, and it was all white. It was all just comfortable “code” for staying away from “the blacks.” So sad, true and regrettable.
3
Racism is inherent in all parts of America. Whites use every available tactic to oppose integration. Northern states have long used restrictive zoning laws to prevent any influx of Blacks into communities. The New Jersey Supreme Court has been trying to address this problem for decades, recently taking the issue from the legislature and forcing all towns to develop affordable housing plans. But attend any local meetings and you will here the mobs who attend clamoring against "outsiders, inner city residents, people who don't have our values" and other euphemisms for Black. We must, however, continue all efforts to integrate America, but, more importantly, we must attack the pervasive racism and hatred that have created our segregated nation.
3
It worked to destroy public education and trust in government in general, and to foment hatred between the races.
People saw their children's education take second place to the colors of their skins, and to be moved as pawns to satisfy someone's idea of an ideal racial mix.
20
@Jonathan Katz Do you really believe that busing is the cause of racial hatred? The US had no racial challenges until kids were bused in the 70's?
1
I was in the trenches covering bussing in Boston in the early 1970s for United Press International. Police motorcycles escorting school busses, terrified kids, riots, burning cars, sharpshooters on the roof of Southie High and Charlestown High. Poor African-American kids bussed to underserved white schools, poor white kids bussed to underserved black schools. Millions spent that could have been spent building great magnet schools, paying teachers, buying supplies. Neighborhoods torn apart as poor people on both sides fought over their scraps of the American Dream.
Ms. Hannah-Jones writes that, "The same people who claim they are not against integration, just busing as the means, cannot tell you what tactic they would support that would actually lead to wide-scale desegregation." OK, I'll give it a try: Start by assuming that all parents, whatever their race, cherish their children's future. Then use money to build schools of excellence, well-resourced schools with the best teacher-- educators who teach children to be aspirational and to love learning. Not exam schools but rather schools available to all parents and children from all backgrounds and all parts of a city. Provide transportation, school busses or public transport vouchers.
Thoughts, anyone?
4
@Steve Liss My first thought is that the entire discussion needs to minimize the notion of race. What we are really talking about is integrating children who are largely underprepared and who come from households with little academic education, into schools where, for generations, the parents have seen the benefits of formal education and therefore support it. Excellent elementary schools can absorb some, say, children of migrant farmworkers who cannot read, but not a large number. An all-white high school in Appalachia may not serve the academic or social needs of the white sophomore whose parents are Yale-educated demographers. Yes, it is true that historically, these differences have been exacerbated by race, but race is not the operative concept. Bussing didn't work because it falsified the problem.
What should have happened? An attempt should have been made to prepare the students from Indian reservations, Hmong communities, Appalachia, Watts, traveling Bracero communities, Southwest D.C., and many others to enter nearby academically-oriented schools, and only then attempt integration. Yes, this would have taken more time, money, and effort. But it might have achieved the true integration that we all dreamed of.
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Red lining and legally segregated neighborhoods was the concrete basis of segregated schools, especially in cities. Busing did a great deal to destroy cities because interstates and suburbs and busing drove wealthy and near wealthy families out to the suburbs and the tax base for city public education dropped. Black families were left in decaying cities with decaying underfunded schools.
Socio economic disadvantage is the weight dragging down poor white and black children all over this country.
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Thank you Ms. Hannah-Jones for your your hard work in laying out the history of busing and the hypocrisy of politicians like Joe Biden when explaining their words and actions in an effort to kill busing as a tool for integration in our country. To politicians like Joe Biden I say — bless your heart. Which I learned late in life is a southern insult made with a politician's smile.
I was ignorant about many of the issues swirling around segregation until joining the military in1966. After flying over a burned down Detroit in 1968 I made it a point to learn what I could over the years about segregation in this country. I remember asking myself one day how segregation in US differed from apartheid in South Africa. Answer, the difference was in style not substance.
That said, I support reparations, not because of slavery, but because of all the government sponsored words and actions taken since slavery was abolished to punish and hold down a people because of the color of their skin. Shame on Joe Biden and all the other big smile, slap on the back, story telling politicians who use semantics to hide their real motives and intentions.
Finally, a big "bless your heart" to Trump, Mitch McConnell, and all the MAGA hats around the country. Hey, its America and I am exercising my 1st Amendment rights to say what I think.
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Evidently it is in vogue now to discuss your personal story with forced busing. I grew up in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware where Joe Biden is from so I remember what forced busing did to the public school system in the 1970's. The author of this story concedes that forced busing did not close that achievement gap between whites and African American students. Putting students on buses for 40 minute bus rides excluding the picking up of children made children of both races unhappy. Forced busing started when gas prices were astronomical and so it added financial pressure on the schools budgets. If one is honest the dirty little secret about forced busing was the belief by the architects that if they put the African American students with the white students and their allegedly superior schools African American achievement would by start to mimic that of the white students. Substantial numbers of whites transferred to private schools this of course caused a very difficult situation to become worse. Schools in Delaware that had had very few disciplinary issues found themselves literally overnight dealing with problems in much larger numbers and more serious issues than they had ever encountered. I have a two inch scar on my face where an African American student threw a wine bottle through the school bus window attempting to hit another African American student that he was mad at. I was collateral damage. Yes busing was an unmitigated failure for everyone.
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As a student in the 1960s I regularly rode a public bus with black inner city students who were attending a school in a middle class neighborhood. They clearly did not want to be transported across town to attend this school and made everyone on the bus aware of this daily. They were disruptive and aggressive toward everyone else. So in this case the problem was not white racism but black self-segregation. Busing was of no benefit to anyone.
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Cue the comments of individuals who have refused to/neglected to/cannot possibly fathom there is data and support for your argument at the end of your article, NOT reading to the end of the article. Very deflating.
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When I came to the USA about a quarter century ago I was left compared to the Democratic Party.
I haven’t changed in the meantime at all. Now I find self soundly centrist and completely puzzled by the Democrats that have gotten lost in space and time.
It used to be the worker’s party, the one standing for the middle-class America and the poor.
Now that’s the organization devoted to the pulverization and dividing of America in attempt to please everybody and serve nobody.
It used to be for the fiscal responsibility and balanced budget. Now it stands for piling up the national debt.
It used to protect the US manufacturing and the workers. Now it accuses them of being overly expensive to compete with the Chinese labor while simultaneously promising us the better health care, free education, affordable housing...
What about the better wages and decent living?
What used to be the racism is now WHITE racism. What used to be bias is now MALE bias. What used to be patriotism is now xenophobia. Support for the law and order is now police brutality.
The Democratic Party now demands that the males and females are equally paid.
It just means that now your husbands, fathers and sons are going to be LESS paid because obviously the work can be performed overseas or cheaper...
The export of our jobs to China should have provided us with the BETTER paid jobs.
To hide this sad reality, let’s talk about the busing and segregation fifty years ago to additionally distract and divide.
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When you take your eye off the ball, the other team steals it. Most whites in the North were rightly indignant about segregation and suppression of blacks in the South in the first half of the 1960s. But, after Congress finally passed and the courts began enforcing landmark civil rights laws in the middle of that decade, white Americans in the North immediately turned their attention to the Vietnam War, and later to blocking busing for integration of schools in their cities, both of which they viewed as threats to their own children and way of life.
By the mid-70s, the gains for blacks and liberal whites in the South began to disappear as the white power structure regained control across the region. Since that time, self-interest has Trumped (pun intended) many of the gains -- fortunately not all -- that Civil Rights leaders fought so hard to win. Where do we go from here?
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Perhaps Bridgeport, CT, Detroit, MI and other failing, underfunded districts should close their schools, and force bussing into more affluent surrounding districts.
Demographic change is making a mockery out of school integration. This especially true in our most populous states. Only 23.2 percent of California students and 27.9 percent of Texas students are white. There are no longer enough white students to go around.
If students of color can only learn when seated next to blue-eyed blond students, we need to change our immigration quotas. Otherwise, we should concentrate on making schools in which most students are “people of color” as good as schools that are predominantly whites.
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Due to a busing order in 1969 I was required to get on a bus as the sole white student with 32 black students. One or another boy was designated to fight me at the bus stop almost everyday. No adults would touch the issue. Eventually I knocked a poor kid out and it stopped. There was a palpable risk of serious injury or arrest-able offenses but nothing was done. By the way, this middle school busing was of students coming out of of a totally integrated, racially balanced, elementary school where everyone got along, had friends of other races etc. Negligent and ham-handed busing implementation was a tragedy.
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@Joe Thanks for the dose of reality.
The various white liberal suburbanites piously commenting here never experienced the "gladiator school" of fights and beatings which accompanied being bused into another neighborhood.
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As a side note, busing was the central organizing grievance of the political evangelicals, the Christiana coalition, not abortion.
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