Busing v. Neighborhood Schools

[Delarage]

I was a kid in Delaware when busing was happening. We were a progressive working class family, bordering low income, but lived in the suburbs (near the now-bulldozed Chrysler plant). My experience with busing was that it made it difficult for families to be involved in the school. We had one half-working car and if I forgot something at home or my mom had to come to school for something, it was 50-50. Wilmington was a haul in an old rusty Ford Torino. That sucked and it went both ways. Then people complain about uninvolved parents.

Perhaps Biden was more interested in making sure the schools in the city were good.

There was an elementary school that I could've walked to, but I took a 30-something minute bus ride every day, both ways, and that sucked to me. It wasn't a great answer to a larger problem, so all this fuss is a little extreme, IMO.

[True Blue American]

1. We lived across the street from a new High School

With an Elementary School right behind. After many meetings we all found our children would have to be bused clear across Dayton.

Our House that we had remodeled extensively went up for sale, sold the next day. We had a time trying to get in our new House in the suburbs. Both black and whites who could afford it did the same.

Dayton was left with a broken tax base. It has never recovered. I have talked to many of all colors. They all felt the money should have gone to fixing bad schools.

Busing May have been good for some, for others and the cities involved it was a disaster.

[Laurian]

5. Very similar to my experience.

We bought a home within walking distance to the elementary school and I became very involved with several programs there. The busing decision would have required my seven year old to take a bus more than an hour each way to another school. I could not bear the thought of her being so far away and knew that I, as the mother of a preschooler as well, would not be able to participate much in the school programs and have difficulty getting to her should she become ill. Remember....this was a time when most families (at least ours) had only one vehicle.

We moved.

I think people are painting opposition to busing with a very broad brush. There were a myriad of reasons for that opposition and it’s unfair to imply that anyone against it was motivated by bigotry.

I resent people judging past events without a scrupulous examination of all factors influencing those events.

[StarfishSaver]

6. I'm curious

Was the busing plan in your community court-ordered or voluntary?

[Laurian]

7. Court ordered, as I recall.

Columbus, Ohio.

[StarfishSaver]

9. Thanks. I'm familiar with the Columbus case.

That was one of the northern school desegregation cases that came about as a result of the local school districts actively resisting efforts to desegregate. Judge Robert Duncan - a brilliant and fair judge - ruled that the Columbus Board of Education had deliberately segregated black and white students by carefully drawing school boundaries that kept black kids in predominantly black schools and white kids in predominantly white schools. He ordered the district to redraw the lines and eventually had to step in and order student reassignments.

This around 1977 and after, I believe. Is that your recollection?

[StarfishSaver]

8. Dayton was an interesting situation

After it was determined that Dayton Public Schools had been grossly segregated due to government policy, black parents and NAACP lawyers tried for years - more than a decade - to work with the Dayton schools to integrate on a voluntary basis and develop a desegregation plan that worked for everyone with a minimum of disruption. But there was so much opposition in the white community and on the Dayton School Board to every effort to compromise and work together that these efforts were rebuffed and desegregation went nowhere. There was much litigation over it and Judge Rice, a very decent and fair federal judge presiding over the case, ordered the school district to come up with a workable plan. They didn't. So having no other alternative, Judge Rice ordered the school reassignments that would require many children to attend school far away.

This was a very difficult situation and required hardship on some people. But what other alternatives are there? Change is hard. Progress often involves sacrifices. And, sadly, too many black children and families were told "we believe in integration and justice. But we don't want to be inconvenienced or make any sacrifices to make it happen so, you should continue bearing the burden of centuries of racism and discrimination, your children should continue to languish in inferior, segregated schools because it would be too much of a hardship for our children not to be able to go to school around the corner."

I'm not saying that's how your family thought, but do you understand my point? Integration and change is hard, but whenever the hard work has to be done, no one wants to do it. And while your family rightly and justly concerned about your well being and educational opportunities, the black families in Dayton were just as concerned about their children.

And please remember that when your family bought into your neighborhood to be near a quality school, it's more likely than not that black families didn't have that option. The evidence in the Dayton School case showed that, although the communities weren't segregated by law (de jure), they were strictly and rampantly segregated in practice (de facto) through federal and local government housing policy, lending practices, realtor steering, etc. Black families were trapped and the only way to deal with this was to disrupt the processes. But that disruption was met with fierce opposition and white flight and often violence and racial terrorism.

So, you're right. It was and is very complicated. And it goes well beyond simple labels like "forced busing."

I appreciate you and am glad you shared your story.

[True Blue American]

10. Yes, I knew Judge Rice.

His order destroyed the neighborhood School District. I still live in a suburb with excellent Schools.

Parents and Teachers alike were very unhappy with his decision. Like the Mother with the 7 year old I understood how she feels. Judge Rice destroyed what was an excellent system. We had meeting after meeting at the schools. I loved walking across the street to be involved.

Busing wasted millions of dollars that should have been spent on the schools that were crumbling.

This was part of the reason the suburbs grew so drastically.

[StarfishSaver]

12. Judge Rice's order didn't destroy the neighborhood

The intentional school segregation imposed by the Dayton Public School Board and it's subsequent refusal to desegregate until the judge had to ordered it to is what destroyed your neighborhood - with a great big assist from the rampant residential segregation that blocked black families from moving into your neighborhood.

Busing didn't create white flight or the suburbs. White flight long predated busing.

[zeusdogmom]

2. The unintended consequences of what was thought to be a way of fixing the problem

of segregated schools. We've learned a lot in hindsight. To me neighborhood schools are the better option if we want families to be involved. Plus you ar going to school with your neighborhood playmates. One of my young daughters went to a county wide magnet school - her friends were scattered all over he place making it difficult to just go play after school.

[StarfishSaver]

4. The problem with "neighborhood schools" during that time is that neighborhoods

we're so deeply segregated - thanks largely to government policies - that integration would never occur if the neighborhood school concept was relied on. And the idea of simply providing more resources to the schools in the black neighborhoods where black children were trapped was a non-starter. That concept of "separate but equal" had been conclusively proven to be a fallacy in Brown and its precursors.

Redrawing district lines was the only really effective way to make this work and that could have been done with a minimum of effort and disruption. And, yes, it often meant that some children were bused to schools farther away. It also often meant that some children could finally go to schools closer to their homes. But many people resisted, so the courts had to step in and order the reassignments, which sometimes meant that kids would have to be bused.

[True Blue American]

11. My suburb is integrated.

[StarfishSaver]

13. Don't understand your point

[True Blue American]

14. Dayton is still very much segregated.

My point? Busing was the wrong solution. They wasted all that money when it could have fixed the schools that needed help.

[StarfishSaver]

15. Busing was the last ditch attempt after all other efforts failed

Desegregation would have worked in Dayton if the school board had made any effort to work with black and white families to come up with a solution instead of fighting desegregation tooth and nail until they were finally taken to court and the federal government was ordered to step in and try to come up with a solution - again with little cooperation and staunch opposition from the school board. No wonder busing wasn't effective by that point. But busing wasn't the cause of the failure of desegregation in Dayton. Massive resistance to integration - often just as fervent and ugly as any seen in the South - was the cause.

[True Blue American]

17. No, it was a

Wrong headed decision by both Congress and Judge Rice in the case of Dayton. I lived through all the meetings and most were dead set against destroying their neighborhood schools.

It was also later declared Unconstitutional.

[StarfishSaver]

20. What decision by Congress are you referring to

And busing has never been declared unconstitutional. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1971 in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that busing is an appropriate method for remedying school segregation.

[StarfishSaver]

3. He opposed and tried to stop busing across the country

This wasn't about concern about schools in Delaware.

[Delarage]

16. Of course

I was just saying that busing made it very difficult for my mom to be active in my school because we had a shitty car, not a lot of money, etc. So maybe it would have been better to fix up the schools that needed fixing up instead of having me sit in traffic on I-95 in a vehicle getting 8 MPG, although I really couldn't tell a difference in teachers, buildings, etc. I just know it was a pain in the ass and, to me, a waste of time, gas, etc.

If the families in the city had even a harder time getting to their kids schools in the suburbs or wherever, it seems even more counterproductive. Active involvement in your kids' schools makes a difference.

[StarfishSaver]

19. The black parents were involved but parental involvement doesn't overcome rampant discrimination

Especially when the parents have no political power - remember this was before and just after the passage of the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Fair Housing acts.

[madville]

18. I was bused in the 80s to a middle school in the city

They bused us from a predominantly white suburb to a majority black middle school in the city. It was pretty bad, I believe it created a whole generation of racists on both sides because there was so much conflict, the school had to be shut down several times and for almost a week one time due to a fight along racial lines involving over 100 people. I was just in 6th grade and it was mostly the older kids fighting so when things like that would break out we would try to get to a classroom or climb onto the roof of the outdoor covered walkways.

All the white families that could afford it pulled their kids and started sending them to the private schools in the area. Several new ones were actually built around that time to meet the demand, in a way the busing helped create a larger elite private school system.

An interesting thing is my parents moved us to a neighboring rural county that had one middle and high school, it was 50/50 black and white and people got along pretty well because everyone had grown up together and weren't forced to be together.

[True Blue American]

21. Why busing was created.

Last edited Sat Jun 29, 2019, 03:43 PM - Edit history (1)

The History.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swann_v._Charlotte-Mecklenburg_Board_of_Education

For most of us it created problems because those who could afford it made our own decisions as to what we could do. Millions of others had no choice.

It was so long ago that those who can remember have hardened our positions. In may cases it made racism worse. This history of how it took place might help some to understand. Google has more information, maybe we can deal more objectively instead of arguing.

Democrats need to pull together and frankly I see the media causing great harm to our party.

[Delarage]

22. From today's News Journal...

Some folks think this is straightforward: Biden made the wrong decision in the 1970s, and history is judging him for it. He buckled to white racists and tried to stop something Wilmington's black community desperately wanted and needed to overcome racism.

The problem with this simplistic view is that plenty of respected black community leaders argued at the time that busing was a bad idea. And it certainly isn't hard to find respected black voices now who say it failed.

“It was the biggest sham,” venerable Wilmington education activist Bebe Coker told The News Journal recently. “It destroyed our community.”

[link:https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/matthew-albright/2019/06/28/desegregation-isnt-just-joe-bidens-problem-its-delawares-too/1593174001/|

[Cha]

23. Thank you for this, Delarage!