Opinion of desegregation busing

[Nichlemn]

I just read the Wikipedia article on it and am conflicted. My feeling is that a milder version might have been successful, but it was excessive the way it was implemented. If I had free reign back in the day, I think I would have preferred policies that sort to improve black schools, while creating integrated schools that used "carrots" rather than "sticks", like having high funding for schools that managed relatively high integration levels. Maybe as far as busing went, it would be only to "gerrymander" school districts in ways that would make them more racially mixed while still being relatively compact (which I realise would only work for black areas that were close to white areas).

As for its use today, while there is still a fair amount of racism and segregation, it's a lot less than the when busing was first implemented, so I think it's too extreme a measure to justify now.

However, as a New Zealander, I have no personal experience nor know anybody who has personal experience with busing and segregation.

[bedstuy]

I think it was a policy that came from a good place, wanting to promote integration and improving education outcomes for black people.  But, I think it caused more harm than good.  It was practically difficult for people to have their kids bused a long distance away.  Also in some cases, it just lead to more rapid white flight and reorganization of white communities away from cities. 

More broadly, I think the theory was pretty flawed.  Going to a majority white high school doesn't solve the problems of poverty and racism which hold black kids back.  The big difference in achievement between a school in Scarsdale and a school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn isn't the school itself.  It's not the teachers, or building, or textbooks.  It's the parents and students.  Busing will never fix or even address that.

[courts]

I think it was a policy that came from a good place, wanting to promote integration and improving education outcomes for black people.  But, I think it caused more harm than good.  It was practically difficult for people to have their kids bused a long distance away.  Also in some cases, it just lead to more rapid white flight and reorganization of white communities away from cities. 

More broadly, I think the theory was pretty flawed.  Going to a majority white high school doesn't solve the problems of poverty and racism which hold black kids back.  The big difference in achievement between a school in Scarsdale and a school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn isn't the school itself.  It's not the teachers, or building, or textbooks.  It's the parents and students.  Busing will never fix or even address that.

that and they focused on high schools rather than you know, actual kids. of course by that age you're much more likely to have fights break out and fixed racial attitudes

[ElectionsGuy]

Mixed. I'm glad that they want to promote diversity and such, but it really doesn't do anything to solve the problem.

[Cassius]

Horrible practice. Take note that some of the strongest proponents of the practice (Ted Kennedy et al) didn't have to worry about the implications of desegregation busing as they sent their children to private schools. Diversity needs to flower in it's own time, not be ramrodded through by government legislation and legal dictate.

[Nichlemn]

Diversity needs to flower in it's own time, not be ramrodded through by government legislation and legal dictate.

While I mostly agree, I think in cases with severe segregation, there's something of a collective action problem that government could alleviate. Imagine a city where the schools are either all-white or all-black (which was basically the case in many cities). Even if quite a few parents would be happy to send their children to an integrated school, they might not like the isolation and conspicuousness of having their child be the only white kid in a black school or black kid in a white school (or at least be very heavily outnumbered). So no-one makes the first move, and all schools remain completely segregated.

Thomas Schelling's model of segregation is relevant. The equilibrium can be for total segregation even when racial preferences are mild (and could potentially improve with exposure).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well intentioned but bloody stupid.

[H. Ross Peron]

It should have been paired with banning private schools from charging tuition or having different admission standards from public schools to prevent white flight

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Well intentioned but bloody stupid.

[TNF]

Good intentions, bad results.

[Indy Texas]

Good intentions; bad methods and outcomes.

The neighborhood school is a civic institution that goes back to the days of the one-room town schoolhouse centuries ago. It is in the public interest and in the interest of students and their families for children to be educated near where they live. Busing took a hatchet to that institution and you could argue that it has never really recovered.

Furthermore, it created a zero sum mentality where children from poor neighborhoods where bussed to more affluent ones, but conversely children from more affluent neighborhoods were forced to attend schools that were arguably worse.

I can't think of any policy that contributed more to the Republicanization of the middle class than busing. It did a fantastic job of cementing into the American consciousness the notion of the put-upon middle class that liberals and/or Democrats do not care about. And in this case, that was indeed the case.

What did the Democratic Party intend to say to the lower-middle class working stiff with a wife and two or three kids, who scrimped and saved and struggled to afford a house in the suburbs in part for the good schools, only to find out that his children were going to be put on a bus and sent to school in the ghetto while [colored] kids from the ghetto were sent to the school he was working his tail off to live near? As if that weren't bad enough, he had to come home from work every evening and turn on the news and see yet another black neighborhood breaking out in riots or hear about how crime rates in the city were skyrocketing.

Someone like George Wallace initially provided a sympathetic audience for his anger and resentment, but soon people like him more or less left the Democratic Party. Then, in 1976, a man named Ronald Reagan came along and promised to set things right and lo and behold, the cementing of middle class white people in the Republican column was complete.

Liberals quite literally took something away from middle-class white people and gave it to poor black people while the children of the rich (both liberal and conservative) were more or less insulated from any consequences of this social engineering. And liberals are paying for it to this day, as any issue from taxes to spending to healthcare is framed as being more taking from "working people" and giving to those who don't work.

[nolesfan2011]

Mixed. I'm glad that they want to promote diversity and such, but it really doesn't do anything to solve the problem.

Same, the idea is good, but the implementation was poor at times, opposition to it wasn't entirely because of racism, in fact many African-Americans were also opposed, probably would have been a better solution. I take the Scoop Jackson approach to civil rights of the era.