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.

[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).