"Good, Bad, and Busing"
Poor, poor old school bus—that once placid symbol of safety, learning and good for the American child—now has a name that’s worse than wasp.
No matter that it chugs away like the little choo choo saying, “I think I can, I think I can, and makes it to the school on time, I knew I could, I knew I could.” Few smile at its sight or effort; some faces turn away in sadness, or look on with apprehension; and there are those that follow old yellow with hate.
With the symbol change we probably should change the color of the bus—for it is certainly not yellow; no cowardice here. Poor obedient dumb mechanical servant. Loved or not, she, or is it he, sits in the lot and waits for his masters to tell him what to do.
It’s not the bus’ fault. The people, and the masters too, are divided.
It is not so hard for a Universalist Unitarian minister to take a determined stand—even an extreme one if backed by conviction—on many issues including this one: the busing issue. Free pulpits work that way. Besides, as one person told me one time: “We like our ministers a little flaky…at least we can tolerate it.”
Sometimes one must wait for history to determine, “was it flakes or prophecy?” but we say what we believe with a “Here I stand,” like Martin Luther “I can do no other.”
And even if we think some speakers or writers are neurotic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_JamesWilliam James helped when he said, “the prophet may be neurotic but we’d better listen to him; he may be right!”
Nevertheless, some issues, or the people behind them, go to such extremes of naiveté that they become preposterous. The busing issue gets into this territory too, it seems to me—into such extremes on both sides—where solutions or obstacles are simplified terribly. There are no simple perfect solutions available right now.
Liberal Catholic philosopher Michael Novak has moved increasingly into support as an ethnic separate and plural posture, and now says “Busing is the Vietnam of the 70’s. It’s a quagmire, a lost cause, taxation without representation, a policy of massive social engineering with no clear prospect of benefiting anyone.”
That, I think, is an overstatement. But I do not doubt he is on target when he says this is the “one subject on which it is hardest to be honest and hardest to venture an opinion without being called a moral name on way or another.” It’s time to cut that out, and get to and through our debate without sanctimonious moral snobbery on either side. I’ll give it a try and hope.
Is there anything supernatural or magical about “whiteness” that sitting blackness next to it will automatically make blackness better? Nonsense! No, not put that way, of course not. Then what is the purpose of desegregation? Is it to uphold the law, and is every law sacrosanct?
Moving toward the anti-busing extreme we hear Mrs. Connor of Louisville—ready to inflame others while denying that she would do so—saying, “I say never! I say never to Judge Gordon. Never to the Communists. Never to the dictatorships of government.”
Interesting.
Even farther out are those of a particular American school of conspiracy theorists who hold that there is a conspiracy in this country to deliver us into the evil hands of “world government,” which plans, say their theorists, to turn our churches into one world church and to commit genocide through school busing.
Genocide! The reasoning, according to one right wing pamphlet, is that what conspirators want our Senate to ratify, what the pamphlet calls “the Marxist Genocide Convention” itself “defines genocide," in part, as follows: “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Hence they reason that forced busing is genocide.
The rhetoric can and does become ghostly and ghastly at the extremes on both sides of the center-line down the road over which our school buses travel.
Some liberals have said, “It’s not the buses, it’s the niggers!” I understand the emotion which gives rise to such a statement, and I believe it is perfectly true for many people; but it is not true for all people. I agree that busing is not the real issue, and to be for it does not coat one with virtue—to be against it does not necessarily make one a racist.
I believe the issue is not busing per se. It is integration and desegregation. The issue is over how the society can prevent discrimination against people on the basis of race…that forced segregation by law (or de facto) may be seen to be discriminatory, and that forcing people into limited geographical areas, or forcing them into limited job opportunities, or forcing them to segregate in schools, is unconstitutional.
The arguments come over how not to force segregation—how to end discrimination—how to be fair and just and give every American a chance at quality in education, at a job he is able to do, at a place to live he can afford without discriminating against him on the basis of color.
The arguments from racists and non-racists are sometimes over whether this should even be attempted—but more often today over “how” to do it.
The majority of Americans, and the majority of people in the Wilmington area say they are for integration, black and white together.
One can be racist and oppose busing for racist reasons. One may not be a racist and yet may oppose busing, if, for example, he believes busing will be counter-productive and will result in greater hostility and more segregation in neighborhoods, not in schools.
Another may be a racist but be for busing, believing that is the way to keep people out that he doesn’t want moving into his neighborhood—bus them but don’t move them.
And yet another may be a non-racist and be for busing as one method only, but one, of achieving integration.
Not all of the arguments are of equal validity—but surely our problem as a society is a complicated one, and, again, there seems to be no perfect solution.
I shall not begin to exhaust reasons against or for court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation, but lets think about some of them.
First, do you ever get the uneasy feeling that this thing may be, even if you hate to think so, somewhat like the prohibition issue? That desegregation is perhaps a noble ideas as many thought prohibiting the use of drug and alcohol was a noble experiment, but that it is just not going to work? That no matter how much of an integrationist one might be, enough will resist it in every conceivable way that it will end up wearing itself out as an issue and have to be resolved on a voluntary basis?
I do not like to think that, and I, personally, do not really believe that, but who has a corner on wisdom? Busing could fail or the courts could shift away from it as a solution, like it or not.
Or, it may turn out that the best reason to oppose school busing for desegregation, has been given by University of Chicago professor, James S. Coleman, the sociologist who authored the 1966 federal study supporting the use of school busing to achieve a better quality of education for all.
Now Coleman believes, on the basis of more recent studies, that busing and court-ordered desegregation are counter-productive—that they result in “white flight” from cities where desegregation has been ordered; white flight at a greater and faster rate than occurs where such desegregation has not been ordered.
That by forcing desegregation we are actually creating greater segregation. His findings are challenged as, so far, unreliable—but he may turn out to be right.
One could answer him, as the NAACP does, that white flight cannot be used as an excuse to perpetuate black plight, but his work should cause thinking people to ask: how can we reverse the flight—how can we do this better—how should we do what ought to be done?
It gets complicated. Liberals have tended to support the right of the Amish, and the courts have now backed them up; the right of the Amish people to take their children out of schools after the eighth grade…this felt to be necessary to preserve Amish agricultural and religious culture.
There is to be no forced integration of the Amish. On the other hand they are not forced out either—they are not forced to segregate…they choose to do so, but go to school together with others through eighth grade.
Could it be reasoned then that a black group or a white group anywhere should not be forced to integrate if it does not choose to do so—not because it is racist necessarily but because it has black pride or white pride or pride in its culture and wishes to see it continue undiluted. Liberals have applauded this for the Amish, but opposed it for the white middle class or working class. It’s okay for anybody, however, upper enough to pay for private school.
If people quibble it may be because they are racists. It may not be. They may value pluralism, may wish for every group the holding of itself in high esteem so long as a freely chosen and truly a quality of education according to the desires of that group are available to it.
Some people shift their opinions merely because the opinions of some of those they respect shift. Because Coleman, for example, still for integration, backs off from busing, other supporters of busing get off at the next stop. Because Coretta Scott King has wondered about the “futile shuffling of students from one school to another with, she says, scant prospect of meaningful education in either”? Because black writer William Raspberry says “Busing hasn’t solved anything because busing can’t solve anything except transportation. And transportation was never the issue”? And doesn’t he ask with some justification, “Why pick on the schools instead of the neighborhoods, where the real segregation is maintained”?
But given the realities now, how soon are neighborhoods really going to become desegregated in any significant degree? No time soon! If integration or desegregation is going to proceed any faster than the slowest slug’s pace, is there any other way than by busing in the schools?
And is all this sound and too often raucous rambling much more than academic at this point? Aren’t the courts moving inexorably ahead and shouldn’t we be getting ready, as some communities have, to make school busing for desegregation work? And work well and smoothly?
One of the big questions is how shall we function in the face of the law? If one breaks the law, out of conscience or otherwise, he should be prepared to take the consequences.
I trust there is not a person in this room, or even anyone we know very well, who plans to resort to violence over this issue. I trust there is no one here who wants a repeat in Wilmington of what has happened in Boston, or even in Louisville, though both have calmed down after a tense school opening, and, given last year’s resistance, busing is actually proceeding rather smoothly this year in the nation.
There are some good arguments for busing and for why it is coming. Over the years, increasing numbers of less advantaged people—poorer people, people who had been discriminated against—and very often these people were black people, have realized that their children would never get the tools to make it—to perform well in this society unless they went to schools together with students from families who had more material and verbal and learning advantages—and this meant going to schools blacks and whites together, given the reality of disadvantage having been forced upon blacks historically.
How can we make a society freer from hostility—more open to opportunity—where people can work and earn together more usefully—with greater benefit to society and to themselves—if one group is held back, if one group is disadvantaged, especially if this is done on the basis of race?
No, busing is not the issue. But it came—was ordered—only after years and years of litigation failed to achieve genuine equality in education.
Busing will put more black and white children together, and some of us want that. This doesn’t mean those who are for it are on God’s side, and opponents are not, but why might it not be a very good thing?
The following incident could have happened to a black or a white child but this one was reported in our news from the white side. Numbers of children have reported being curious about their racial opposites, admitting that they have missed something by not knowing more children from different racial backgrounds.
One of them looks back to an experience in third grade. “We had one little black boy in school. His name was Lee and whenever I got near him, I kind of shook. I was scared of him, and I couldn’t figure out why except that he was black. Finally I went up to him and told him I would never get over this until we talked. So we talked and played football and all that kind of stuff and I guess we got to be friends after that.”
Busing will put more of our children together sooner. And why shouldn’t that be a good thing? Without it, many of the best intentioned integrationists, not to mention others, will not really move to make those opportunities possible until they are what people are expected to do—what the neighborhood does, what the law requires, what the school district says must be.
And it will put more parents together, at least make it more possible. Of course we choose our own friends, but that does not have to be racial (yet the past tended to guarantee that such would be the case).
Limited by race, busing is again not the problem. Look how many kids are bussed right now. One is tempted to raise an eyebrow when protests become heavy about the direction in which the bus moves, or that the bus trip will be a little longer, is hardly cause for apoplexy in the Wilmington area. The distances just aren’t that great.
When I started high school my family lived in Virginia Beach, VA. I was bussed more than a dozen miles each way every day out to Oceana, VA to the consolidated High School out there.
Indeed that school was segregated by law in those days down there, but I do not recall the busing as anything but pleasant—a time of visiting and talking, of last minute homework, of watching the landscape change.
Would one be afraid to be bused? Afraid of rough kids in an unfamiliar school? White or black? My high school still had 21 year olds attending it. Kids came from the towns and the farms all around. No segregation of farmers though. Some were tough, really tough. But that had nothing to do with race. Are we afraid the style of teacher and of discipline will be different, more severe perhaps? In my white high school some years ago discipline was a bit more primitive: one teacher would make as if to strike an unruly pupil and when the student put his hands up to ward off the blow, around she would come with the left—blam, right in the temple! Another teacher, a math teacher and coach, would address misbehavior with a barrel plank. The student assumed the position over a barrel to apply punishment to one’s vulnerable dignity.
I don’t recommend that school or a return to something like it, but toughness and harsh punishment and bullying, where it existed then—where it exists now—are not necessarily racial, and they certainly have nothing to do with busing. And things aren’t handled that way anymore, anyways.
Why shouldn’t Wilmington area people decide, and decide now, that we will handle this like say Stockton, California, which has moved into busing for desegregation without trouble? The communities that fight busing to the last minute and continue to fight it are the ones that have the trouble.
Stockton decided it did not want what troubled cities had had. There were early student and parent exchanges. They had contingency plans for the police to move in decisively if needed, but the students at the schools greeted those arriving by bus with banners reading “Welcome Brothers and Sisters.” It went well. It can here.
You know, someone shared with me a local ad from one of our area churches where the minister was going to speak against busing. He said, because families were breaking down—there was infidelity, a breakdown in parental authority, a lack of love for children, divorce, and a lack of respect—busing was going to worsen these things even more.
Well it did not take busing to bring about the things he describes for the bussed future by divination. And, bless Pete, at the end of his advertisement he offered free bus transportation to his church for everybody.
I do not much doubt that Coleman is right when he says desegregation results in white flight, though he now admits his evidence is not conclusive, and that white flight would continue form the cities with or without busing…unless, maybe, schools were to be integrated on a metropolitan basis where flight would not mean escape.
I have no way of knowing, but it strikes me as highly possible, even likely, in the Wilmington case that that will be the ruling: Bus across district lines including suburbs.
I have come to agree, without moral superiority—I’m not sure what that is in this case—to agree because of where we are and what is happening with Michael Putney, who wrote in the National Observer:
“The Supreme Court is going to have to make a choice to either integrate schools on a metropolitan basis or stop doing it, because to continue what we have been doing is merely to convert big cities into all-black cities. The Court is going to have to decide if it really wants integration or whether it doesn’t.”
I want integration so I want metropolitan busing.
I want it for the disadvantaged whom Coleman still maintains benefit from it and their feelings of self-esteem are improved because of it. I want it for my children who I believe can learn from, and benefit from, and be freer from prejudice because of real integration.
But I cannot pontificate about the great moral virtue of this position like some fanatic. Too often the good we espouse is driven to the very evil we oppose because we demand that others accept and live by our definitions of virtue.
I admit to wanting a child to grow up believing in such values as integrity, honesty, achievement, responsibility, family strength, self-discipline, intelligence, fidelity, respect of privacy, rules of safety, a regard for private property, to be a law-abiding citizen. I want by child to live by these values.
Some may say my values are square values. That is all right, by me. I do not and cannot insist that everybody has to hold to these values or even that they are superior to some other list in some other situation or place, but they are values I hold or want to hold. Busing isn’t going to hurt them. Integration isn’t going to diminish them.
I do not see that they would be destroyed by busing or desegregation. If such values are destroyed it will be in our homes, in our relationships, in our churches, and yes, in our schools too, but not because they are interracial schools.
If, for some folks, it is a middle class rigidity that brings them to fear busing, then what is it that makes them think they will escape the challenge of a variety of lifestyles out there in suburbia?
You or I really do not know what our friends or neighbors think about this thing unless they are willing to tell us honestly.
Some of us can’t help listening between the lines when someone says, “I am not a racist, but…” They may not be, but watch to see whether the protesting goes a little deeper.
Or if we hear too many “they” statements—like “they don’t really want to come to our schools,” or “why should we go to their schools”—look out for that.
Of course people are much too sophisticated by now to say, “some of my best friends are black, or Jews, or Catholics, or Chicanos, and so forth; I mean, it is really sad to hear bigotry when a person does not even know he is an obvious bigot.
But don’t chalk it up to being one-sided about busing, whether you're on either side. That is not where it is.
Bigotry detection is something you get—you understand, that is—almost by osmosis—sometimes non-verbally—and it may or may not be related to busing.
So what are we to do? I don’t know. Think! Think it out. Think it through. Think about what you value. What you believe. What you want for yourselves and others. Think and do not get discouraged if your friend or your teacher or your minister or your neighbor hasn’t seen it the way you have.
After all, if nobody got upset about this issue among students, teachers, parents, authorities, then peace would reign despite all the differences of opinion.
And When Big Yellow comes rolling through your neighborhood, however his fate should be decided, try to give him a smile. He may turn out to be the best trip in town.
