Talk:Desegregation busing

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The use of the term "Forced busing" was certainly not unique to, or most likely even initiated by the Boston area. The material here, however, seems to be of good quality, so this article should be re-written in a more general viewpoint, with the Boston case used as a good example. -- Kaszeta 19:03, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I am from Richmond, Virginia, and was directly involved as a school employee. Perhaps busing had some worthy goals, but a lot of damaging side effects occurred here. Vaoverland 05:40, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Good edits. I'll try to add some material regarding my own experiences with Delaware. -- Kaszeta 23:06, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Redirect

The spelling mistake "bussing" redirects here. It should redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busing


[edit] Thoughts From Richmond 33 years since we tried it

I have tried to bring a bit more information and balance to the article. I believe the points to be made are:

1. In the past, it was OK practice for the school districts to assign students for racial segregation purposes and use buses to accomplish the transportation required.

2. Under a plan to desegregate, it should therefore be an equally acceptable practice to assign students to accomplish desegregation purposes and and use buses to deliver them to assigned schools.

3. A problem in making that transition is that more pupils will be riding longer distances to schools unfamiliar to them. Some school of the school are perceived as being located in dangerous and high crime parts of the community.

4. When the assigned school is far away, logistical problems arise with regards to after school activities, PTA meetings, retrieving a sick child from school, and so forth arise with distant assignments.

5. an Elementary pairing strategy would take home school X on one side of town and home school Y on the other side of town. We are assuming each would have about the same enrollment of K-5 grades. When they are paired, all the K-2 from both X and Y attendance zones will to school X and all the grades 3-5 from X and Y will go Y. Assuming that the children live reasonably near their home school, about 50% of their 6 elementary years, they will be cross-bused.

PROBLEM: Say Family Smith has children in grades 1 and 4. Normally, they would expect the 9 year old 4th grader to look after her younger 6 year old sister, especially going to and from school. The pairing plan prevents this from happening. Extra attention from the district to the special needs of younger children in transit may offset this somewhat.

Some thoughts...more to follow Commemnts, anyone?

This is a good statement of some of the major issues. Indeed, that's much the experience I remember from my early childhood in Delaware, except that #1 wasn't a huge issue---the schools were segregated since the neighborhoods were de facto segregated (and hence the school funding became segregated as well). As a result, busing caused a *lot* of school kids got bused around long distances (Newark, DE suburbs <-> Inner City Wilmington) since typically K-3 were in schools in the suburbs, paired with 4-6 at inner city schools. Results were as you mentioned: extracurricular activities suffered, and it was difficult to get any parental involvement for half of the elementary years. Much student and family resentment over the often excessive bussing, too. On the flip side, it did do much of what it was designed to do, which was to get the inner city students out of the delapidated inner city schools for half their elementary years, while simultaneously getting some suburbs to care about the decay of the inner city schools. -- Kaszeta 03:25, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Present situation

The article is very, very fuzzy about the present state of busing. It uses the present-tense to refer to busing in San Fransisco, even though this paragraph is in a section called "Historical examples" and the next section is called "Elimination and aftermath"; doesn't busing still exist in some areas, particularly in the South? I don't know much about this, but this article could definitely use a rewrite for clarity on the present situation. --LostLeviathan 07:34, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on busing outside Cleveland (and I know a little about Chicago). When I found the article it was it tatters and I did the best I could to make it more readable. To be honest, I don't know where busing is still used or where it isn't. We need someone who knows a lot/is willing to research it. DirectorStratton 20:16, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use of term "forced busing" and Proposal to Move

In Massachusetts cities, at least, "forced busing" was a political shibboleth used by anti-integration activists. Would "busing" be better? "Forced busing" also primarily used by the more aggressively racist protesters in the city and their elected advocates. - User:MMZach

In Cleveland, busing was the accepted term, and satisfies NPOV. I support the move. DirectorStratton 20:24, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Support the move, for reasons stated by MMZach and DirectorStratton. JamesMLane 12:41, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

"Busing" seems vague to me, but I agree that "Forced Busing" can have POV connotations. In Wilmington, Delaware, "forced busing" or "busing" were the standard terminology by most folks, but if having a formal debate on it this term was considered "loaded", and the more complete term "busing to achieve racial integration" was favored. Perhaps a more elaborate title? -- Kaszeta 01:19, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I do not support the move since the busing was court ordered, police enforced, and against the will of many parents who had children in the Boston school system the name "forced busing" is accurate. It certainly wasn't voluntary. And since most Boston parents (black and white) who could afford to send their children to private schools shows that it was never accepted.

To refer to as just "busing" equates it with the use of school buses in rural and suburban areas. Irish Hermit 18:31, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Try to remember that this article doesn't only pertain to Boston; it is true that in most areas the move wasn't supported by many of the people. The key question is what was busing officially known as, ie. in newspapers, TV reports, etc. If these and other official outlines called it forced busing this might be a valid argument. In Cleveland such sources used "busing" as the term, I admit that I do not know what is was officially called in other cities. If there is another article in the future with the name busing a disambiguation such as busing_(desegregation) can be added. DirectorStratton 22:20, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
"Busing_(desegration)" sounds good to me, with some mention of what names it went by in different areas. I agree with IrishHermit, in that "forced busing" isn't inaccurate (hey, we didn't have a choice in Wilmington, either), but "Busing_(desegregation)" is definitely NPOV and descriptive. -- Kaszeta 01:22, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
General convention (I don't know if this is codified somewhere) is that if an article's title is unique, it doesn't use an xxxx_(xxxx) name, that is only for instances where two topics share the same name. In this case, there is nothing else named "busing" so busing_(desegregation) ian't needed or used. I listed that as a counterpoint to Irish Hermit's argument that "To refer to as just "busing" equates it with the use of school buses in rural and suburban areas." Since there ins't an article on busing in rural and suburban areas, "busing" is still a valid title. Does this make sense? DirectorStratton 01:29, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
Eventually there will be an article on busing as the normal practice in large districts, where many of the pupils live beyond walking radius of their school. I would prefer to move this article to busing (desegregation) now, and write a stub of the other article, as a place-holder, Since this section appears to have become the general move discussion, I will change its title. If anyone is offended by this, please change it back. Septentrionalis 16:36, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Actually, School bus has a pretty decent background on this. I'd recommend moving Busing to point to School bus (it currently points here), since it has a good overview of the process, and make sure the material in School bus that points here is appropriate. -- Kaszeta 18:56, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with much of the above. Forced busing is accurate, but a bit icky, while busing seems too general and more aligned with the contents of school bus than with this. How about yet another option? I would suggest moving this to desegregation busing and having busing redirect to school bus. That seems to incorporate the best of Kaszeta's two suggestions and avoids DirectorStratton's objection. Actually, it might even be appropriate to make busing into a disambig for school bus and this. Dragons flight 20:08, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Support as long as busing/school bus is given a disambig to here. DirectorStratton 22:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
Sounds good to me, too? Anyone else?? -- Kaszeta 22:55, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Hearing no objections, I have moved the page and set up a disambig at busing. People might want to go through and look at the usages of "forced busing" still in the article to see if they are reflective of a neutral tone. Dragons flight 00:34, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Desegregation Busing is an Orwellian euphemism

The term reminds me of how the death of civilians in an aerial bombing is called "collateral damage." Read Politics and the English Language and Orwell's essay

No, it's worse than that. The term is a neologism and is therefore in violation of Wikipedia standards (see WP:NEO). The choice must be made between Busing or Forced Busing. The latter, while POV, is a) the term actually used to describe it by many, and b) more descriptive than the ambiguous "busing." Xuanwu 02:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I was directly involved in the Richmond case, and can attest that the term dates to at least before the 1971-72 school year. The term is proper and more descriptive than "busing". I thought we resolved the most NPOV name for this article 2 years ago. BTW, not all the participants in many busing plans were "forced". Many (but certainly not all) had choices. Vaoverland 05:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wilmington

I think that it's not true that Wilmington integrated due to Brown. I seem to remember that a few months before Brown, the Delaware Chancery Court ruled against segregated schools. I'll have to look up the decision and make any necessary changes.

[edit] Article Focus

I appreciate the improvements and changes to the article, but I think it is important to keep in mind that this article is on desegregation busing and not desegregation. Some sentences in this article are being slowly twisted to general arguments for/against desegregation rather than the act of busing to improve desegregation. DirectorStratton 05:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] outrageous article

incredibly biased article. too many ignorant comments to mention. i grew up white in a inner-city boston neighborhood.we had very diverse neighbors (black, hispanic, various white ethnic groups and one of the largest jewish communities in the world a few miles away.)forced busing was and is a DISASTER. it did not make the schools better or provide a better education to working class and poor blacks,whites,asians, or hispanics. boston public schools today are far more segregated than when forced busing started. the white student population, once you hit high school age, is almost non-existent. no one in their right mind, whatever their race or ethnicity, willing sends their children to a boston public high school (with the exception of the city's excellent exam schools)if they care about them. if you want to see a truly pathetic sight, go to the west roxbury neighborhood of the city, which still has a majority white population, and watch the ENDLESS stream of yellow buses carrying black students from the mostly black neighborhood, being bused to the almost ALL-BLACK west roxbury high school.

even today i'm still furious at the way the mostly left-wing so-called intellectuals demonize and continue to demonize working-class white people. i remember well how these people (from the safe and secure lily-white suburbs and wealthy private prep schools) ridiculed those "evil" and "racist" white people in the city of boston (a place ironically FAR more diverse than it's suburbs.) finally, there is rarely mentioned the incredible violence that occurred, especially if it involved black on white. i personally witnessed totally innocent white (and hispanic)kids and adults have the snot beat out of them by gangs of black kids and adults. my brother had the misfortune of coming home one day on a city bus by himself when a large group of black kids got on and proceeded to beat him senseless. he showed up at our front door looking like a bucket of red paint had been poured over his head. i was jumped at least a dozen times and it was ALWAYS racially motivated. it was routine for major cross-town streets to be closed off in the warm weather because gangs of black kids and adults would target cars with white occupents, drag them out and beat them. these things were under-reported or not reported at all, but i can assure they occurred, and were wide-spread and the norm.

anyone who thinks the white flight (or more acurately middle-class flight) wasn't greatly excelerated by forced busing is delusional. many folks were soo desperate to get out they literally abandoned their homes. what was once a cool,diverse,thriving neighborhood was turned into a dangerous,decayed,depressing ghetto within a matter of a few short years.today,it's considered by some people to be a great example of big city diversity, with an especially large lesbian population, but it's a pale reflection of what it once was; it has never really recovered from the horrific turmoil of that period, which still lingers today. and there are many folks of that generation, white and black, myself among them, who were unfortunate enough to have been used as guinea pigs in an arrogant social experiment (implemented by powerful,privilaged people who wouldn't dare subject their children to the same thing) who still suffer from the psychological and physical abuse they endured.

the hypocrisy of the liberal white middle-class and upper-class so-called intellectual elite, who control so much in america, knows no bounds.

  • I mostly agree with above. I included the example of busing in Prince George's County because it shows that busing was not just and urban school district phenominon. The only thing that busing accomplished in Prince George's was turning a mostly white suburban county into a mostly black county. Test scores, parental involvement, school sports all were significantly hampered. I am a recent graduate of the school system, and experienced the end of the busing order. I was lucky enough to go to high school that was located in my boundary area. But kids in parts of the county were bussed to a school 25 miles away!

The will of the people was completely denied in Prince George's. The people of the county voted in a school board that was compliant with all laws, but some federal judge who didn't live in the county imposed his will upon the people of the county with some illogical social experiment that by ALL accounts failed MISERABLY.

Now the people in the county are left to pick up the pieces and put things back together. We have to repair the damage from a program that was un-needed, un-wanted, and universally damaging. The hypocritical thing about is was that it was ruled unconstitutional to have inter-district busing. Segregation doesn't stop a school district lines. School busing was one of the darkest mass experiements that was ever conducted in our democracy.--Findpeace 00:43, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

I believe that statements which imply that opponents of busing were racist are biased, inaccurate, and unfair. While the court system and the media largely viewed this issue as a racial one, for many families it was an economic and practical issue.

Every responsible and capable parent of every race who can avoid sending their children to a bad school should do so. The "racism" issue should be addressed in a direct and neutral manner rather than allowing this article to be a platform for exposing closet racists and their diabolical coded language.

[edit] This article is biased

I've added a paragraph to counter the overwhelming bias in this article. It largely presents one side--that of busing's proponents--and belittles those who present the flaws. (The repeated reference to "no empirical evidence" that busing encouraged white flight, "no empirical evidence" that busing created stresses for parents and schoolchildren, is pure sophistry.) There must be more balance here, as (1) busing has been ended in one community after another since the 1990s, often with the blessing of African American parents who want to return to the community spirit of neighborhood schools, and (2) public school systems from Savannah to Charlotte to Richmond have become minority school systems due to one thing: radical busing plans to achieve a mathematical racial balance.Mason.Jones 23:14, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Many Modifications

Please be patient while reviewing my changes. This issue is obviously a touchy subject for many but I believe a few things can be agreed on...

  • Busing is understood to be a failed program
  • The opponents are not necessarily racists
  • The proponents are not necessarily zealots/leftists/whatever

When I found this article it implied that the resistance to busing was secretly racist. That's unacceptable. I removed bias where I saw it in the main part of the article and expanded the "Criticisms" section to cover the major criticisms of busing. I believe that somebody should jump in and offer some sort of "Arguments For Busing." I'm not the ideal person to create that section. I hope everybody finds my modifications to be an improvement. --68.188.177.73 21:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

A point that seems understated is the impact on children. I remember stories of kids having to endure hour long (sometimes more) bus rides to and from school when their closest school was only 5-10 minutes away. Such long rides are damaging to a child's capacity to learn, since it means they had to get up early in the morning and came home later at night. This hurt every student affected by busing, regardless of race. Xuanwu 02:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needs more rework

Just about every reference to "Metropolian area" (and similar phrases) in this article should be changed to city. Much of white flight was moving out of the city (or school district) to the suburban areas of the metro area (and the counties adjoining which in turn resulted in the metros land area increasing.) Jon 22:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kansas City

I added information about the KCMSD busing program. It really went far beyond just busing at attempting integration, although full details would be off topic in this article, so maybe it should be linked elsewhere (or have its own page for that matter). I didn't have much time, so I kept the addition short. I added an external link to a very good (although probably not so NPOV) analysis from the CATO Institute. There are some good facts there that could be added.--Kagato 06:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Social engineering

A miserable example of a particularly unAmerican era in America. Some ivory tower intellectual theorized that racism could be eradicated if we just forced black and white kids go to school together. Never mind that their freedom is being stamped out or that their education is being ruined. One comment I heard from a busing supporter was that it failed because it didn't go far enough: the court should have forced people to live together too. Ie, take a family out of their house and make them live where the court wanted them to. Unbelievable. Why not force people to marry who the court wanted them to? Why not tear children from their parents and force them to live with another family picked by the court? All in the name of fighting racism.

What actually happened was bad enough. Right at the time when Europe and particularly Japan were kicking our asses competitively, esp. in children's education, the ivory tower types unleashed their massive social experiment on the public schools, creating a huge distraction away from basic education at the worst time. Instead of concentrating on improving reading and math, which was the real need to help our children compete for good jobs, educators and administrators put their energy into transforming the schools into social engineering and social service agencies. No wonder America now has to import huge numbers of engineers and scientists from abroad.

[edit] Ted Landsmark

This piece says that Landsmark, who was attacked by participants in an anti-busing rally in Boston City Hall Plaza, was an attorney. I believe that he was (and is) an architect. Anyone know for sure? The article also says that an American flag was used as a lance in the attack. While it looked that way from a famous photograph, J Anthony Lukas' Common Ground says that the flagpole was actually swung at him like a bat. This is more consistent with his injuries--he suffered a broken nose, not a sstab wound.

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