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At the time of court-ordered "desegregation busing", the busing was not ordered because schools had a policy of segregation. They were ordered because the school demographics reflected the racial makeup of neighborhoods, and it was felt that the "mixing" of students in classrooms needed to be more balanced than the mixing of the neighborhoods.
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka already struck down public school segregation. Swan v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education supported the use of busing within a school district to remedy the issue of racial imbalance (aka segregation) between schools within the same school district.
Point of fact - in Detroit and surrounding suburbs there were restrictive racial covenants in residential property deeds that were used to prohibit blacks from moving into white neighborhoods. Blacks were pretty much resigned to living in black-only neighborhoods in Detroit - Black Bottom, Conant Gardens, Russel Woods and Elmwood Park. Even when blacks were able to move into working class white neighborhoods, they met either violent resistance or the neighborhood experienced white flight. For more on this, see Detroit and the Great Migration
While racial covenants were outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1948 (Shelley v Kraemer), real estate brokers still practiced racial steering in which potential home buyers were steered towards a neighborhood and away from others based on their race or ethnicity. There are still claims that racial steering is being practiced, see Century 21 Town and Country v The Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR - Formal Charge of Unlawful Discrimination Issued Against Century 21 Town & Country).
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There was absolutely no policy in place at the time that enforced any kind of segregation, except that kids were sent to school within the district of their own residence.
The Detroit Public School District encompasses all of Detroit. The Pontiac Public School District encompasses nearly all of Pontiac. The school boards set up schools within neighborhoods and drew boundaries for those schools. If you were in a black neighborhood, then you went to a black school. If you were in a white neighborhood, then you went to a white school. In either case, you still went to a Detroit or Pontiac public school - de facto segregation.
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There was, in most cities, no de jure segregation of neighbohoods.
There was de jure segregation up to 1948 (again, see Shelley v Kraemer) and de facto segregation afterwords; the reason for court-ordered busing in the 1970's was due to the de facto segregation that existed within school districts at the time.
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The disproportionate distribution of black and white families was a result of historical traditions, and black families were not required to live in any neighborhoods or any school attendance district. Black families were free to move into neighborhoods in which the schools were predominately white, but they simply had not voluntarily done so yet, and as a result, some school were still mostly black, and busing was enforced to redress this imbalance.
See above regarding racial deed convenants and racial steering.
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At the time of busing, there was no "enforced segregation" of schools, neighborhoods, or anything else. In northern cities, blacks has been free, legally, for decades to move into any neighborhood of their choice. Segregation was de facto, a detail of historical inertia, not a de jure fact regulated by legislative or judicial will that could be undone by desegregation law.
It's a moot point whether the segregation was de jure or de facto - it was still segregation. Regarding the 'freedom' of blacks to move into any neighborhood, again I refer to the links posted previously.
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There is absolutely nothing "factually wrong" with my statement that "Schools in the northern states were integrated well before the 1950s." In every northern state, for decades, every single child was perfectly free to attend the school designated for the place of his family's residence, and every family was, legally, free to live in the district of any school. No child was every denied enrollment in any school on the basis of his color alone. Nor was any law on the books that would constrain any family from living in any school attendance disrict on the basis of their color alone.
You've stated that "Schools in northern states were integrated". I've shown that school segregation did indeed exist in places like Detroit and Pontiac. Your statement is factually wrong.
As to children being denied enrollment in any school - if the school board drew school boundaries based on racial composition of the neighborhoods and the children were required to attend schools within those boundaries, then they were being denied enrollment in any school based on color alone.
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That was NOT true in southern states, where desegregation had not occurred. And there is nothing in your link to the contrary. It is a misnomer to call it "desegreation busing" because there was no segregation to be desegretated.
Racism and segregation were alive and well in both northern and southern cities in the 1970's. The local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan even fire-bombed the Pontiac buses in order to prevent school segregation.
No more so than if the courts had ordered students in Detroit and Montana to be flown to each other's schools. Black families were not forced to live in Detroit school districts, instead of Montana school districts---that's just where they happened to be, and they were free to move on their own, for their own reasons.
Seriously, do you really think that this statement has any basis in reality?
. . . to remedy the issue of racial imbalance (aka segregation) . . .
Don't be absurd. There is racial imbalance in the National Basketball Association and in the National Hockey League. Show me where that qualifies as "aka segregation". There is racial imbalance everywhere in the USA except in a birthday party in a McDonald's commercial with kids sent over by central casting. That doesn't make it "aka segregation". In the city I live in, there are more blacks living in the south end of town than the north end. Do you need judges to come in here and bust up our "aka segregation" by forcing white people to have their Sunday picnics in south-end parks?
That is such an outrageous preamble, there is no point in even continuing to read on to whatever you try to get at from there. You have no clue what we are talking about when we say "segregation".
I grew up in a northern state and went to college in the south in the 1950s. Go ahead, tell me again how they were both segregated the same. I must have missed something.
The biggest difference in de-jure (i.e. Jim Crow laws) segregation in the South and de-facto in the North is that the former were just less hypocritical about it.
The biggest difference in de-jure (i.e. Jim Crow laws) segregation in the South and de-facto in the North is that the former were just less hypocritical about it.
Being open about your racial prejudices rather than clandestine...that makes the former a virtue?
Being open about your racial prejudices rather than clandestine...that makes the former a virtue?
Who said it was a virtue, necessarily, either way? Those are your words only.
I said the South was less hypocritical about their (our) brand of segregation. One was open about it, the other tried to hide it and gave themselves airs, later, about it.
I am sure you have probably seen the series "Eyes On the Prize"? The first three segments were devoted to the Civil Rights Movement in the South, the next three (Part II) were when it moved up North. It is not my analysis of the differences, but from veterans like Andrew Young, for instance...who said that he was never so scared for his safety in the South as he was in the northern states. And is there any doubt that the worst racial incidents, in terms of large numbers, were in places like Pontiac, Michigan and South Boston?
Here is a good link (and excerpt) on the history of some of what is being discussed:
In Democracy in America, Toqueville wrote that "the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known." Toqueville found that in the North, if laws did not discriminate against blacks in virtually every area of their existence, "popular prejudices" did.
Who said it was a virtue, necessarily, either way? Those are your words only.
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These were your words:
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that the former were just less hypocritical about it.
Are you not arguing that less hypocrisy is better than more? Without making it into virtue, you still appear to be making a moral judgment in favor of those who are more open about their racial hatreds. Is that not the case? Would it not follow that you are arguing that a society which pretends that it is tolerant, but isn't very tolerant in relaity, suffers in your esteem compared to a society which makes no pretense about such matters?
My thinking is that if I was in the position of being in that non tolerated group, while finding both distatsteful, I would still think of myself of having better chances for self advancement in the society which feels compelled to pretend...there one might find lopholes to exploit, there one might make such a favorable contribution, that some of the others decide to overlook my minority status. In the society where I am openly codified as inferior, such opportunities would not exist at all.
Yep, those are my words. And I provided a link which seems to illustrate the point, right?
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Are you not arguing that less hypocrisy is better than more? Without making it into virtue, you still appear to be making a moral judgment in favor of those who are more open about their racial hatreds. Is that not the case? Would it not follow that you are arguing that a society which pretends that it is tolerant, but isn't very tolerant in relaity, suffers in your esteem compared to a society which makes no pretense about such matters?
What moral judgement? I don't presume myself capable of making a moral judgement (historically speaking) of another era and those who lived in them. Can/do you?
Are you not arguing that more hypocricy is better than less?
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My thinking is that if I was in the position of being in that non tolerated group, while finding both distatsteful, I would still think of myself of having better chances for self advancement in the society which feels compelled to pretend...there one might find lopholes to exploit, there one might make such a favorable contribution, that some of the others decide to overlook my minority status. In the society where I am openly codified as inferior, such opportunities would not exist at all.
As a note in passing, kinda interesting, don't you think, that there is another "Great Migration" back into the Southern states?
Regardless, read the link again. Openly classified as inferior by de-jure laws were just a less hypocritical way of expressing the same done by de-facto "laws". There was the old saying, in the South it didn't make any difference how close you got, just don't get to high. In the North, it was don't make any difference how high you get, just don't get too close. Which was preferable? And again, why are so many blacks moving back to the South?
Yes, you have a certain, limited, point, about the self-advancement aspect...but the general conditions and treatment was no better -- in fact, in many ways, much worse, in the North than in the South. One aspect is that, in lots of cases, blacks were so shunned they were relegated to where they could and couldn't live. At least in the South (during that Great Migration era), being still a mostly rural region, blacks at least had the opportunity to own land and have some freedom of control.
Was any of this paradise? Hell, no it wasn't. My objection is that the North was some land of milk and honey and the South was a netherworld. Which is, in spite of all contrary evidence, how many supercilious northerners would like to present it...
My objection is that the North was some land of milk and honey and the South was a netherworld. Which is, in spite of all contrary evidence, how many supercilious northerners would like to present it...
Then, should any supercilious northerners ever show up on this board and come at us with false portrayals of milk and honey integration, we know that we have a champion ready to sally forth into the fray and smite their bogus propaganda.
Apart from that danger, however remote, I think that this is a situation where one may construct an absolute moral hierarchy and rank the sections by weight of offensiveness.
If asked to rank the following situations for relative morality:
1) People doing the right thing for the right reasons
2) People doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
3) People pretending to do the right thing, but secretly sabotaging it when they think they can get away with it
4) People doing the wrong thing due to misguided intentions for good.
4) People doing the wrong thing but with explanatory rationalizations
5) People doing the wrong selfishly and not caring at all that it is the wrong thing.
So, first, would you not agree that those precepts are already ranked in the order in which they would be placed if voted upon in a random poll of Americans?
Now, consider collecting all of the Northern attitudes, behaviors and thoughts from the Jim Crow era and spreading them across a graph of the above moral rankings. Then do the same for a collection of Southern attitudes, behaviors and thoughts.
What would the graph look like? It would look like the North was a more moral place than the South, at least in terms of how it was treating African Americans. It certainly wouldn't look like a milk and honey racial paradise in the North, but it would look better than the picture which emerges from the South.
And it would be shocking if it looked any other way because the South was still the place where most of the African Americans were. Had the population of freed slaves been distributed equally among all the states, I do not doubt that Southern and Northern moral graphs would have been hard to distinguish. It has always been easier to be moral in theory than in fact.
I said the South was less hypocritical about their (our) brand of segregation. One was open about it, the other tried to hide it and gave themselves airs, later, about it.
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In other words, the South openly blocked blacks from using restrooms and water fountains and public facilties, which was a virtuous display of candid honestly. While the north covertly allowed blacks to use public facilities, which was a malicious pattern of self-serving posturing.
Then, should any supercilious northerners ever show up on this board and come at us with false portrayals of milk and honey integration, we know that we have a champion ready to sally forth into the fray and smite their bogus propaganda.
Apart from that danger, however remote, I think that this is a situation where one may construct an absolute moral hierarchy and rank the sections by weight of offensiveness.
If asked to rank the following situations for relative morality:
1) People doing the right thing for the right reasons
2) People doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
3) People pretending to do the right thing, but secretly sabotaging it when they think they can get away with it
4) People doing the wrong thing due to misguided intentions for good.
4) People doing the wrong thing but with explanatory rationalizations
5) People doing the wrong selfishly and not caring at all that it is the wrong thing.
So, first, would you not agree that those precepts are already ranked in the order in which they would be placed if voted upon in a random poll of Americans?
Now, consider collecting all of the Northern attitudes, behaviors and thoughts from the Jim Crow era and spreading them across a graph of the above moral rankings. Then do the same for a collection of Southern attitudes, behaviors and thoughts.
What would the graph look like? It would look like the North was a more moral place than the South, at least in terms of how it was treating African Americans. It certainly wouldn't look like a milk and honey racial paradise in the North, but it would look better than the picture which emerges from the South.
And it would be shocking if it looked any other way because the South was still the place where most of the African Americans were. Had the population of freed slaves been distributed equally among all the states, I do not doubt that Southern and Northern moral graphs would have been hard to distinguish. It has always been easier to be moral in theory than in fact.
I think the problem with the morality graph is that number 3 basically becomes number 4, 5 or 6 after they pretend to do the right thing. The north certainly "talked the talked", but they certainly didn't "walk the walk" when it came to integration and race relations. From the development of the Levittown's among other early suburbs that expressly forbid African Americans from living in them, to the concept of "blockbusting", to the drawing of school district boundaries, etc.
Much of this is driven by what you correctly determined to be the differences in African American population in the North vs. the South that was turned upside down during the First and Second Great Migration. The thing to remember though is that it was also a rural to urban migration and the urban centers had always been identified along ethnic lines. So, when African Americans moved north they moved into cities and claimed sections of those cities as their own. The changes were often rapid and there was extensive discimination and even violence against African Americans.
When the Second Migration started the general response in many areas was a move to the suburbs that in many cases were exclusively white. This left the African American population as "hyper urban" as they were largely the only groups left in the city. This reinforced what had long been known in the North that there was a "racial divide".
In the late 1800's it was easy for northerners to talk about race relations and integration. Take Chicago for example, in 1900 there were 1.7 million people living there, with about 50,000 or so being African American who were largely concentrated in the South Side. By 1920 the city added 1 million residents, of which 200,000 were African American. By 1960 that number had grown to 850,000, completely changing the cities demographics. In the span of 60 years the city went from barely 3% African American to over 29% African American and the story was similar across urban centers in the north and midwest.
I don't think either "system" was right, but I don't think the north held some moral highground over the south on the issue of race relations. If anything, I think the south has actually ended up a more racially integrated place than the north where the "racial divide" still holds true in many areas and is one of the driving forces behind the current migration of African Americans back to the south.
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