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After 40 years I think it's safe to say that this social experiment was an abject failure. It did absolutely nothing to lift education standards in poor schools, nor did it help race relations at all. In fact, thanks to forced busing, cities experienced white flight which only made the schools more segregated and poorer than ever before.
With inequality still being an issue in education today, what can we do now that we know that forced integration/busing is not the answer?
Busing was yet another liberal "feel good" measure to show that white people could and should co-exist with black people in the same classroom. It was NEVER about educational attainment. And it NEVER did produce educational "equality."
After 40 years I think it's safe to say that this social experiment was an abject failure. It did absolutely nothing to lift education standards in poor schools, nor did it help race relations at all.
It did do something - the ugly faces of those white Boston crowds, like Bull Connor's dogs and firehoses, made a huge impression on a lot of younger Americans, and turned us into life-long anti-racist activists.
Whites and blacks (and other groups) can certainly coexist and learn in the same schools and classrooms but the problem arises when people confuse race with class.
Putting middle-class whites in classes with middle-class blacks would be (and still is) a non-event.
But putting undereducated, poverty-stricken, generationally poor blacks in the same classes as middle-class suburban whites will create a lot of problems. And this would happen regardless of the races involved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC
It was NEVER about educational attainment.
No it wasn't. It was a failed social experiment like Prohibition.
Whenever the government tries to fix something that ain't broke they invariably make it much worse.
Funny, just this week my kids and I were discussing my experience with busing in Memphis in the mid 1980s. My middle school age children were able to see the immediate flaws- lower participation in after school activities, less parental involvement, people could just move, waste of gas, etc. It's amazing that 12 and 13 year old children immediately recognize what some federal judges did not.
Here's a great article about how busing destroyed Memphis Public schools:
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By 1974, more than 30,000 students had left the Memphis public schools, and Memphis had the largest private-school system in the country. Busing was a life-changing and city-transforming experience. The people who remember the early 1970s — black and white, parent and student, teacher and administrator — still say that.
"The average American couple who are raising their children scrape and save money to buy a home in a nice residential neighborhood near a public school," he wrote. "One can imagine their frustration when they find their plans have been destroyed by the judgment of federal courts. . . . The burden of eliminating all the ills of society should not be placed on public school systems and innocent school children."
What was lost in the process, more than anything else, was something best described as "connectedness," for want of a better word. Connectedness is the difference between a geographic area and a neighborhood, between school attendance and school spirit, and between a group of people and a caring community. Memphis still hurts for connectedness, and busing is partly to blame.
School busing plus the housing voucher program of the 1990s-2000s are two liberal programs that have destroyed much of the fabric of Memphis.
My mom went to public school with some black people in the 1960s, but there were still separate drinking fountains, which is so hard for me to imagine. I still don't grasp how people can think they are better because of their skin color. I started K at public school in the 1980s and my school was a mix of kids of all races. When they started busing kids from my school across town, many people fled. My parents cashed in their retirement to send me to private school. Not because of race, the school I would have attended was actually more white, but because they didn't want their 7 year old on a bus for 1.5 hours a day. We eventually moved to the suburbs.
By the time I was in high school, many Memphis schools were once again segregated. Most of them were almost 100% black. All that disruption to end up with an even more segregated system.
Whites and blacks (and other groups) can certainly coexist and learn in the same schools and classrooms but the problem arises when people confuse race with class.
Putting middle-class whites in classes with middle-class blacks would be (and still is) a non-event.
But putting undereducated, poverty-stricken, generationally poor blacks in the same classes as middle-class suburban whites will create a lot of problems. And this would happen regardless of the races involved.
No it wasn't. It was a failed social experiment like Prohibition.
Whenever the government tries to fix something that ain't broke they invariably make it much worse.
The only way to eliminate the division, and the need for people to see others who don't look like them as "the other" is through education.
Teaching anthropology in school beginning in kindergarten would be the easiest way to address the outmoded concept of "race", and cause humans to see each other as biologically and genetically on even ground. There is no superiority with regard to "racial classification" because classifying humans by "race" is false.
Socio-economics, is the leading cause of division and strife among people.
Class division (which could also be attached to culture) is another.
Eliminate "race", then you have to focus on what really divides and unifies Americans and that's socio-economics.
Beginning in the late 90's Boston began to experience an increase in the white population.
Yes, the white population has increased in Boston since their initial white flight in the 70s. However white children make up only 13% of Boston's public school population. In the 70s it was closer to 50%. So again we see how forced busing had the exact opposite reaction of its intended purpose, and set the groundwork for public schools to become more segregated than ever before.
Today, Latinos account for 42 percent of the public school population; blacks account for 35 percent and Asians 8 percent. Whites make up about 47 percent of the city population but only 13 percent of the public school population.
Yes, the white population has increased in Boston since their initial white flight in the 70s. However white children make up only 13% of Boston's public school population. In the 70s it was closer to 50%. So again we see how forced busing had the exact opposite reaction of its intended purpose, and set the groundwork for public schools to become more segregated than ever before.
Today, Latinos account for 42 percent of the public school population; blacks account for 35 percent and Asians 8 percent. Whites make up about 47 percent of the city population but only 13 percent of the public school population.
Exactly. And Memphis schools are less than 7% white. More than 90% of black students in Memphis attend schools that are 99-100% minority and 90+% economically disadvantaged.
Busing (and the housing voucher program) ran out the not only whites, but also middle and upper class black families.
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