Here's the thing about opposing "forced busing"

[StarfishSaver]

"Forced busing" - the pejorative and intentionally inflammatory term for court-ordered desegregation - was actually not the issue during the busing controversies in the 1970s - it was just a convenient and obviously very effective strawman.

Calling court-ordered desegregation "forced busing" is like referring to court-ordered recognition of gay marriage as "forced cake baking."

Millions of schoolchildren were bused every day for decades, often to schools miles away from their homes (even when other schools were closer). The bus was simply the mode of transportation used to take children to school.

The real issue was school reassignments ordered by courts after local school districts refused to comply with the constitutional requirements to stop segregating their schools based on race.

Many districts did this voluntarily. Because they did so on their own, there were no lawsuits, no court litigation and no need for judges to order them to do anything. They just did it.

But many districts refused to desegregate, rebuffed black parents' entreaties to provide equal educational opportunities for their children, dug in their heels, retrenched and said 'hell no." So the black parents had to go to court and sue for their children's civil rights.

The result of many of those suits was the courts ordering the school districts to develop plans to reassign students in order to overcome the long pattern of educational and housing segregation and discrimination that kept black children trapped in segregated, inferior schools.

The school districts and many white parents were furious about this. But most of them weren't upset about the buses since there was no requirement that their kids ever get on a bus to get to school. They were upset about desegregation. Many were also angry that their children might have to attend a previously all-black school they seemed inferior - a clear, if tacit, acknowledgement that black children were being being subjected to conditions that were viewed as unacceptable for white children.

But here's the thing. "Forced busing" i.e., court ordered school desegregation was ONLY "forced" because school officials, with the full support of many white parents, openly defied the law. If they had complied with the law and stopped discriminating against black children, there would have been no need for the courts to step in and "force" them to do anything.

So this distinction between "voluntary" desegregation and so-called "forced" busing is pure bull, nothing but subterfuge and obfuscation of the real issue that was at play.

What we're really talking about is the difference between local government officials obeying the law and local officials breaking the law in order to continue denying constitutional rights to their black citizens. A court order to follow the law isn't "forced" anything and a court isn't out of line or overstepping or "interfering in local matters" when it requires local government officials to obey the law. It's what they're SUPPOSED to do.

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[Hoyt]

2. +1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000!!!!!!!!!!!

The local white controlled governments could have avoided "forced busing" by pursuing other options to ensure schools were desegregated and equal.

[jberryhill]

10. It's been a disappointing and revealing week here at DU

Desegregation in Delaware was the result of a long judicial process in which Delaware officials refused to engage in good faith until the court finally had to impose a solution.

It had nothing to do with the Department of Education or other such nonsense.

It was entirely the result of housing discrimination and open animus toward African Americans.

[BlueWI]

47. No kidding.

The history of segregation ignored in favor of whitesplaining and excuse making.

Fortunately, most of this week's posters are not on the Biden campaign team. For all of our sake, I hope there are tweaks in Biden's messaging to address the head scratchers. We need to win should he become the nominee!

[emulatorloo]

3. Is Senator Harris planning to run on reinstating "forced busing?"

I’ve not seen any statement from her campaign that indicates she is.

[StarfishSaver]

4. That's a silly question not relevant to the issue and not worth answering

[emulatorloo]

7. I'm trying to understand her position on busing in 2019. So it is relevant to the issue.

It’s a discussion board, so people are going to discuss things.

It is also a discussion board where we are civil with one another.

[StarfishSaver]

13. Here's her position as I heard it

Biden opposed busing in the 1970s and she asked him if he thinks he was wrong, noting that this was very personal to her because she was one of the students who benefitted from busing.

He said that he didn't oppose busing, just busing "'court-ordered busing" but he didn't opposed voluntary busing programs like the one she participated in. He said that it was wrong for the federal government to in local decisions on these issues. She pointed out that it there are times when the federal government must step in when local governments fail to protect follow the law and require them to comply, listing the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act as examples.

Based on this, it's clear that she's not in any way suggesting that busing should be used today or that it is even an issue in 2019 - any more than talking about his Iraq War vote would be an effort to argue that we should engage in a war in Iraq today. The issue is whether Biden is willing to reconsider his position on state's rights and whether he still believes that the federal government shouldn't ever step in and require local governments to protect people's rights when local governments refuse to do so.

[emulatorloo]

14. Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I appreciate it.

[StarfishSaver]

21. No problem

And I apologise for assuming you were being disingenuous.

[Celerity]

34. great post

[wyldwolf]

26. How's this?

Forced busing was an unmitigated disaster.
No one in their right mind would make it part of their platform.

But Democrats are supposed to believe it was good policy.

Biden didn’t. Sanders didn’t. I’ll bet if someone digs hard enough they’ll find a Warren quote against it.

But once “progressives” start handwringing, it’s hard for them to stop.

[crimycarny]

40. African Americans didn't support forced busing either

Amen. At the time that Joe Biden was against forced busing, so were 91% of African Americans and 96% of whites.

[StarfishSaver]

44. One of the reasons support for busing dropped among black parents

was that the terrorism targeted toward their children worked.

[wyldwolf]

56. Fascinating. You have stats on that?

Perhaps a link that shows a nationwide effect of alleged "terrorism?"

[Jake Stern]

55. Here in Denver forced busing was a big part of white flight to the 'burbs

So much so that the number of white students in DPS dropped dramatically.

A good thing to come from forced busing here in Colorado: the Poundstone Amendment which blocked Denver from annexing more land.

[RHMerriman]

52. Sure sounds like it...

Sounds like it...

See:

[link:https://twitter.com/jeneps|]

Bloomberg reporter says the senator thinks busing (unclear if court-ordered mandatory, or voluntary, or whatever) is just what the 2020 Presidential Campaign needs...

"...busing is one of the methods by which we create desegregation and we need to make it more."

Seems like that escalated quickly ... I can just see the GOP take on this one:

From "Joe, you didn't support busing back in the 70s, when I was 6, even though my Mom and Dad were both Phd.s and could have afforded to send me to the best public school in Madison, Wisconsin, where my Dad was a full-time tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin," to "the U.S. needs to reinstitute federal, court-ordered mandatory busing today."

Donald Trump thanks you, Senator Harris. Perhaps he'll invite you to the inauguration...

[asiliveandbreathe]

5. Great post...we have come a long way..and a long way to go...in Boston currently...

https://metcoinc.org/

[delisen]

6. Thanks for the facts and rational analysis.

[jberryhill]

8. Thank you

I am surprised at how many here on DU casually fling about the “forced busing” phrase to refer to desegregation.

Next up “anti life” to refer to “pro choice”.

“Forced busing” is one of those phrases that, at least in my lifetime, instantly identifies a mouth-breathing right winger.

[wasupaloopa]

15. What reference point do you have to say that?

Where you around during the bussing period.

My guess you are one of those who think their opinion is actually reciting history even you were not there.

I was there.There were parents both white and black did not want their kids bussed miles away from where they lived. There reason had nothing to do with integration. They were forced against their will to have their kids bussed.

[jberryhill]

17. Hah!

That’s funny coming from an anonymous poster.

I grew up in Delaware - where Joe Biden lived in an exclusive neighborhood where black folks could not buy, and he went to an all white private school and then graduated in 1965 from UofD which didn’t admit black students until 1971. His family was quite well off in Delaware, where his father ran a successful auto dealership, in contrast to his constant “hard times” Scranton stories.

I was in high school in 1979 when Evans v. Buchanan, which began in 1971, was finally implemented in New Castle County. And I know damned well what my racist classmates and their racist families were upset about when the “n—— wagons” arrived. I can recall classmates of mine attempting to organize a walkout to protest the desegregation decision when it was handed down.

And those racist assholes consistently used “forced busing” for “desegregation”.

I’ve written several posts here about the circumstances relevant to what was going on in Delaware when Biden was running for re-election for the first time in 1978. The county school districts were drawn around groups of white neighborhoods which were kept that way by the real estate industry and the banks.

To join, say, a pool club, the membership committee would visit the applicants’ family at home to make sure they were the “right kind of people”. It was deeply entrenched into the patterns of life here in Joe Biden’s Delaware.

You are the second anonymous nobody this week to offer nothing but a snide and incorrect personal comment when you have ZERO clue what the circumstances relevant to Joe Biden’s history on school desegregation actually are.

[wasupaloopa]

20. This was not about Biden. The OP states that the

issue was not bussing but integration. And that there was no forced bussing.

You are anonymous too

[jberryhill]

22. Wtf are you talking about?

First, I post under my real name. Find another lawyer in the US named J. Berryhill. I’ll wait.

Secondly, what happened in Delaware, which I lived through and about which you have an obviously determined and thorough factual and legal ignorance, was the case of Evans v. Buchanan. That case addressed what is called “de facto segregation” mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Addressing decades of racial discrimination in the housing market in northern Delaware, Evans v Buchanan resulted in the dissolution of the racially gerrymandered school districts and a consolidation of the county schools - along with transportation of students among them - to achieve desegregation.

You have no idea what you are talking about and your bizarre and incorrect personal insinuations are a bad match to your ignorance.

[BlueWI]

48. Thanks for the post!

I appreciate the deeper dive into the culture and geography of Delaware, an unintentional and positive consequence of the post-debate discussion.

[StarfishSaver]

23. There was no "forced busing"

No child was ever forced to ride was anywhere.

What was "forced" were school assignments to facilitate integration and only because the school districts refused to desegregate voluntarily.

[cwydro]

57. Semantics. I was bused.

I no longer could walk or ride my bike to my nearby school. There were buses provided for all of us who were “reassigned.”

Sure, I wasn’t “forced” to get on that bus; my parents could take me, we could carpool or whatever. But I sure couldn’t ride my bike or walk anymore. Such nonsense.

We were taken from our neighborhood schools, instructed what bus would take us to our new schools, and off we went. No one liked it. Black or white. I remember my black classmates being even more angry than we were. But we ALL hated it.

There was no “terrorism” directed at black children. Not in my city. Boston, a NORTHERN city, had vastly different outcomes.

Busing was an unmitigated disaster. The schools in my city are more segregated than ever now, and unfuckingbelievably the powers that be are discussing trying it again.

It was an awfu experience. The horridness of that experience had zip-all to do with the colors of the children's skins. A fucking fail of a nightmare.

[Delarage]

27. Born and still live in Delaware

Maybe I was younger, but busing started for me when I was in 4th grade. Instead of walking to a school near my working-class neighborhood, I spent 30+ minutes on I-95 to go to a school in Wilmington for 4-6 grade. Then I walked to the middle school near my house.

My only complaints were that it was super-inconvenient and limited my mom's ability to be involved in my school. And a waste of time and gas. Maybe the city school I attended was grossly underfunded until busing started...that I am not sure of. If that's the case, maybe it was worth it. Just seems like they could have fixed that another way.

I posted elsewhere about the opposition to busing from black and white communities...for many of the reasons I experienced. I'll link below....

You make Biden sound like an elitist racist, which doesn't seem to match up with his life and record.

[link:https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/matthew-albright/2019/06/28/desegregation-isnt-just-joe-bidens-problem-its-delawares-too/1593174001/|

[jberryhill]

31. What does that have to do with the districts before then?

Yes, I saw your earlier post, and it’s pretty clear that as a fourth grader in either Robscott Manor or Devon Park you probably weren’t aware that there were virtually no black students at schools like AI, Brandywine, Dickinson, and Mckean, which were set up to feed from white neighborhoods built in the early 60’s in which black families could not buy homes.

Your point seems to be that because you found it inconvenient to ride a bus in fourth grade, that New Castle County should have maintained racially segregated schools, because you seem oblivious to the fact that we had them.

And, yeah, growing up in Alapocas and going to Archmere like Biden did is a very different life from yours.

And no, Biden is not a racist. Like many white people in New Castle County, he lived a life in which black people did not exist. That’s not racism. It’s merely the consequences of the way things used to be here.

[Delarage]

33. OK

My point is that it would have been better to focus on racially segregated neighborhoods instead of shipping people all over the county. Our country does a horrible job at mixed-income housing, income inequality, etc...maybe focusing on those would get to the root of the problem.

And assuming that I was saying NCC "should have maintained racially segregated schools" is insulting, to say the least. I'm also aware that they existed....but I was giving my opinion as a 9-year old. And my opinion now is to fix income inequality and the wealth gap. And, as mayor Baker and others pointed out in their opposition to busing, it made it difficult for parents.

I never claimed to know everything about the issue, I was just sharing why I and many others (black and white) thought there had to be a better way. Biden can't help when he was born---but his efforts in office indicate to me that he's a good guy fighting for progressives.

It would be interesting to hear what various candidates say about Delaware's schools now, since they have basically resegregated. I know a lot of teachers, and most say that the public schools--urban and suburban--are struggling due to behavioral problems primarily. They say that's why charter schools (some of which also appear to be segregated) are drawing students away.

But I firmly believe that fixing the wealth gap and income inequality, along with mixed income housing, if closed, would cure all kinds of ills.

[jberryhill]

35. Okay so...

The bottom line is that you were fine with racially segregated schools.

Saying “fix the neighborhoods” is kind of silly when those neighborhoods are also the tax base that funds the schools. So, how many generations of basically status quo racial segregation is okay with you?

Here’s a great “Delaware pre deseg” question. Did your family belong to a swim club when you were growing up?

[Delarage]

39. OMG

I can't believe I'm arguing with a lawyer....this may be no-win for me (which, BTW, is why I like Harris and think a Biden-Harris ticket...or Harris-Biden ticket would be good...they could rip Trump to shreds in a debate). But here goes...and I am really open to enlightenment....

Doesn't a tax base increase when neighborhoods are fixed up? And by "fixing up," I'm sure you're familiar with the condition of some neighborhoods in Wilmington. The areas that led to a TV show called "Murder Town" almost being made. Knock down the dilapidated buildings, repair the streets/infrastructure, plant some trees, open some desperately-needed community centers, send more money to the schools that deal with the behavioral/emotional/educational needs of people exposed to all the shootings/chronic poverty in the city.

Wilmington schools are currently resegregated and there's talk of making a Wilmington School District, instead of having it split up. What do you think of that?

I really don't know the answer. Again, I'm just saying that busing didn't fix it and maybe working on the neighborhoods would've been a better use of those years.

I really am open to ideas about what's wrong with Delaware schools. You might say it's racial segregation. Teachers that I know say it's behavior. I think it's neighborhood segregation (racial & income) and the wealth gap. The wealth gap is really my focus for most issues, though. Fix it and we have health care for everyone, cleaner air/water, better schools, etc.

[StarfishSaver]

41. They tried also to fix racially segregated neighborhoods, but than can't be done overnight

It takes years, if not decades, to change housing patterns. In the meantime, the children suffer the results of segregated neighborhood schools.

[Delarage]

46. Still not done

Well, the kids in Wilmington schools are still suffering to this day...but can, via a "choice" process, attend any other school. Most people don't want to be far from home, so they stay. I don't have pre- and post-data about the racial makeup of the city, but it doesn't seem to have changed much, either. What is the answer?

And to answer your previous question/comments, my family would have loved to live in the neighborhoods you listed (to compare to Biden) and no, we did not belong to a swim club--LOL. We were in pretty bad shape. I lived across the street from a prostitute and biker gang members lived a couple houses up from her--and killed my pet dog.

I'm open to other answers about fixing Wilmington schools. I don't think busing fixed the problem and I don't think racism in the schools is the problem now. I think the problem comes from the impoverished neighborhoods, crime, stress, etc. which make, to a small but significant number, education fall down the list of priorities. The kids most traumatized by it all disrupt the kids who are trying to learn. And I'm not victim-blaming. We need to do more for the kids who are traumatized, while at the same time minimizing disruption in the schools and protecting the majority of the kids in the school who really are trying to learn. This takes significant money. Once again, I think focusing on the sources of the trauma will be more impactful than sitting next to a white kid 7 hours a day.

*** and we can argue about this all day, but, come November 2020, I'm voting for whatever candidate has a "D" next to their name. Harris, Biden, Mayor Pete, the author lady, whoever. Good discussion, though.

[TomSlick]

11. You are correct.

However, "forced busing" was also necessary to counter de facto segregation. To integrate larger school districts, it was necessary to bus white students from white neighborhoods while busing black students from black neighborhoods. That's why VP Biden's distinction about de jure segregation is a dodge. If students, white and black, had not been bused out of their neighborhoods, there could have been no integration.

Voluntary busing could never have been the answer. White families would not voluntarily bus their children to black neighborhood schools. The result would have been that a very few black children would be bused to white schools - until all the slots were filed - the remaining black children would have languished in substandard overwhelmingly black schools.

After decades of "red-lining" and other means of keeping people of color out of white neighborhoods, if students went to the schools in their neighborhoods, they would be in de facto segregated schools. Forced busing was largely unpopular among people of color. It was wildly unpopular among white people. However, there was no other way to integrate the schools.

People like VP Biden and I who lived through the times know the history. VP Biden owes it to us now to explain why he opposed "forced busing" to integrate the schools.

[jberryhill]

19. That was precisely the situation in Delaware

[GulfCoast66]

50. Tell that to an 8 year old me. And my parents.

Walk to my local school 10 minutes away. Then put on a bus and shipped half an hour away to a school where I had no friends, was totally alienated and was set back 3 years academically. Not from the quality of teaching, but from feeling totally disconnected from my environment. 45 years later and that year still pisses me off. And it wasn’t the black kids in class. I was born in 66. Always had integrated schools and was sheltered as a young child should be and never knew at the time schools had been segregated.

The one thing proponents of bussing never addressed , who were well intentioned I’ll admit, was the effect on the young children.

Forced bussing was an unmitigated disaster. It hurt children. Black and white. And in my town it destroyed the black neighborhood schools since more of them were bussed to meet the quotas.

Bussing where I lived took children as young as 6 and shipped them to a school across the city to a place where they had no friends, no family and were alone. Moms(and there were no dads walking kids to school then) would walk their kid to school. But rather than being met by their neighborhood friends and going to class got shoved on a bus and sent to a strange place.

That was the reality. Not some high minded goals you have read about. I know. I went through it. No way in hell will I ever support that bullshit. We can clean up our mess without harming innocent children.

[StarfishSaver]

53. But remember - busing didn't do this. It was just the transportation

You were reassigned to a different school farther from your home as part of a xcourt-ordered desegregation plan. The court ordered it only after your school district refused or failed to come up with a voluntary plan to integrate the schools that it had kept segregated for decades.

Busing was just the transportation provided to you to help you get to your new school. The busing wasn't forced - it was purely optional. It was the desegregation plan that was mandated.

But "forced integration" didn't quite have the ring that "forced busing did" and certainly didn't trigger the same deada and hostility. So instead of calling it what it actually was - court-ordered desegregation - it became "forced busing" another race-baiting, fear-mongering tool we can thank Lee Atwater for.

[wasupaloopa]

12. How old were you and where were you during this time

History is seldom written by those who lived it but becomes what the majority believes it is.

[jberryhill]

18. Are personal attacks all you have?

I suspect your real name is not “wasupaloopa”.

[TomSlick]

45. I was born in 1957 - the year of Brown v. Board - and lived in a small town in Arkansas.

When I was eight - in a prime example of "all deliberate speed" - the schools started integrating when I was in the third grade. It was easy in a small town, the combined school systems spread the student body between the buildings of what had been the two segregated systems.

I lived the experience of busing by watching it on the nightly news. Busing as a means to achieve integration was still big news when I was in high school in the 1970s. No one like busing kids. There was simply no other alternative.

[hlthe2b]

16. Good piece, but I have to correct the statement: "But most of them weren't upset about the buses

since there was no requirement that their (white) kids ever get on a bus to get to school.

Not true. While we relocated at least 4 times from elementary to high school in three states of the Deep South during my youth, (including time also spent overseas), I was "forcibly" bused as were both white children in my neighborhoods and black children further away, to schools seeking to equalize the most segregated schools in the district. In only one of those experiences did we encounter the kind of ugliness experienced elsewhere across the country though clearly there would have been some "white flight" masking some of the discord. Given African Americans were frequently bused from very long distances, their parents were not always happy either. Those kids were the ones I felt for as there genuinely were both unwelcoming (but also surprisingly positive) responses to their arrival. Kids can be intensely mean and they DO project the attitudes and fears of their parents.

My sister and I never minded--we'd been raised children of very progressive (for the time) parents who had already given us the tremendous gift of getting to live overseas among children of all kinds of cultures, races, and ethnicities. As a result, I think my parents tamped down some concern from white parents in the neighborhoods that felt at least initially quite differently. For that, I am intensely proud of them looking back.

[StarfishSaver]

24. I didn't say "all" - I said "most"

These are not the faces of parents worried about their children riding the bus long distances to school or worried about their safety once there. If they were so worried, why weren't they driving their kids to school, organizing car pools or riding with them on the city bus to make sure they were ok rather than forming mobs in their own neighborhoods to terrorize black children trying to peacably attend school in their community?



And the primary reason support by black parentsfor busing dropped was not that they thought busing was inherently bad but because they were terrified for the lives of their children who were threatened and attacked by white mobs who didn't want them going to school with their kids.

[hlthe2b]

25. I'm glad you recognize that

but, I quoted you accurately: "But most of them weren't upset about the buses since there was no requirement that their kids ever get on a bus to get to school."

The "most" in your sentence construction refers to them not being upset about buses, not necessarily to the phenomenon of "required" or "forced" busing or whatever you wish to term it.

There is sufficient lack of understanding of the issues, the times, and the many variations of what was happening across the country during that time, that I felt the need to correct the misimpressions, whether intentional or not. I think given the understandable emotion surrounding this discussion, that those of us who lived through it have to be as precise and accurate as possible.

[loyalsister]

28. Exactly

To concede the local control argument is to accept excuses from segregationists who claimed no good could possibly be achieved through desegregation.

The anger directed toward someone who represents people who did benefit is disturbing.

[ucrdem]

29. Busing and desegregation are not the same thing.

Desegregation is a mandated goal of the Civil Rights Act; busing is one available remedy. The terms are not identical.

p.s. here's a copy of the 1964 CRA, which does not include the word busing (or bussing):

https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=97&page=transcript

[StarfishSaver]

30. They aren't synonymous. But they too often are used inteechangeably

or more accurately, desegregation is rarely referenced at all while "forced busing" is used as a catchall phrase to describe virtually all court-ordered desegregation.

And, FYI - while it could be said that desegregation "is a mandated goal of the Civil Rights Act," there's more going on here. School desegregation was ordered by the federal courts, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, based, not on the Civil Rights Act, but on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in public accommodations, including schools, codified the 14th Amendment and these cases.

[ucrdem]

32. If you're going to talk about a policy, get the terms straight.

You want to suggest Biden opposed desegregation. He didn't. And if Harris is confused about this she should return to law school. She isn't and what she did on Thursday was beneath her.

[jberryhill]

36. Yes he did, because that's what the court ordered in Delaware

Biden was opposed to the court-ordered remedy in the Delaware desegregation case of Evans v Buchanan. Period.

[ucrdem]

37. Busing is *a* remedy, and a highly imperfect one.

And opposition to busing is not opposition to desegregation. Far from it. And it's misleading and unhelpful to suggest or claim that it is, with or without the cameras rolling.

[jberryhill]

38. It was the one ordered by the court in Delaware

You completely fail to understand that suburban Delaware was intentionally developed along racially segregated lines.

Brown v Board was I the mid 50’s. AFTER that, white people realized they couldn’t keep overtly segregated schools. So, in the late 50’s and early 60’s housing boom in this area, the school districts and their feeder patterns were intentionally gerrymandered to keep black people out of white areas, and to make sure the white school districts this had better funding.

You can play whatever rhetorical games you want, but where I lived, just a few miles from Wilmington, black people did not exist - not in the neighborhoods and certainly not in the schools.

ONLY busing changed that. If you have some other method of transporting students among what were intentionally segregated schools located according to the intentionally segregated neighborhoods, then let’s hear it.

[StarfishSaver]

42. Let's also not forget the role that federal transportation policy had on all of this

The building of the highways, roads and bridges straight through black communities was not accidental - much of it was intentionally designed after Brown to cut off and isolate black communities from white areas, making it more difficult for blacks to travel in and out of their neighborhoods and to create barriers that hemmed in "neighborhood schools."

Given the federal government's complicity in educational and housing segregation, it's both laughable and appalling to hear people who should know better insist that the federal government should play no role on remedying the damage it helped to cause.

[jberryhill]

43. Correct again

And also directly relevant to the Wilmington, Delaware experience.

They literally dug a trench right through Wilmington to put in I-95.

Later, of course, every one of those cities needed to be fitted with a 4– beltway because of the initial poor design.

[BlueWI]

49. Well said.

Good reminders of the policies that left segregation intact and intractable.

[dawg day]

51. Thank you re: "forced cake-baking"

What the resistant school districts opposed wasn't "busing". Most of them already bused children here and there, and certainly had been busing black children PAST schools to segregate them. What they resisted was integration. They would have resisted that if there was some magic transporter that whisked children to school.
Busing was just a means to integrate. When it worked, and yes, it worked a lot, it led not just to integration of schools but also integration of districts as families moved closer to their kids' schools. In my own town, in the 1970s, a black family moved into one neighborhood and left when a cross was burned on their lawn. Thirty years later, as the high school became integrated, that very resistant neighborhood now has several non-white families, and there's not much conflict... because everyone's kids go to school together.

Of course, now most of the districts have consolidated high schools == not for integration but just to save money-- and all the students are bused. Almost no one goes to a 'neighborhood school' because they don't exist here. Instead there are big schools with a whole lot of students and a whole lot of courses and activities. It's a mixed blessing, certainly. But this nostalgia for "neighborhood schools" is sort of out of touch with the realities of geography these days.

[StarfishSaver]

54. Thank you

I particularly love this: "They would have resisted that if there was some magic transporter that whisked children to school" because it's so true

[Delarage]

58. Question

If a family moved closer to their kids' school (that they were bused to), then their kids would've been bused back to their old school (?). And who had the means to pick up and move because their kid's school changed for a couple years? Not us.

If there was mass movement and neighborhood integration, maybe it was worth it.

There's a school in my neighborhood now and it's my understanding that about half of the kids walk to it. Some take a bus b/c they'd have to cross nearby highways. Some are dropped off in cars. Not many (if any) take a 30-minute ride.

Opposition to busing does not equal opposition to integration, racism, etc.

At least in my case. Unless it really worked as you say, but I just know moving is a big deal and my family couldn't have moved even if they wanted to be closer to my school for 3 years (and if I wouldn't have been bused back to the suburbs). More important to us was proximity to the Chrysler plant, since my father walked to work there.