Here's the thing about opposing "forced busing" [View all]

[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.