The Public Policy

...White parents have engaged in several demonstrations which, while perfectly legitimate in themselves, have usually featured much demagogic, inflammatory speechmaking from decidedly unstatesmanlike Boston politicos who seem determined to exploit the disruptive aspects of the current situation for whatever political profit can be obtained...

...One could argue endlessly over whether the white community or the black community or the judge or someone else bears major responsibility for Boston's problems—there is ample support for all positions...

...no one can say for sure...

...The evidence, however, will no longer permit us to treat this facile answer, no matter how well meaning, as a sufficient response...

...And aside from these more obvious examples of disruption of the educational process, one may well speculate on the negative impact that the tensions of this year have had on the learning progress of even those who have missed not a single day of classes...

...they cannot be shunted aside as simply the "price of progress...

...As this is written, state patrolmen have yet to receive checks for extra work done two months ago, and state government must somehow come up with these additional funds even as it grapples with an overall deficit some four times higher than initial projections...

...See New York Times, May 22, 1974, p.18...

...A May 21, 1974 referendum yielded large majorities against busing among citizens of both races, the overall ratio of opposition being 15 to 1; subsequent surveys reveal similar results...

...For example, both the city and state have spent literally millions of dollars in regular and overtime pay for police officers needed to hold down violence throughout the year...

...This is a perfectly unexceptionable little homily as far as it goes, but it has clearly had little impact in reversing the general trend toward greater racial discord...

...Of course, the standard reply of the busing advocate is that while initial difficulties are to be expected, everything will soon smoothe over and we will all be better off...

...Additional effects of busing in Boston—perhaps less drastic but serious nonetheless—are not hard to find...

...Overall attendance figures reveal remarkably high, and remarkably persistent, levels of absenteeism—the average for the year being around 25 percent...

...In short, busing, rather than generating serious inquiry into how best to deal with Boston's educational or racial problems, has promoted instead a destructive, unseemly, and often vituperative exchange that serves only to intensify those problems...

...In particular, the Massachusetts capital seems characterized by a higher degree of what is popularly known as "ethnic consciousness" than most large urban centers—a factor which has undoubtedly exacerbated some of its present difficulties...

...Particular incidents of violence and the overall increase in the level of personal danger for the average Boston public school student are, of course, only part of the story of magnified racial tensions...

...As I attempted to demonstrate in my earlier column, there are strong indications that busing will do little to advance either educational achievement or social harmony...

...The most extreme example of the latter phenomenon was a much ballyhooed "March Against Racism," notable mainly for bringing together on historic Boston Commons a group of grizzled veterans of the student demonstrations of the 1960s for a little Sunday afternoon excoriating of the city's blue-collar community...

...While increased racial conflict is the most obvious and dramatic by-product of Boston's experiment in forced busing, the impact on the educational effectiveness of the public schools has also been pronounced...

...July 8, 1974, p.22...

...indeed, for a period of some weeks the situation was sufficiently serious for the governor to mobilize the national guard...

...The major themes of that article were first, that what evidence is available suggests that the racial composition of an elementary or secondary school has very little effect on the performance of black schoolchildren...

...The article also intimated that forced busing would involve sufficient practical difficulties in an urban community to call into question its efficacy as a governmental policy even if it did offer some educational or societal benefits...

...On a more general plane, sizable segmentsof the community have become polarized into loosely organized groups over the busing issue, and have engaged in a months-long "dialogue" that reflects little credit to either side...

...But I doubt seriously that Boston is really so much more "racist" or "ethnic" or "violent" or "unstable" or whatever than other cities that its experiences can be dismissed as completely atypical...

...In the past year, Bostonians have been treated to the spectacle of white students stoning buses carrying black schoolchildren, black students knifing whites in high school corridors, a white mob dragging a black man from his automobile and proceeding to mug him in broad daylight, a number of teenage-gang type altercations between young people of both races, and numerous confrontations, at times bloody in nature, between citizens of all colors and the police...

...More evidence could be placed on the record, but I think the point is clear: busing in Boston is fairly described as a complete mess...

...As one may gather, the conclusion was that we would be well-advised to reject busing as a preferred instrument of social change...

...Whatever the motives, however, the result is the same—large numbers of students have simply missed most of an entire year of schooling...

...They cannot be blithely dismissed as mere "initial difficulties...

...While the Supreme Court has held in the Detroit case that racial balance does not demand busing between separate school systems, within systems busing remains a featured player in the continuing saga of "The Federal Court as School Board...

...Similarly, some schools have been closed for weeks at a time because authorities justly doubted their ability to control potential outbreaks of violence within the student body...

...Even now, daily pat-down searches of students for weapons are de rigueur at a number of locations...

...They involve instead educational and social disruption on a scale that few other governmental interferences can hope to match...

...Indeed, the closest thing to responsible public comment on the issue has been a series of media editorials built around the platitudinous theme of "Now that busing is here, why don't we all forget our personal differences on the issue and pull together to make it work...

...Many would contend, for example, that the Boston School Committee has deliberately promoted segregation in its drawing of school districts and its selection of building sites for new school construction...

...Judge Garrity, on the other hand, has selected the most disruptive means of ending segregation available, despite consistent indications that Boston, black and white, is overwhelmingly opposed to forced busing...

...The presence of police units has become commonplace at several area high schools...

...Accordingly, having witnessed the events of the past few months in the Hub at fairly close range, I thought itmight be worthwhile to return to my former topic—focusing this time not on the efficacy of busing as a vehicle for educational or social progress, but rather, using the case of Boston, on busing as a catalyst for community disruption...

...second, that racial tensions in the United States are rooted less in "misunderstandings" than in cultural differences unlikely to be alleviated by thrusting blacks and whites together in the classroom...

...Specific incidents reflecting this development abound...

...What Boston should teach us is that whatever the ultimate benefits of forced racial balance, the costs of implementing that policy are serious...

...Indeed, Mayor Kevin White has even felt compelled to request the district court to permanently close South Boston High School, alma mater of any number of local public figures, and an important community symbol to much of working-class Boston...

...In terms of public policy, the point is simply this: if we choose to institute forced busing in our major urban areas (as apparently we have), we may confidently expect to experience the serious social and educational difficulties Boston is encountering today...

...and third, that busing as a response to de facto (as opposed to de jure) segregation thus provided at most only some superficial emotional satisfaction to those who naively contend that state-enforced juggling of black-white pupil ratios will somehow "solve" America's racial problems...

...indeed, on several occasions events connected (at times peripherally) with the implementation of forced busing have been deemed of sufficient import by the media to warrant national coverage...

...And on a more academic and legalistic plane, those who take seriouslysuch abstract principles as the separation of judicial and legislative powers in the American constitutional system might properly be disturbed by Judge Garrity's recent direction to the Boston School Committee to vote favorably, under penalty of contempt, on particular desegregation proposals...

...One wonders how many more Bostons must occur before the federal judiciary follows suit...

...For Boston, it has been a notoriously unpleasant year...

...Perhaps Boston is a severe case...

...By and large, the federal judiciary is no more impressed by the points I attempted to articulate in my effort for the December 1973 issue than they have ever been...

...To a large degree, however, such questions are irrelevant...

...to date, the haul has amounted to literally hundreds of knives (regular and switchblade), razors, and other portable implements of destruction, including the occasional small firearm...

...The most immediately striking feature of that experience has been that busing, which is ultimately supposed to lead to greater racial harmony and social cohesiveness, has rather significantly enhanced the level of racial tension in the Boston area...

...Recently, the New York State Board of Regents has decided that given that disruption, "racial balance" as a separate goal of educational policy isn't worth the candle...

...As a consequence, students at those schools, particularly seniors interested in college, now face the prospect of six-day weeks through the summer if they are to complete minimum requirements...

...Nevertheless, the Boston example seems sufficiently illustrative of the kinds of problems one can expect from implementation of forced busing to warrant recounting the experience...

...Meanwhile, the neighborhood school comcept, long important to the many ethnic communities of Boston, is falling victim to the dictates of court-ordered racial balance...

...On the other hand, many advocates of the busing program have yielded all too readily to the obvious temptation of labeling their entire opposition as "racist...

...In part these figures reflect organized boycotts, mainly by whites, and in part they reflect less political (and probably more legitimate) parental concerns about the safety of their children in the prevailing atmosphere...

...Of course, as is true of every individual example, Boston contains unique features which must stand as a' caveat to overbroad generalization...

...One of the more notable episodes in this drama is currently taking place in Boston, which for the entire 1974-75 school year has been struggling under the impact of a court-ordered desegregation plan involving extensive employment of cross-district busing (issued by the Honorable W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts...