The Public Policy
Meyerson, Adam
by Adam Meyerson The Public Policy Busing: Musings on a Peculiar Institution The overwhelming majority of Americans object to busing schoolchildren for racial integration. According to a Gallup...
...In Goldsboro, North Carolina and a few other small communities, desegregation has proceeded peacefully and harmoniously, but in most cities, racial tension in the schools has increased as a result of busing—often to the point of violence...
...It seems ridiculous to press for busing in the Detroit school system, as the NAACP has done, when only 28 % of the system's students are white, and when a third of the white parents have indicated they would take their children out of the system if busing were ordered...
...The crime rate has soared, even during periods of high employment and affluence, even during recessions...
...Since the students leaving the public schools tend to come from better-off families which can afford to move to the suburbs or to pay parochial and private school tuition, school busing is increasingly coming to mean the integration of poor whites with poor blacks...
...The ugly violence which has flared recently in Boston and Louisville has been nourished by all these fears and resentments, as well as by good old-fashioned hooliganism, none of which is primarily racial...
...Consider, for example, the probability that busing has driven many whites out of big-city public schools and has therefore been self-defeating...
...If an overwhelming majority opposes a series of court decisions, its elected representatives can always amend the Constitution, and perhaps in time—it will take time—they will do so...
...Enterprising Americans are taking advantage of the opportunities this field affords...
...If busing clearly led to higher achievement for black schoolchildren or to greater racial harmony, there might be a very good case for it in terms of its effect on "hearts and minds...
...In all fairness to the NAACP, it is important to point out that many of the defects of busing arise through no fault of its proponents...
...These are fundamentally in-egalitarian conditions, and it is both sad and ironic that they should result from a policy like busing which has such egalitarian motivations...
...The campaign for school busing—with its symbolic connection to earlier, much more important, desegregation efforts or, say, to Rosa Parks' refusal to sit at the back of the bus —offers a chance to continue the great crusade, even if it leads to few practicalbenefits...
...and the opposition cuts across all regions, all ages, all levels of education, both sexes, and both political parties...
...They can issue rulings only when plaintiffs have filed charges, and without the willingness of organizations to spend enormous time and energy in litigation, the courts would presumably be unable to order any busing...
...The courts, then, have their own reasons for continuing to impose a policy which most people dislike and which doesn't seem to work...
...The times have changed, to be sure—in good measure because of prior NAACP achievements—and the connections often seem forced...
...Yet courts throughout the nation continue to hand down orders for school busing...
...Busing was supposed to raise educational achievement for black children...
...EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) fifty serious crimes...
...Finally, busing was supposed to be part of a larger racial policy which would help remove the stigma attached to skin color, to take away from_ Negro schoolchildren what Earl Warren described so well in Brown v. Board of Education as "a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone...
...How can this be...
...What would happen if the NAACP were to insist not on busing, which is only tangentially (if at all) related to educational quality, but on achievement of eighth-grade reading levels by the time of graduation...
...But in the overwhelming majority of school desegregation suits, the major proponent of busing has been the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which, together with its legal arm, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, has long been one of the world's most distinguished civil rights organizations...
...Not necessarily...
...Nothing can rally an organization around a policy better than proof of its opponents' wickedness, and insofar as the reaction to ing evokes memories of old villains, we can expect the NAACP to persevere in its crusade...
...The local school is an important strand in the social fabric of many urban neighborhoods, and however much the term "neighborhood school" has been abused by racist demagogues, there are good reasons why people fear the disruption of their communities by busing...
...And here we arrive at still another oddity...
...To a large degree because the NAACP has succeeded in past efforts, the major problems facing black Americans are no longer discrimination and prejudice...
...It is too early to predict its long-term effect on racial harmony, but in the short term it has brought about quite the reverse...
...A number of commentators have pointed out that, as a result of its successful efforts to eliminate dual school systems and Jim Crow laws, to pass civil rights legislation which has greatly reduced most racial discrimination, to help bring about a remarkable diminution of white racial prejudice, and even to impress upon government the need for compensatory programs to benefit blacks, the NAACP is in the awkward organizational position of having achieved most of its traditional goals, and therefore of not knowing quite what to do with itself...
...The goal of metropolitan busing might be justly criticized for its coercive implications, but insofar as "white flight" is a defect of busing, the answer lies, as the NAACP recognizes, with more busing rather than with less...
...Crime is a field with vast opportunities for the young men or women who really want to get ahead, and it is apparent that they are flocking to it...
...instead, they are problems of education, employment, crime, welfare dependency, and so on...
...Let us eschew the pap about his repressed creativity or individuality or any of the other nonsense about his sophisticated qualities, and let us get to the real injustice...
...In the last two years, 17,000 white students have left the Boston public school system, chiefly to avoid busing and the disruption which has attended it—a dramatic illustration of what is happening on a lesser scale all over the country...
...Does all this mean that busing is here to stay, even though it is unpopular, counterproductive, and inegalitarian...
...The American criminal is one of the most profit-minded members of his community...
...So long as the Court continues to uphold the principle of local control [with some qualifications] of school districts as well as the right to attend private schools, there will be opportunities for "white flight...
...Boston and Louisville will soon give way in the headlines to Indianapolis and Wilmington...
...while there is greater integration within school districts, there are much greater racial discrepancies between school districts, and the "white flight" from big-city schools is in part a reaction to orders for busing...
...But whatever violence results from busing, especially violence accompanied by suggestions of race prejudice, conjures up images of Little Rock and Selma, and therefore strengthens the connections in the minds of the crusaders...
...In addition, it is easy to see how some of the problems which have convinced most people of the futility or undesirability of busing can also serve to confirm its proponents' belief in the need for busing...
...Ironically, the logic of Constitutional interpretation, which leads to continued reliance on busing, also limits the effectiveness of busing as a means of integration...
...So let us forget all of this tomfoolery about the romantic character of the criminal...
...It just was...
...Doubtless there are good Constitutional reasons for going ahead with policies that are unpopular, counterproductive, and inegalitarian, and it must be said in the courts' defense that everywhere they have ordered busing they have found evidence of unconstitutional de jure segregation...
...There is no evidence that these criminals are significantly different from individuals in any other walk of life, a point convincingly made by Ernest van den Haag in his excellent book Punishing Criminals...
...But except for isolated instances where arithmetic test scores have risen slightly for blacks, there is no solid evidence that busing has had either any beneficial or any detrimental impact on achievement, black or white (see Nancy St...
...Moreover, many communities exercise a kind of informal control over their local schools—both directly and through their influence on elected school boards—and much of the resentment of court-ordered busing comes, I suspect, from a vague feeling that the courts have usurped this control...
...Busing is certainly the law of the law now, but the Supreme Court has reversed itself in the past—and might do so again...
...In the late 36 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1976 1960s, when fashionable opinion glorified black violence and separatism, the NAACP bravely continued to insist on peace, on law, and on integration—even though it must have seemed that no one was listening to its arguments...
...But to the extent that there has been some racial violence—and what with all the "Nigger Go Home" signs, no one can deny that there has—the proponents of busing are confirmed in their commitment to its continuance...
...In the absence of such obvious benefits, however, the assignment of pupils to schools according to race perpetuates the very racial stigma that proponents of desegregation hoped to eliminate...
...The NAACP has pressed even harder, however, for extensive busing between Detroit and its suburbs, which would presumably reduce "white flight" by making it more difficult to escape integration, but the Supreme Court, in Milliken v. Bradley, refused to order such busing...
...Busing was supposed to help bring about racial harmony...
...The tax bite is the lowest of all professions, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration makes no demands nor does the Consumer Products Safety Commission...
...Meanwhile, the courts are subject to another constraint: for all their judicial activism and their legislative pretensions, the courts are in one sense passive institutions...
...The Constitutional amendment process is long and tiresome, and would be especially divisive on an issue like this, but several Congressmen and Senators have begun to think seriously of working for amendments...
...And yet present busing policies seem to lead to great socioeconomic segregation...
...Now I do not intend to delve into the arcana of the court decisions which are directly responsible for most of our present busing...
...Many parents fear, not without justification, that busing will bring increased crime and tension to their children's schools, and perhaps poorer education...
...No miracles—there are limits to what schools can do—but such an insistence might easily do more for black schoolchildren than any elaborate busing plans...
...Since the courts operate in an elaborate system of checks and balances, however, these Constitutional reasons cannot alone explain why busing continues to prosper...
...civil rights lawyers justify their insistence on present busing in such symbolic terms, by pointing out, e.g., that twenty-five years ago black children were bused out of their neighborhoods to segregated schools...
...The evidence which they have found does not always seem to warrant the remedies which they have prescribed—one wonders, for example, how the existence fifteen years ago of an unconstitutionally segregated school system in Charlotte/Mecklenburg County, North Carolina violates the Constitutional rights of black children in Charlotte today, or how, given the absence of any educational benefits, that violation is redressed by an expensive and time-consuming cross-county busing plan— -but Constitutional law unfolds in its own peculiar way, and, however arrogant and destructive they may appear, most court busing orders follow logically from their judicial precedents...
...This is certainly the case with the violence and hostility which the policy has often provoked...
...According to a Gallup Poll taken in late 1974, 80 % of our countrymen-83% of the whites and 54% of the blacks—are opposed to such busing...
...Both the 1966 Coleman Report and subsequent evaluations of its findings have shown that whatever modest gains could be expected from school integration would come more from integration of socioeconomic classes than from racial integration per se...
...But in the North, as James Coleman and others have demonstrated, separation of the races has increased...
...In some busing decisions, for instance the case of Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky, state agencies have brought suit against the school systems...
...The oddity of busing increases when one considers its failure to achieve the goals for which it was designed...
...America, are you listening...
...It is significant that it was the Burger Court, not the Warren Court, which unanimously mandated the crazy-quilt Charlotte busing plan in Swann v. Mecklenburg...
...Disregarding the majority will is sometimes a mark of statesmanship, of course, but it is odd that at a time when so much homage is paid to the ideal of responsive rather than statesmanlike government, a policy should prevail which is so clearly unpopular...
...Our continuing reliance on busing grows even more peculiar when considered in a class context...
...Perhaps too the NAACP will change its focus...
...This is bigotry, pristine and unadorned...
...Most opposition to busing, of course, has nothing to do with race...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1976 37...
...Today the pursuit of crime is a profession for which one need no advanced degree, no period of apprenticeship, and no special insurance...
...The NAACP has a remarkable tradition of combining sober argument with an insistence on the moral urgencies of reform, and its painstaking legal and educational efforts reached their deserved reward in Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965...
...Despite the nobility of its ideals, one cannot help but wonder whether the NAACP is not misplacing its energies and resources by expending them on busing, and perhaps the NAACP will recognize this...
...even judicial conservatism has been subsumed by the logic of Constitutional interpretation...
...Busing was supposed to bring black and white schoolchildren together...
...Even Edward Kennedy has noted in the December 6, 1975 New eYork Times that "crime does pay...
...It is this organization, composed of responsible and intelligent men and women of good will, with a distinguished history of civil rights accomplishments, that is most dedicated to a policy which has so little to commend it, particularly as it does not seem to be achieving its goals...
...John, School Desegregation: Outcomes for Children, Wiley, 1975...
...The hours are generally discretionary and one is subject to no foremen or bosses of any kind unless one joins one of the more organized branches of criminality...
...He is a go-getter of the top chop and he sounds and acts like one, yet nowhere is there a place for him in the Chamber of Commerce...
...Education is oftenshockingly poor for blacks, for example, as evidenced in the uproar over the new admissions requirements at the City University of New York that applicants be a to read at an eighth-grade level...
...Furthermore, if we are to trust Coleman, this kind of integration does neither poor whites nor poor blacks much good...
...In other words, although most parents object strongly to busing, only those who are better off have the option of avoiding it...
...It cries out for government action...
...It has done so in the South, particularly the rural South...
Vol. 9 • February 1976 • No. 5
