WASHINGTON REPORT: School Busing-A Detour
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT SCHOOL BUSING-A DETOUR A significant shift has developed within the Senate in its attitude toward busing of public school children for purposes of racial integration. For...
...The situation has the making of a tragedy-not the clash of right and wrong, but the clash of two rights, the stuff of which history, and great plays, are made...
...The Senate's actions reflected at least two important elements...
...Civil rights lobbyists, standing outside the Senate chamber, were startled at the development-first, when the anti-busing amendment was approved and, subsequently, when efforts to delete or render meaningless the amendment failed...
...funds for assigning students to schools because of race...
...It's the best of what's available as a social tool-or the most that political leaders are willing to undertake...
...First, unlike in past years, the bill sent to the Senate by the House contained no anti-busing amendment...
...School busing is a main objective of theirs and, as the Post has described it, support for busing is a litmus test of who's "liberal" and who's "conservative" in racial matters...
...The approved amendment applies only to the HEW Department's administrative actions in favor of busing- not to desegregation orders issued by the federal courts...
...The Senate's action, while conclusive in terms of a slim majority now able to be assembled against busing, is not conclusive in terms of the omnibus health-educa-tion-and-welfare appropriation bill itself, to which the anti-busing amendment was added-as well as another one put forward by the Majority Whip, Senator Robert Byrd...
...A veto is possible...
...Yet, the new Northern converts among busing opponents, in general terms, do not believe the public school system should bear the brunt of what busing in a broad sense is intended to do-affirmatively integrate society among the school-age population...
...In this instance, the House has been approving anti-busing legislation by increasingly large majorities...
...Many blacks, including the California State Superintendent of Schools Reis, oppose busing...
...The Senate, therefore, was not, as in past years, responding to any action of the House on the busing issue...
...And, that, even now, school discrimination can't be solved unless housing discrimination is lessened first...
...And if that is set aside, demoralization and, even turmoil can not fail to set in...
...Moreover, school busing in the 1970s has become an intangible symbol-a rallying point for the really discriminated against...
...This is a point editors for the Boston Globe, living in more prosperous suburbs of Boston, don't seem to understand...
...They concede busing is not the most desirable course, but it is possible to achieve successfully-if parents and school administrators would cooperate, and members of Congress would not argue against busing in the context of the worst possible consequences of busing...
...This will encourage segregationist-minded members of Congress to renew their efforts to prohibit by law or by Constitutional amendment school busing...
...Later, a few of the eight reversed their position on subsequent efforts by pro-busing Senators, led by Senator Brooke of Massachusetts, to strike or render meaningless the amendment...
...Nevertheless, the woods shouldn't be overlooked for the trees-whatever the fate of the bill itself...
...say their numbers are increasing...
...By last December, a patently unconstitutional amendment against busing was defeated in the Senate by only a handful of votes...
...Second, at least eight Northern Senators with liberal credentials swung over to support the anti-busing amendment added by the Senate...
...But, Senator Brooke and his colleagues in the Senate who tried unsuccessfully last month to fight off the anti-busing amendments, should not be ignored...
...Basically, they believe school busing is a bankrupt policy-a bus is not a classroom-but they express reluctance to continue to keep company with those of their colleagues who oppose busing for what might be called more personal reasons and who will try to end busing altogether...
...Noble thoughts, Sunday sermons and Marches on Washington will no longer suffice, they point out...
...The Congress now appears to be at point that, a majority of its members are willing to publicly acknowledge their opposition to administratively ordered busing...
...They, and many with credentials earned in the civil-rights field, believe discriminatory housing patterns, basic to school enrollment make-up, should have been the objective undertaken 20 or more years ago...
...As school desegregation orders began to be issued in recent years against urban school districts in the North, Senate colleagues of Ribicoff began to waver...
...But late last month, during debate over a House-approved appropriation bill, a slim majority, that in the past has diluted or killed-off House amendments, dissolved...
...The essentials of the amendment remained as part of the big fund bill approved after several days of debate...
...Reassigning blacks from lousy schools in the Roxbury section of Boston, where they live, to lousy schools a few miles away in white (and hostile) South Boston-and vice versa- doesn't solve much...
...For several years, the Senate, in keeping with George Washington's venerable analogy, has been the saucer in which has cooled the hot tea of actions by the House of Representatives...
...Among them were Senators Mansfield, the Majority Leader, Eagleton, Mag-nuson, Nelson and Symington...
...Then came the turn-around last month put into motion by the youngest Senator, 32-year-old Joe Biden of Delaware, who offered the amendment...
...And back would come the vetoed bill, anti-busing provisions and all, for the Congress to be given an opportunity to override the veto...
...The Senate and the House must confer to resolve their differences over non-busing provisions of the big bill...
...Assuming a compromise is reached, that, in turn, is subject to approval by the full House and Senate...
...not because of the anti-busing provisions, of course-the President opposes busing-but because the amount of the funds approved is expected to be far higher than he will find acceptable...
...The North, Ribicoff said in opposing busing, stands "guilty of monumental hypocrisy" if it insists on what he regarded as a double-standard-one for Mississippi public schools and another for Minnesota's...
...He broke ranks to insist publicly that school desegregation standards should apply nationwide to all school districts in the North as well as in the South...
...Subsequently, an article in the Washington Post said: "If only a conservative, like Richard Nixon, could open the door to China (in 1972), perhaps only a liberal like Joe Biden can slam the door on busing...
...These...
...Pledges by anti-racist, but anti-busing, forces to work to achieve more funds to improve ghetto schools haven't worked in the past, and in an economy now generating budget-cutting at a state and municipal level, won't work now...
...Conversely, a slim majority materialized in support of an amendment to prohibit the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) from using its (federal, i.e...
...And, if that occurs, the bill would be forwarded to President Ford, who may veto it...
...There's no conclusive answer...
...Historically, in Senate terms, the approval of the anti-busing amendment recalls the first defection several years ago by a Northern Senator with impeccable liberal credentials-Senator Ribicoff of Connecticut...
...But their change of position did not alter the outcome...
...And this poses a problem, both logical and political, for Northern Senators who last month voted for the Biden amendment...
...SISYPHUS...
Vol. 102 • October 1975 • No. 16
