BUSING: REALITIES & EVASIONS

...There is no conflict between the goals of community control and integration, unless, of course, Professor Glazer and his confreres are using the term "community" as a euphemism to describe separate racial and economic groups...

...For example, Professor Glazer and others have portrayed Richmond-type cases as giving "enormous control to central school bureaucracies," thereby diluting the control of local communities over their own schools...

...We will have to concede that the purpose of our public education system is not to educate our young to full humanity, that it is not a moral as well as an intellectual enterprise...

...Under the Richmond plan, the new consolidated district would be divided into six subdistricts consisting of 15,000 to 20,000 students in each...

...In Detroit, a group of white city residents initially raised the metropolitan issue...

...The response to a Time magazine interviewer of one white seventh grader, who attends a previously black junior high school that is now 55 percent white, is typical: We can do it fine if they'll let us alone...

...Civil rights groups have answers...

...Perhaps the best pragmatic course of action for McGovern and liberal Democrats is to stick to their defensive posture, continue to mouth their platitudes, and hope to ride it out...

...The median average ride in the 14 districts was 20 minutes prior to implementation of the plan and 27 minutes afterward...

...To accomplish this required additional busing...

...Such facilities could also be organized to accommodate programs to serve the gifted and the handicapped, to improve teacher training, to use television as an aid to individual instruction, and to provide other educational aids too expensive for each neighborhood school...

...Many racial incidents between students occurred inside the schools...

...No one yet has found a feasible way to impart these skills to children locked up in ghetto institutions...

...and that the largest increases took place in the 1940s and '50s during the drive to replace oneroom schools with more satisfactory educational facilities...

...By the California primary last June, the major Democratic contenders had settled uncomfortably into what has become the new litany on school integration and busing...

...Bus rides would average 35 minutes, with a maximum of 45 minutes in five subdistricts and one hour in a rural area—less than the maximum times for children who are now being bused for reasons other than integration...

...Having a voice in educational policy is particularly important to black people whose children often face a difficult struggle for equal treatment in physically desegregated schools...

...fearful and cautious, not courageous...

...Many black parents with children in desegrated schools have been disillusioned...

...Other arguments for opposing metropolitan integration are equally subject to challenge...

...3) integration across district lines in the many metropolitan areas both North and South where central city schools are predominantly black...

...What was in controversy was Judge McMillan's determination to undo this discrimination and minimize the possibility of resegregation by approving a plan under which 588 one-race schools were eliminated and almost all schools roughly reflected the 71 percent white to 29 percent black composition of the total school community...

...While the details have not been specified, each subdivision could be delegated broad authority to determine the kind of educational program that best meets the needs of children in the area...

...The flight of white people from an area sometimes may be based on racism and other times upon a judgment parents make that schools consisting of a majority of advantaged children offer the greatest educational benefits...

...Simple justice and common sense require that we replace the present welfare mess with a new income maintenance system, but if that system itself is not to become a permanent dole, we must find ways to give poor and black children the critical educational skills needed for success in a technological society...

...In the Richmond metropolitan area, where there is a minority population proportionately as large as in any area in the nation, the consolidated school system would have an enrollment 66 percent white and 34 percent black...

...A partial answer is that these fears, real though they may be, often turn out to be unfounded...

...II he current furor over school integration is indeed traceable to several recent federal court decisions, and since their holdings have been so widely misrepresented, what the courts actually said and did is worth some attention...

...But by and large the legal questions are of interest primarily to lawyers and ideologues...

...In Charlotte and Tampa, where the integration plans are metropolitan in character and onerace public schools have been eliminated, the declines in public school enrollment have been relatively small and, if the pattern that has prevailed in other Southern communities holds, many of those who have left will soon be back in the public schools...

...There is only a bit of recent precedent for this kind of approach to the issues of school integration and busing...

...BUSING: REALITIES & EVASIONS IV When all has been said, however, it can hardly be denied that the busing issue spells trouble for McGovern and the Democrats...

...The timing could not have been better for the Administration, since it enabled Nixon to put on a superb mock show of going through the agonies of presidential decision-making while he was actually engaged in political haymaking...

...But the Supreme Court held that busing was a "normal and accepted tool of educational policy" and that "desegration plans cannot be limited to the walk-in school...

...Recently, civil rights researchers examined busing in 14 districts, including those on which the Nixon administration placed greatest reliance for its claims of "excessive busing...

...Citizens should obey court orders, but they doubted the validity of some court decisions, notably one by a federal district court requiring school integration on a metropolitan basis in Richmond, Virginia...

...So the Nixon proposals were shelved and in their place Congress adopted a foggy compromise (supported by McGovern against the wishes of civil rights lobbyists who believed it was a dangerous retreat...

...This fall there are fewer major new integration plans scheduled for implementation than in recent years...

...Still, it is surprising that liberal political leaders have not undertaken to explain to white city residents that metropolitan approaches may be in their interest—by distributing the burden of change more equitably, by giving their children along with blacks access to better educational opportunities, and by helping to defuse the conflict between blacks and whites in the inner city...

...The most complex situation exists in Detroit, where, under Judge Roth's plan for the city and 52 surrounding suburban 590 districts, more than one-third of the 780,000 children may require transportation...

...Commission on Civil Rights that problems had been no worse than in previous years and some principals commented that things were going better...

...Apparently surprised that the Burger Supreme Court has held firm in school integration cases, Nixon has deemed it expedient in the past two years to intervene in desegregation matters and to undercut the efforts of his own secretary of HEW to enforce the law...

...In Richmond, the city school board was a principal moving party in the law suit...

...While it is true that any additional expenditures may pose problems for hardpressed school boards, the need for financial aid to property-poor districts is an issue far broader than busing...

...Parents in Evanston, Ill., Rochester, N. Y., and Boston, Mass., whose children have moved from racially isolated to integrated schools have reported feelings of greater participation and influence in their children's education in the new situation than there were in the old...

...Among the areas were such Southern districts as Nashville, Tenn., and Tampa, Fla., which were compelled by the Swann decision to broaden their desegregation plans, and Northern districts where courts had found a basis for ordering desegregation during the 1960s...

...It is true, of course, that city dwellers, like blacks, constitute only a minority of our suburbanized nation...

...Nixon's picture of the American people, but it is not mine...

...At the beginning just about everybody sat at all-white tables in the cafeteria, and the whites and blacks wouldn't talk to each other very much...

...Despite uneasiness in Congress about the consequences of a "probusing" label, the Nixon bills initially received a chilly reception on the Hill...

...And if we yield to pressures to stop school integration, we will have to reconcile ourselves to garrison cities in which fear 594 prevails and in which we deal with drugs, crime, and poverty by quarantining victims rather than striking at causes...

...Together, Swann and the lowercourt decisions would result in (1) far more extensive integration of Southern school districts that have had only token desegregation...

...There followed organized efforts to boycott the schools, picketing at the schools, and shouting of epithets at students...

...But here, too, the available evidence suggests that community participation of minority and low-income parents in school affairs will increase, not decrease, WILLIAM L. TAYLOR under metropolitan integration arrangements...

...Nor is busing particularly costly...

...In Tampa, which has an extensive cross busing plan requiring longer rides than most, similar acceptance has been reported...

...Since it is generally conceded that effective redress for housing discrimination is a process that will take 30 to 40 years at a minimum, it is not surprising that some courts have concluded that there must be a more expeditious remedy for the harm that black children are now suffering in segregated schools...

...We have to live together and grow up together so we can keep this earth going...

...One thing, however, is pretty clear: if national leaders can not soon muster the courage to try to stem the tide of race conflict, by the time they do the country may be ungovernable or not worth governing...

...They have coped with a few racial incidents involving older children and believe that as children whose early years have not been spent in racial isolation move through school, the incidents will decline...

...But there are certain things we should then be prepared to admit to ourselves...

...In no district was the average ride more than 45 minutes after the implementation of a desegregation plan...

...The hand of government in creating segregation was everywhere...

...Continuing to rely on the regressive property tax system that makes the funds expended on each child's education a function of the property wealth of the area in which his parents live makes no sense...

...In Hartford, Conn., where another metropolitan suit is pending, much integration might be accomplished without any busing at all, since the bulk of the minority population lives in the North End, a neighborhood immediately adjacent to affluent white suburbs...

...I guess the blacks were worried about us too...

...After government has righted its wrong, those black people who view ghettos as places of refuge will be free to create their own, just as some members of immigrant groups have done...

...He then let it be known that if a Democratic Congress was so inept in slowing down the courts and the "extreme social planners," he might be compelled to seek a constitutional amendment to settle the matter once and for all...

...Of the 14 districts, 6 experienced no increase in the duration of average bus rides as a result of court-ordered plans (San Francisco and Oxnard, Calif., Pontiac, Mich., Arlington, Va., Jackson, Miss., and Savannah, Ga...

...Prior to opening day, ten buses were destroyed by bombs, a crime for which five members of the Ku Klux Klan were later indicted...

...Federal pronouncements then made it clear that schools as well as neighborhoods had to be segregated and that, if necessary, racially restrictive covenants, zoning laws, and even busing for segregation had to be used to keep them that way...

...But McGovern in his acceptance speech omitted almost entirely the civil rights record of the Nixon administration as an issue he would take to the people this fall...

...They view the struggle to win equality of status in desegregated schools as an integral part of the effort to win equality of status in a biracial society...

...But these conclusions do not apply to metropolitan plans...

...Many more were aware that the odds were great that the the Supreme Court would declare the Administration's bills unconstitutional, tossing the issue right back to Congress, perhaps before the November election...

...An interracial organization of seventh graders is putting on skits in the elementary schools about experiences with integration and has signed up more than 1,000 members...

...Most citizens are far more concerned about the potential impact of particular remedies upon their own interests...

...The key Supreme Court decision, Swann v. School Board of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, held that busing, provided it did not endanger the health and safety of children, must be employed where necessary to disestablish the old dual school system in the South...

...The legal bases of these decisions are not difficult to ascertain...

...Administrators and principals reported in the spring to the U.S...

...A further contention of integration opponents is that the effort is bound to be futile since white parents inevitably flee integrated schools for suburban neighborhoods or private schools...

...In a few places, this policy has contributed to a shortage of buses resulting in staggered school schedules that inconvenience parents and children...

...In conclusion, a presidential candidate fond of preaching the social gospel and concerned about the spiritual health of the people might say: If Mr...

...Such an arrangement enhances prospects for stability...

...The trouble is that these arguments are often camouflage for the real concerns of parents —that if their children are bused to inner city schools, they will be exposed to racial hostility, drugs, and violence...

...All of these findings of the district court judge were in the record that reached the Supreme Court and were hardly disputed, notwithstanding the peculiar implication of Nathan Glazer in the March issue of Commentary that the Supreme Court acted on "only one piece of evidence suggesting an effort to maintain segregation...

...But, McGovern could say, the federal government can assume financial responsibility only under guarantees that educational expenditures will be geared to need and that equality of opportunity will be afforded to all children...

...The new law provides that for 18 months no court-ordered desegregation may go into effect until all judicial appeals are exhausted...

...Antibusing groups have argued principally that busing for integration would be massive and very costly, that it is unsafe, that it requires small children to spend a disproportionate part of their day traveling long distances, that bused children would be excluded from extracurricular activity and suffer other inconveniences...

...Antibusing hysteria usually reaches its peak in September and early October after school opens and tends to subside when the schools, freed from the pressures of pickets, boycotts, and violent rhetoric, are permitted to operate a bit more normally...

...President Nixon has served clear notice that he intends to employ the busing issue to defeat the Democrats in November...

...In July, the Democratic national convention adopted a civil rights platform that was less equivocal, reminding the nation that the long and anguishing effort to obtain compliance with the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education had not yet been completed and affirming the use of busing as one instrument for accomplishing integration...

...But it's one way we can get to know each other...

...Even in districts with large school transportation needs, busing does not ordinarily account for more than 2 percent of the total school budget...

...The reason for all of this discomfiture on the part of both McGovern (whose political courage on most issues is beyond dispute) and other Democrats is not hard to discern...

...Fears are not easily allayed and in any event no one will pretend that the effort to undo the effects of centuries of racism can be accomplished without some difficulties and sacrifices for all citizens...

...The 7,000member PTA, though suffering a number of defections when it supported the integration plan, has mounted a program under the banner "Let Us Make It Work...

...And the lines were being drawn for the 1972 campaign, with the Democrats clearly on the defensive...

...A better alternative would be to 593 shift to income taxes, with the federal government assuming a large share of the burden...

...In March, the President found time between summit meetings to unleash an allout attack on lower federal courts, accusing them (without specifying courts or cases) of having gone far beyond "what most people would consider reasonable" and what the Supreme Court has said is necessary in ordering desegregation and having embraced "extreme remedies...

...Governor Reuben Askew of Florida has spoken out along similar lines and although large masses of people have not yet been converted, he has won respect for his honesty and apparently has not suffered politically...

...How important busing is in a sea of Democratic troubles is harder to assess...

...In addition, two sets of lower federal court decisions could have a significant impact upon the course of school integration, if their principles are affirmed by the Supreme Court...

...It is Nixon who has eased the tax burden for the wealthy by vetoing legislation to invest in early childhood education, day care, and other measures to meet the needs of the majority of citizens...

...587 The second set of decisions, best exemplified by the Richmond and Detroit cases, holds that where integration is not feasible within the confines of a central city because black children constitute a disproportionately large percentage of the public school enrollment and where this is traceable to racial discrimination in which government has been involved, integration across district lines in a metropolitan area may be ordered...

...Most important, blacks, Chicanos, and other minorities do not view as friendly acts the statements of President Nixon or other politicians who are manipulating the busing issue for political gain...

...that almost 19 million children-43.5 percent of the total public school enrollment— are transported to school daily...

...Given these facts, Professor Glazer's statement on the issue—`But why should it be the right or the duty of the federal government and the federal judiciary to destroy the ghetto as a place of refuge if that is what some blacks want...

...The legal issue facing the courts is quite different from the one posed by Professor Glazer...

...They have found their children subjected to teachers who are insensitive or racist, to courses of study that ignore the black heritage, to exclusion from extracurricular activities, to the taunts of white students...

...Professor Glazer notes, however, that the private school option remains open and conjures up a picture of whole metropolitan public school systems being turned over to less affluent whites and blacks, everyone else with $100 in the bank presumably having fled to private schools...

...Candidates who rely upon the conventional wisdom that black interest in integration has waned may be making a mistake...

...If ways can be found to improve the quality of education for all people, initiatives to assist the least advantaged citizens will not appear so threatening...

...Such an approach might begin with the recognition that our public education system ill serves the needs of all but the most privileged of Americans...

...While George Wallace's victory in the Florida primary might have been achieved even without the busing issue, his solid win in August 3, 1972 Michigan can be explained only by his successful exploitation of public fears stimulated by court-ordered school desegregation in Detroit...

...Indeed, the Nixon administration has made matters worse by refusing to permit districts under court order to tap available federal funds for the purchase of buses...

...Busing shouldn't be the solution to segregation...

...Some congressmen were concerned that placing a moratorium on court enforcement of federal rights (something successfully attempted only once previously, in the aftermath of the Civil War) would establish a dangerous precedent...

...Not surprisingly, the families adversely affected are mostly black...

...This diatribe was part of a message to Congress proposing legislation that would have postponed for a year the implementation of any court order requiring busing and then would have permanently banned any increase in busing at the elementary school level...

...The greatest increase in time was from 20 to 45 minutes in Tampa, Fla...

...I guess we were all afraid of black people...

...Not all of these people are truly convinced of the need for school integration...

...So if by community participation or control we mean the accountability of school officials to parents, the involvement of parents in shaping educational goals and programs, and the reinforcement at home of the good things that happen at school, there is every prospect that the process will be enhanced by integration...

...2) integration of schools in Northern communities that, while often more rigidly segregated than their Southern counterparts, had not believed themselves under any obligation to remedy the situation...

...They draw upon the experience of abortive, piecemeal efforts to integrate central city schools where the burden of change fell mostly upon workingclass white andblack families...

...But they do assert with justification that the burdens involved in change should be shared by the generally more affluent citizens of suburbia, not simply by the white and black working people of the cities...

...And in Wilmington, Hartford, and other places where cases are pending, white city dwellers have also expressed support...

...They supported busing to meet "the requirements of the Constitution" but were opposed to it "solely for the purpose of achieving racial balance...

...Three districts experienced an increase of 10 to 20 minutes (Nashville, Tenn., Norfolk, Va., and Manhasset, N.Y...

...In either case, the dangers of rapid resegregation are deBUSING: REALITIES & EVASIONS creased where the obligation to desegregate is system-wide and the racial and economic class composition of each school is within a defined range...

...I'd like to have him come over and spend the night, but my dad wouldn't allow it...

...This might well include the hiring of faculty and administrative personnel and decisions about curriculum and the allocation of budget...

...Since judges ordinarily issue orders only to remedy what they conceive as violations of the Constitution and not to achieve a racial balance, there is little likelihood that the new legislation will be widely applied except by courts otherwise disposed to find reasons for delay...

...McGovern and Humphrey both declared against "massive" busing but for "reasonable" transportation...

...The answer is clear: because the federal government helped create the ghetto in the first place and because the Constitution of the United States does not permit government to imprison racial groups in ghettos even if some people are content with their confinement...

...callous, not compassionate...

...592 WILLIAM L. TAYLOR At a recent education conference sponsored by the congressional black caucus, some of the loudest cheers of the 600 black educators, parents, and community leaders were for Derrick Bell, a black civil rights activist and Harvard law professor, who warned that the antibusing onslaught jeopardized all of the civil rights gains won since 1954...

...Lawyers representing black parents and their children have challenged this belief and have asserted instead that school segregation is the product of policies and practices of racial containment in which government at all levels is directly implicated...

...The answers to safety concerns are clearcut...

...They note that the yellow school bus has become an American institution during this century...

...There are other factors that enter into the political calculus of integration and busing...

...We are...

...In the Northern and metropolitan cases, the courts have been impelled to reexamine a long held assumption that segregation, except where imposed by statute or explicit school board policy, is "adventitious" or "fortuitous" or "de facto" and, accordingly, not properly redressed by the courts...

...The schools opened under a court-ordered plan that required cross busing and assigned white children to formerly black schools in the inner city...

...Nixon prevails and his legislative proposals to halt school integration are enacted, life will go on...

...All' ntibusing arguments based on considerations of cost, safety, distance, community control, and feasibility are all answerable both in terms of logic and experience...

...It requires a view of the American people as incurably racist to suggest that they will be ready and willing to shoulder the major financial burdens of private education to avoid even a modest degree of integration...

...Still, it is interesting to speculate on the possible impact of a more aggressive and candid approach—one more in keeping with McGovern's image as a man who speaks the hard truth to the American people and proposes solutions to difficult problems...

...The facts are to the contrary...

...Soon after the compromise passed Congress but before the President signed it into law, Federal District Court Judge Stephen Roth indicated preliminary approval of a comprehensive plan for integrating public schools throughout the Detroit metropolitan area starting in fall 1972...

...And, finally, in candor we will have to admit that the lesson we have taught ourselves and our children is that as a people we are meanspirited, not generous...

...It is Richard Nixon—this argument would run—who has diverted attention from the real crisis in public education by setting the interests of black against white and fanning the flames of racial mistrust...

...It is whether government discrimination is redressed simply by steps to undo housing segregation or whether school authorities must be compelled to alleviate racial separation...

...is cruelly if unintentionally ironic...

...While lack of money for schools is hardly the principal cause of educational failure, a restructuring of our system of school finance could be a liberating influence in American education...

...During the year community support for integration began to build...

...But there is a catch: the law provides for such postponements only where the purposes of the court order are to achieve a "balance among students with respect to race, sex, religion or socio-economic status...

...We should also recognize that in the process of shielding our children from contact with children of other races and income groups, we may be equipping them poorly to function in the racially hostile world we have created for them...

...I know we can do better...

...The greater likelihood is that where all public schools are integrated and all consist of a majority of advantaged children, most people will have an incentive to stay where they are and make integration work...

...They're not trying to make it work...

...Still, forthright talk about busing is probably high-risk politics in the year 1972...

...Testimony showed that racial separation could not be explained solely as a function of free choice, or private practices of discrimination, or even a lack of sufficient money to go elsewhere (though poverty itself of course is a product of racial discrimination...

...Above all, an honest approach to school integration would put before the people the real alternatives...

...But most of these students are already riding buses and the Judge's order contemplates maximum trips of 40 minutes...

...New types of school facilities, such as education parks, located to serve both city and suburban children, could provide integration while alleviating the problems associated with cross busing...

...And they opposed busing children to schools where they would receive "an inferior education...

...And a fair number were prepared to incur some political risk rather than to write off so cavalierly all the sacrifice that had been expended in the effort to eliminate racially segregated schools...

...Nixon knew and let the American people know that the new law was unlikely to prevent Judge Roth's decision from going into effect since the order was not on its face designed to achieve racial balance...

...Experience does not bear him out...

...Yet a few weeks later, after adult picketing ended, the schools became calm...

...But most have not drawn the conclusion that because this new phase of the desegregation struggle is difficult the whole effort should be abandoned...

...What the President must also BUSING: REALITIES & EVASIONS have known but chose not to disclose was that, since the decision involved legal issues that had not been definitively settled, the Court of Appeals would undoubtedly exercise its discretion to stay it anyway (as the Court subsequently did...

...Even when, other devices having been exhausted, the school board adopted a geographic assignment plan, it gerrymandered zone lines, constructed new schools in areas designed to serve only all-white or all-black student bodies, permitted whites to escape integration through free transfers, and maintained all-white and all-black faculties to insure the racial identifiability of each school...

...The evidence included urban renewal programs of the WILLIAM L. TAYLOR 1950s, which displaced black people from their homes and located them in new ghettos, and even the newer subsidy programs of the 1960s under which housing is still being built and operated on a segregated basis...

...The President ultimately signed the bill, but not before causing tremors in the university world by suggesting the multibillion-dollar higher education bill to which the compromise was attached might have to be sacrificed because the "antibusing" provision was too weak...

...Neither have the charges that court-ordered integration involves long and arduous bus rides for small children withstood analysis...

...I've made a lot of friends here at Jefferson, and my best friend, that's Keith Fowler, he's black...

...A further aspect of the metropolitan litigation, little noted but of potential political significance, is that support for integration is coming from white central city residents as well as from blacks...

...Similarly, the metropolitan initiatives proposed for racial integration are also consistent with what is needed to upgrade education for all children...

...That may be Mr...

...In Richmond, Judge Merhige's plan for the consolidation of the city and two suburban county school districts would add 10,000 to the number of children being bused in a 104,000-student area...

...And many sense that students who are shielded from any interracial contact in the name of avoiding mistreatment will be ill prepared for the struggle for equal status they will face after school...

...Police statistics at the end of the school year revealed that 90 percent of school-related crime had occurred during the first month of adult-inspired turmoil...

...A misunderstanding of the basic facts and legal issues has led some people to rationalize their opposition to court-ordered school integration by characterizing the deBUSING: REALITIES & EVASIONS cisions as social experimentation or a capricious numbers game...

...Well, how can they tell...

...I've stayed at Keith's place though...

...The adults say that seventh graders can't grasp the situation, that we're too young...

...Charlotte, North Carolina, had followed a pattern of resistance to integration typical of many Southern cities...

...Thus, even with the new legal requirements placed on Southern school districts by the Swann decision in 1971, busing for integration is a negligible part of the whole transportation picture...

...In Pasadena and elsewhere, parents who initially opposed integration now support it...

...Since the busing proposed for integration compared favorably with existing busing of children for other purposes, in terms of numbers (15,000 for integration v. 23,600 students now being bused in an 84,000student system), average distance (7 miles v. 15 miles each way at present), and average time (35 minutes v. more than an hour each way at present), the Court could hardly conclude that the plan posed a risk to the health or safety of the children or impinged on the educational process...

...The adjustment to integration in Pontiac is not atypical...

...The first set of cases holds that school authorities in the North may not build their assignment, boundary, transfer, and construction policies upon segregated residential patterns where government has been involved in housing discrimination and where the school board has feasible alternatives that would result in less segregated schools...

...Even in the cases involving metropolitan relief, the logistics may be no more difficult than desegregation plans for a single district...

...After a careful review of the political and educational limitations of other types of school initiatives including community control, Bell concluded: "The right of black children to attend integrated public schools—quite literally whether exercised or not—is a right that is crucial not only to black success, but to black survival in this country...

...Congress was once again under pressure to enact restricted legislation...

...We will have to acknowledge that law is no longer a means of carrying out our highest aspirations and goals but of expressing our worst fears and prejudices...

...But we've only had twelve big arguments or fights at Jefferson since school started...

...Under the plan, all schools would have enrollments ranging from 18 to 40 percent black...

...They aren't the ones in the school...

...Yet even as to remedy, the debate has proceeded at something less than an exalted level...

...While it is true that busing has continued to increase (though at a reduced rate), less than 1 percent is attributable to integration, according to figures supplied by the Department of Transportation...

...In 1971, the National Safety Council reported statistics showing that there is far less danger of accident to children who are bused to school than to those who walk or are transported by passenger car...

...In September 1971, Pontiac, Mich., an industrial suburb of Detroit with a history of racial problems, became the national symbol of racial conflict over school integration...

...To prove this contention, the lawyers cited the policies of the Federal Housing Administration during the 1930s and 1940s when, in helping to create whole new suburban communities, FHA advised developers that no community would be `stable' unless it was racially and economically homogeneous...