(01-28-2018 11:42 PM)BinghamptonNed Wrote: The people in the NCAA that advocated busing should never have be allowed to have anything to do with education or government again after busing was proved to be so disastrous.
If drawing lines that made common sense did not fully integrate schools then it would have been wise to do the best they could and let time settle the problem. Using busing, neighborhoods were destroyed, schools were destroyed , yet schools we not fully integrated.
I suspect you mean NAACP.
Ned, I think you are older than me, and maybe significantly so. I come from the generation when the busing plan was implemented, but not the busing fight.
The reason busing didn’t work is due to white people not wanting black kids bused to their schools. My issue isn’t about the effects on the white side. To me, it seems that your issue was more about anger that black kids were sent out east.
If there had been no white flight and in flux of white kids into private schools, there would have been no problems for the families in those communities. But the reasons for not wanting black students had everyday to do with why segregation/Jim Crow was law in the first place: a desire to see black people as inferior and a fear that bringing black people into an equal footing would eventually lead to “co-mingling.” Ned, I fear that your rationale as a twinge of what was racist motivation to fight busing in the first place. The fact is, segregationists didn’t want any African-Americans in their schools, moving to their neighborhoods, or going to their churches; not to mention dating their daughters.
My rationale is that the schools should have truly been made equal. But that was never going to happen. Manassas and BTW were
NEVER going to be funded and managed to have the level of course offerings, extracurricular resources, and experienced/educated facility like White Station and Central.
And in cases where integration could happen without busing, like my alma mater East High School, which could be resolved by closing the nearby segregation high school, Lester, within a couple of years, white students stopped going to East.
So brother, the solution was to get rid of the superiority complex. Busing was an attempt to combat that with diversity. It didn’t work. Not because the idea was flawed; but because racism was just that strong.