The Boston Globe ran another self-serving and dishonest opinion piece about busing today, this one by Jeff Jacoby. It does not deserve to be quoted, and I won’t. As is virtually ALWAYS the case in the self-serving whines about busing published by the Globe and other Boston publications, the “history” always starts with the 1974 order by Judge W. Arthur Garrity.
The Boston busing crisis did not begin with that order.
A more accurate history is provided by pieces like “Morgan v. Hennigan: Desegregation of Boston Public Schools. The US Supreme Court made segregated public schools unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. More than decade later, the Massachusetts legislature belatedly ordered the integration of ALL public schools in the state in 1965. That was nearly a decade before Judge Garrity’s ruling. The Boston school committee ignored that order. The Massachusetts legislature made no serious effort to enforce its own 1965 demand.
The explicit segregation of Boston’s public schools had been unconstitutional for a full TWENTY YEARS before Judge Garrity’s 1974 ruling. TWENTY YEARS — plenty of time to address the issue. The city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts flagrantly and explicitly violated the law of the land by refusing to integrate Boston public schools. That egregiously illegal segregation was just as racist as any racist policy of any southern state during the Jim Crow era.
It certainly was and is hypocritical for the legislature and suburban whites to call out the city of Boston while remaining resolutely silent about the refusal of the legislature to enforce its own action between 1965 and 1972. The schools of Massachusetts are, if anything, more segregated today than they were in 1972. School funding in Massachusetts remains dependent on property taxes. The state collects lottery revenue from poor (and therefore black and Hispanic) communities and distributes it to wealthy white communities like Carlisle. The minority populations of our “gateway” cities like New Bedford, Pittsfield, Springfield, Holyoke, and Lawrence continue to suffer from ever-worsening public schools while our white Governor and white Speaker of the House declare that things are fine.
After years of inaction by the legislature and the city of Boston, the NAACP in 1972 filed a class action lawsuit — Morgan v. Hennigan — on behalf of Boston’s black community. That class action suit was supported by a large volume of supporting documentation stretching back to 1938.
There is no doubt that the City of Boston intentionally and illegally created a segregated public school system.
It is a racist lie to begin any “history” of busing with the 1974 order and ignore the illegal behavior that provoked the order.
Systemic racism is alive and well in Massachusetts in 2019.
I’ve always liked your idea that lottery revenues should benefit the community in which the ticket is purchased. OTOH, I’ve always disliked that school funding is so property tax dependent (and FWIW can’t stand Prop. 2 1/2).
I found this article to be helpful.
From your own link (emphasis mine):
We stopped forced busing, and failed to replace it with anything else.
The result is that the gap between blacks and whites is as bad today as it was in the early 1970s.
Yes, the racial gap narrowed, but did the school to school gap? Basic math says that if you mix the races between two schools, one better than the other, the racial stats will start to converge, but there are still individuals being left behind. I think that’s another basic difference in premise between us. You see simply two groups defined by race and all you care is that the groups collectively are equal. I, OTOH, see students as individuals and am still concerned about those students stuck in the lesser school of whatever race.
The data is voluminous, compelling, and decisive.
The concerns you raise are addressed in the data. Since you apparently don’t read the literature, you continue to ask the same answered questions.
It appears to me that you see only the white students, and reject both data and first-hand anecdotes (from drikeo and me) about the benefits that accrue to white students “stuck in the lesser school”.
I’m concerned about students of any color who are not afforded the best possible schools and resources.
Then you should support integrated school through methods like controlled choice which are statistically proven to be the single best way to equalize test scores between racial subgroups and class demographics.
Horace Mann when he started the public school movement envisioned schools where all kids from all backgrounds would learn in the same common schools.
Parents shouldn’t need to bankrupt themselves with high risk home loans to move into affluent school districts. Places like Brookline shouldn’t be allowed to resource hoard when in a just society their property taxes would help neighboring Boston and it’s schools.
Controlled choice worked for Cambridge, it worked for Berkeley, and it has worked for Jefferson County. Even these voluntary programs are threatened by the very color blind racial analysis you support. John Roberts uses your color blind framework to strike down voluntary school integration programs. Joe Biden’s bill he solicited the support of segregationists to pass threatened voluntary programs not just mandated ones.
Warren, Harris, and Sanders have made integrating schools part of their education justice agenda. I think it’s the only way we actually create the color blind society you want.
I’ll need to hear a bit more about what controlled choice is, but what I think I can gather it seems like a possible solution. I do think the voluntary aspect is key. I have long thought that public school choice is appropriate, though we still need to push for every school being excellent since once the better schools hit capacity there will still be students stuck in the under-resourced schools. I have also been long supportive of either equalizing property taxes throughout the state as the NH Supreme Court forced that state to do a few years back, or delinking from property taxes entirely. There should be a very high floor for all schools throughout the state, though I’m OK with towns which wish to going above and beyond.
Now we are getting somewhere. I did not know about that NH case and am surprised we did not try something similar in MA.
The immediate steps we can take are supporting Fund our Future which will help ease the burden on underfunded districts and help close (though not eliminate) some of these funding gaps.
Here’s how controlled choice works in Cambridge and how it works in a wider district like Louisville, KY.
I do support Fund Our Future, and what I appreciate about the Cambridge system is the socioeconomic focus. (The Louisville link was a bit TLDR for now, though I subscribe to the Atlantic in hard copy so I’m sure I’ll read it eventually.) I should clarify that I don’t recall whether the NH ruling actually equalized the property taxes per se or just required that the taxes collected should be redistributed among the communities statewide. I know that wealthier towns complained their tax dollars were going to less well-off communities.
That is an old article so it won’t be coming out in print anytime soon, it may be in a back issue. The same author wrote a more recent piece about METCO that is also worth reading.
Part of the benefit of doing it by socioeconomics is that it has the veneer of being a race neutral policy while achieving the same ends of racial integration. Unfortunately socioeconomic markers are still tightly correlated to racial ones, so even if we are not explicitly using racial markers they can act as one. It also makes it easier for this policy to survive court challenges and avoid the political third rail of race.
One of the best policy ideas from a 2020 candidate is Cory Booker’s baby bonds, which hopefully outlive his candidacy and get adopted by the eventual nominee. It is a way to give every American child a leg up on the wealth ladder which has the intentional effect of disproportionately benefiting black families and closing the racial wealth gap within a generation. That is the kind of reparation that is politically feasible. Similarly, controlled choice is the only way I see voluntary busing becoming viable to scale.
NH is also a good reminder that resource hoarding has a class component as well as a racial one. At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that zip codes should not determine academic outcomes. Equalizing the funding as NH proposed is exactly the way to solve for racial and socioeconomic inequity in MA.
Massachusetts doesn’t want to look in the mirror here, but in many ways today’s landscape doesn’t differ much from the late 1950s to early 1970s. The lines just happen to be drawn a little larger – at the city/town level instead of neighborhood level – but all the problems of segregation are the same today.
Remember when cities funded schools in neighborhoods differently based on whether they were black or white? Remember people arguing that the poor black neighborhoods shouldn’t be funded equally because those neighborhoods didn’t bring in as much property tax? Remember when the richer neighborhoods in those cities fought against the construction of both multi-family housing and subsidized housing, claiming that those things would “change the character of their neighborhoods”? Remember when the people in those wealthier white neighborhoods in the city argued about how they worked hard to be able to afford to live in those places, and how it wasn’t fair that others should get that benefit without that same work?
That is exactly what is happening today, but people figured out that although they couldn’t win that battle _within_ a city due to Brown vs. Board, they could absolutely win it _across city lines_ due to Milliken v. Bradley. All they had to do is move, which they did.
That has resulted in “very desirable” school districts where the White/Asian (Asians are considered “not something to avoid” by most when it comes to evaluating a district) student percentage is in the high 80s, usually surrounding a majority-minority community where the white student percentage is less than 20%. I offer these areas within the state, with a majority/minority community listed first, then immediately adjacent communities listed next. Data is from the DOE.
Springfield: White/Asian: 14%, Black/HIspanic: 85.5%
Longmeadow: White/Asian: 88.6%. Black/Hispanic: 7.4%
Hampden/Wilbraham: White/Asian: 86.9% . Black/Hispanic: 9.6%
East Longmeadow: White/Asian: 84.8%. Black/Hispanic: 12.1%
Holyoke: White/Asian: 14.6%. Black/Hispanic: 84.1%
South Hadley: 82%. Black/Hispanic: 15.5%
Southampton: White/Asian: 91.6%, Black/Hispanic: 6%
Easthampton: White/Asian: 82.4%. Black/Hispanic: 14.2%
Brockton: White/Asian: 19.7%. Black/Hispanic: 75.2%
Abington: White/Asian: 87.5%. Black/Hispanic: 11.1%
Easton: White/Asian: 84.8%. Black/Hispanic: 11.7%
East Bridgewater: White/Asian: 92%. Black/Hispanic: 4.9%
Boston: White/Asian: 23.6%. Black/Hispanic: 73%
Newton: White/Asian: 81.1%. Black/Hispanic: 12.3%
Wellesley: White/Asian: 84.4%. Black/Hispanic: 8.8%
Winchester: White/Asian: 89.4%. Black/Hispanic: 4.4%
Lawrence: White/Asian: 4.9%. Black/Hispanic: 94.7%
North Andover: White/Asian: 82.3%. Black/Hispanic: 14.2%
Andover: White/Asian: 88.4%. Black/Hispanic: 8.4%
Southbridge: White/Asian: 38.7%. Black/Hispanic: 59.3%
Sturbridge: White/Asian: 87.6%. Black/Hispanic: 7.1%
Dudley/Charleton: White/Asian: 86.9%. Black/Hispanic: 10%.
Are those areas any less segregated than neighborhoods were in the 1960s?
I would be willing to bet that with less than a dozen exceptions, if the state declared that it was going to take a single busload of black children from any of those majority-minority districts and send it into any any of those adjacent districts, the public outcry would be the same as it was in 1970.
Don’t bus them, just fund them.
It hasn’t happened in 50 years.
Who is “them”? If you preserve current racial mixes cited by nopolitician (and others), then we will still have a segregated society. If you “fund them” without changing that, you are literally advocating “separate but equal”. When you refuse to admit that systemic racism even admits, then you will resist ANY alternative that addresses that systemic racism.
The system that have now IS discriminatory. It IS racist. Blacks and Hispanics in Massachusetts suffer in comparison to Whites and Asians.
What mechanism, other than racism, do you offer to explain the stark racial disparity that has been proven — through hard science — over and over in the past fifty years?
I’ve never argued that race has not been a factor in the discrepancies, but I don’t think that should be deliberately part of the solution either. I am running out of ways to say I DO NOT CARE about segregation per se, although I will be the first to cry foul if a district tried to do it deliberately in direct contradiction of Brown v. Board of Ed., because physical traits are (or at least should be, and if not we need to insist on getting to the point where they are) irrelevant. YOU seem to be the one implying that there is no way a school could be excellent if it happened to have an all-black student body, and I would emphatically reject that. BTW, the same article points out that this has not been universally supported by African-Americans either.
It’s crystal clear that you don’t care about segregation. That’s the point.
Only if it’s done deliberately; otherwise it’s about as relevant as the difference of eye or hair color. My position, for ALL students and schools, matches that expressed by Sam Seaborn in this clip. Part of the reason I reject busing is that it gives opportunity to some while not fixing the problems for everyone, kind of like vouchers it turns out.
Please read my earlier link on housing policy-it is done deliberately. To my knowledge we have never discriminated based on eye color or hair color so bringing that up trivializes the very real discrimination we have done and continue to do because of race.
I understand that housing has been deliberate, but seeing as how moving is more easily said than done I’d rather have excellent schools in every neighborhood. I found this Biden quote on DK which matches my views perfectly:
You are of course correct that we have never discriminated on the basis of hair or eye color. To do so would be just as stupid and immoral as discrimination on the basis of skin color. We never should have discriminated on the basis of skin color in the first place and we should not be sorting on that basis now, even if the motive is to somehow rectify the past.
You’ve offered the offensive comparison to eye or hair color before — I wish you’d stop. You insult every person who cares about racism when you offer that.
The data already shows that it’s done deliberately, it’s just not done explicitly. When city or town talks about the “undesirable element” in rejecting a proposal for affordable housing or for transit, who do you think they’re talking about?
When someone kills someone else, the state of mind of the perpetrator does not excuse the crime, it only guides a decision between involuntary manslaughter, second degree murder, or first degree murder. All three are still crimes.
I suggest that the victims of segregation don’t care about the state of mind of the perpetrator. You’re doing nothing more than making an excuse for racism.
YOU are the one suggesting certain physical traits are more significant than others, which I frankly find a bit offensive too. I’ve apparently insulted myself with my comments since I deeply care about racism and have lost count of the number of times I’ve seen evidence of it and want to scream, “It’s the 21st century, for crying out loud – knock it off!” Why do you assume that towns that don’t want transit or more housing are talking about race? That’s a bit of a stereotype too, don’t you think. More people may mean strain on things like school overcrowding and I’m pretty sure 100 more families a school needs to serve is the same 100 whether those families are all white, all black, or some of each. Plus, if you insist on sorting people by race for the purposes of statistical equality how do you categorize those of mixed background? At the end of the day it will always be easier to see everyone as simply a fellow human being, not to mention the right thing to do. I’m the last person in the world who will make excuses for racism, thank you very much.
Whether you realize it or not you are making excuses for systematic racism every single time you talk about this subject. You view racism as an individual problem and a character deficit, remembering the nice sounding parts of the I have a Dream speech about content of character. Yet you forget the parts of the very same speech where he calls for integration and calls for reparations in the form of guaranteed jobs, housing, and quality schools.
The core tenant of Brown was that segregated schools will always be inferior schools for non-whites. The data have born this out sixty five years later. Only through intentional integration can the achievement gap by closed. You may argue we desire the same ends, but you persistently reject the only means proven to achieve those ends.
Only an active federal government can destroy systematic racism by creating systematic integration. By rejecting policies like controlled choice, affirmative action, fair housing vouchers, and some kind of universally applied reparation like baby bonds or a basic income you reject the very means of achieving the equality you seek.
In many ways you miss the forest for the trees. It saddens me rather than angers me.
Racism is not just the confederate flag (which you still defend) or the violence in Charlottesville, but the schools of Charlottesville which are the “neighborhood” schools you support that see affluent majority white schools do better than less affluent majority non white schools do worse. In the same community. I call that injustice. I hope you can recognize it as such.
What saddens me is that you so often get my arguments and views so wrong. I am open to considering controlled choice, housing vouchers, and basic income. I absolutely do recall the parts of MLK’s message about housing, jobs, and education and fully support such. I don’t defend the Confederate flag either. The core tenet of Brown was that Linda Brown NOT be bused for the purpose of maintaining segregation when there was a perfectly good white school closer to home. As for your Charlottesville example, there is absolutely NO excuse for schools within the same city to have such gaps. If Charlottesville is funding schools in the white neighborhoods better than those in non-white neighborhoods someone ought to sue! PLEASE if you are going to argue with me at least do me the courtesy of understanding and remembering what my arguments are.