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School bus simple and immediate solution
The author is a freshman in the College of Arts
and Sciences.
by John C. Wiltsie
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown vs.
Topeka Board of Education case that segregated
public school systems were unconstitutional. The old
ruling of "separate but equal" ended in the
conclusion that segregated schools, were "inherently
unequal."
The justification for this constitutional
interpretation was found in the Fourteenth
Amendment. This amendment, passed in 1868,
guarantees citizens' rights, especially section one
which the court cited as primary to their ruling.
In 1968 the Supreme Court termed
freedonof-choice plans, giving blacks the option of
attending integrated schools and whites the option of
avoiding them, as insufficient attempts toward
desegregation.
Unanimous Supreme and Federal Court decisions
have maintained forced busing to be a proper and
legitimate means of achieving racial desegregation in
public school systems. Besides condoning busing in
their 1971 ruling, the Supreme Court said that it was
not necessary for every school to be racially balanced
by the same ratio.
Since this last high court decision, federal courts
have made two further moves: 1) They indicated
genuine integration may sometimes require merging
suburban school districts with inner-city schools; and
2) distinguished between "de jure" (legally enforced)
and "de facto" (in fact) segregation.
In Los Angeles, Denver and Detriot, as well as
other Northern cities, judges have found de facto
segregation patterns have been so reinforced by
official action that they really are de jure. For
example: location of schools in the middle of the
ghetto instead of on its borders.
Of the 42 per cent of the nation's public school
children riding buses, barely three per cent are bused
for racial integration. Should the Supreme Court
decide in favor of the Federal District Court ruling in
the Denver case (the hearing is scheduled for this
year), there would undoubtedly be more than three
per cent.
If the lower court is upheld in its view that defacto
segregation is tainted with de jure in Denver, there are
probably few cities in the nation that would be
unaffected by those findings. Mandatory desegration
in all public schools would gradually become the law
of the land.
As Article III, section I of the Constitution states,
the judicial power of the Supreme Court is of the
highest order, and it is the court's job to interpret the
laws.
Article VI explains that "judges in every state shall
be bound thereby' The Constitution also
requires senators, representatives, state legislators and
and all executive officials "to support this
Constitution."
The various courts involved so far have not been
acting out of social conscience or activism, but
through their obligation to uphold the Constitution,
which calls for equality before the law.
And yet the executive arm, which is responsible for
enforcing those court orders, publicly repudiates
them. President- Nixon is quoted in Newsweek as
saying "I am against busing for the purpose of
achieving racial balance." Most of Congress is against
busing and has been trying to forbid it with
legislation or proposed constitutional amendments.
I would contend that one cannot rule by law by
ignoring the law.
According to a Gallup poll released March 6, 69
per cent of those surveyed were against busing. The
same poll also reported that 66 per cent were in favor
of integration. Thomas Shaheen, San Francisco
superintendent of schools, insists that "you cannot
oppose busing and be for desegregation in the major
cities of this country."
Busing has become a code word," the Rev.
Theodore M. Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame
University and chairman of the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights says. "The real question is . . . the
education the student gets at the end of the ride."
The educational results of desegregation have been
thoroughly studied. It has been widely accepted as a
spur to the educational achievement of most ghetto
children and no hindrance to their more affluent
peers.
The most widely recognized proof of the subject is
the 1966 federal study known as the Coleman
Report. The report, made by a team of educational
specialists headed by Johns Hopkins sociologist James
Coleman, concluded that such devices as smaller
classes, newer books or more sophisticated faculties
made little difference in the work of disadvantaged
black children.
But when black pupils attended schools in which
majority of the children were white andor middle
class, the blacks improved with no change to whites.
Coleman deduced that the determining factors in
classroom performance were social and economic
background, not race.
He wrote: 'The results clearly suggest that school
integration across socio-economic lines (and hence
racial lines) will increase Negro achievements."
Because the educational system of the U.S. is
orientated for the most part towards white
middle-class values, it is no surprise that a child
should do better when exposed to such prerequisites.
This is not to say that I fully approve of such
orientation, but never the less, without it success is
much more difficult in this society.
These conclusions have been supported by further
studies. The first concludes that compensatory
education programs, (if they are even undertaken),
which hope to raise the achievement of segregated
blacks by delegating huge sums to ghetto schools,
have failed. The second finding is that efforts to raise
the schoolroom performance or poor, black children
by exposing them to white, middle-class standards
have usually been successful.
In Evanston, 111., a three-year survey of then
integration plan for elementary schools demonstrated
improved achievement by black children and normal
achievement for their white classmates. The black
children who were bused improved even more than
black children who walked, presumably because those
who rode to predominantly white schools lived even
deeper in the slums.
A recent Hartford study showed black
fourth-graders bused to the suburbs were reading at a
level four months behind their suburban fellows, but
nine months ahead of their city counterparts.
"Students, parents, teachers and administrators,"
Rev. Hesburgh says, "are calmly proving to the world
that desegregation can work."
The United States has now had 18 years since its
first court ruling to desegregate public schools.
Virtually nothing has been done. To allow the public
to solve this problem by its own initiative would be
to ask those who have allowed institutional racism to
flourish to suddenly change course.
The courts, by forcing the hand of the government,
are finally proposing a simple and immediate
solution, the common school bus. The notion of a
school bus in hardly revolutionary, and supposedly
the idea of integration is acceptable, as long as it is
not carried out.
Aside from the racial harmony that integrationists
have always claimed follows such programs, there are
other goals and benefits.
No one can deny that education is a sound
economic investment. A better educated populace
makes more money, votes more and is more socially
flexible. It would end the hypocrisy (at least in this
area) of injustice in a country that claims equal
justice. It would allow all children a more equal
opportunity to obtain an education.
Perhaps it would get the taxpayer to eliminate
outmoded facilities and techniques in their schools
and the government to change the equally decrepit
tax system for educational revenues. It would make
Americans live up to some of the ethics and laws that
they profess to believe.
Perhaps busing is not the best way, but for now it
is the only way. The cost to America in dollars would
be paid back many times over, but the real cost is
concern. The long and short term benefits outweigh
the drawbacks, and it would lend credence to a quote
from Wendell Wilkie, "the Constitution does not
provide for first and second class citizens."
Should anti-busing forces succeed, they should be
sure that in addition to prohibiting busing, they
prohibit the civil rights that justify it.
That way, the three R's-recession, regression and
repression, could be taught in the best of tradition.
As Terrence said, "Rigorous law is often rigorous
injustice.
PAGE 4
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1972