In today's NY Times is a debate on the matter of forced integration via busing. I decided initially not to read but then decided I would. As I read the various essays, most were written by very elite types that had grown up in Southern towns but educated at elite universities like Wellesley, Harvard, etc. I say that to say that I felt their credibility to address this matter in 2012 might be a bit biased. I have put together my thoughts on this volatile issue but felt creating my qualification for commenting important as an entry point to my heartfelt thoughts on this matter.
I think the thing that jumps off the pages of reading these opinions is that if you live long enough .... fill in the blank. I was a child of the South. I saw forced integration first hand. I heard George Wallace screaming venom about Alabama remaining segregated forever. I had the first black ever bused into my high school in our senior year and it was a terrible experience for him. My wife's first teaching assignment as a new college graduate was teaching in an all black elementary school where all the faculty had been recreated into a all white step toward integration. I saw MLK marching my streets in Gadsden, AL in 1960. I remember well the Selma Marches my junior in high school. All too well do I recall the White and Colored water fountains and rest rooms at our Sears in Gadsden and the quick closing of lunch counters in downtown Gadsden. Never will I forget seeing the blacks, people I knew, having to walk to the back door of our doctor's office because they could not sit in the white waiting room. In other words, it was all true, all too real and still sickens me.
I qualify my comments on the debate with the facts of my life. At sixty-four living in Ohio and all over the world due to my professional career, I have seen racism in many forms and especially in South Africa. Many times while in SA, I felt like I was back in Alabama in the 50s, 60s and 70s. But as I read this debate on busing and segregation this morning, I felt my belly churning in 2012 that screamed, "oh my, here we go again!" However, there are so many demographic differences today versus that dark period of Southern racism that I believe impact the relevancy of this today.
First, there were far more children for we, the Baby Boomers, were occupying the classrooms exponentially as our fathers returned from WWII. That same 76 million of us are now flowing to the end of our wealth-generating careers and into retirement. There are far more schools now setting empty or facing closure due to low birth rates by the post Baby Boomer generation. Busing did not "work" whatever that means then I am a doubting it will work now. I find more and more that the government is not made nor intended to fix societal issues but seem intent on trying to do so.
Living in an economically challenged area in a Northern state for many years to this day and now serving as an educator of college age young folks, I realize maturity and experience have changed my heart I believe for the better. I detest vehemently discrimination in any form. Perhaps having a black African grand daughter has has deep impact on my heart and sensitivities of the ugliness people and exact on other people knowingly or not. But race is a matter of reality in Man for it has always been an issues and apparently always will be. Seeing first hand over 200,000 jail and prison inmates with the overwhelming majority being black has also actually softened my heart to the societal cauldron that has been created within which these young men and women have to work so much harder than their white counterparts just to almost try and get and remain even. It is simply unfair societal mathmatics that is a juggernaut that continues to slash and burn through yet another generation.
I believe that busing to force a numerical or statistical equilibrium of races is simply outdated and ill fitting. Today the "races" are no long just black and white for the racial mix has escalated and diversified many fold with Latino, Asians, European more a reality than a thought. I heard last week that now over fifty percent of one year old babies are now minorities in America. Let that sink in demographically and then project that by say twenty years! So the matter of busing to mix black and white for some ideological reason is simply demographically seeming unfeasible in our new century. In other words, taking a 1960s approach to a 2012 world seems rather stupid and inappropriate. I am not sure the answer nor will I postulate a set of possibilities for, frankly, I feel incapable of such ability.
It is my greatest hope that the incindiary nature of the racial divide does to explode as it did so poisonously during my teenage years for this is a very different world, global culture and the interdependancy of our global village would have been inconceivable to imagine fifty years ago looking to where we are now. There is a way for the races to coexist and I believe the common denominator resides in a belief in a God that created us all in His image for good! I believe that is the message God put on my heart in this matter this day.
Jim, I'm ten years younger than you and grew up in the North. I did not see separate restrooms and water fountains. I do remember the riots in Detroit and had family members trapped by the fracas. My school was threatened with bussing to Detroit, which, fortunately did not come into play. Growing up in a one car family meant that if there was an emergency, it could not have been responded to in Detroit, whereas my school was within walking distance. Any segregation today is by choice. Folks choose where they want to live and generally they want to live near other folks who are like them, i.e., similar interests, morals, etc. It's time to put bussing and affirmative action into the vault and move on.
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