RALEIGH – Advocates of forced, race-based busing have tried to resurrect the policy through the state courts, having failed to maintain federal court supervision over where children attend school. They failed, fortunately.
The trial judge in the long-running Leandro case, Wake Superior Court Judge Howard Manning, Jr., heard the busing argument from Julius Chambers and several other attorneys representing black plaintiffs in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Chambers, one of the litigators in the original Swann case that imposed racial-balance dictates on the local school system in the early 1970s, tried to sell Manning on the idea that the Leandro interpretation of the state constitution – that it guaranteed all students the right to an opportunity for a sound, basic education – also required forced busing.
I wish I could say that Manning tossed this argument out of court with a deservedly dismissive snort, but his rejection was far more ambiguous. According to an Associated Press report, Manning told Chambers that busing was not the answer because it was impossible to “move all the children out” of poor schools. “Shuffling [students] around on a bus may not be the answer,” he concluded.
May not be the answer? I can’t conceive of a reasonable question for which it would ever be the answer.
The debate over racial balance and forced busing has a tendency to devolve into name-calling and crude stereotypes. Advocates of busing appear to believe that only shortsighted or racist people could disagree with them. Opponents of busing ascribe various, nefarious motivations to school administrators and educators. I don’t doubt that most advocates of forced busing mean well. They believe that poor, minority children will suffer unless they prevail.
But they are mistaken. And their policy is worse than mistaken – it is abominable.
The key to understanding why is to consider a fact that few would contest: it is highly unlikely that forced busing results in higher academic performance for most of the students involved. The assumption is that either because of classroom culture, teacher expectations, or a more equitable distribution of resources, the presence of a critical mass of either white or less-poor students is necessary for less-advantaged students to prosper. Some advocates argue that the better-off students might gain in other ways – a greater appreciation of diversity, and the like – but you never hear that the result of busing is to boost their reading or math scores.
I don’t buy the assumptions behind the busing policy. That is, I believe that the right set of policies and personnel can led to minority-student success regardless of whether their share of the student body is 20 percent, 50 percent, or 80 percent. But even if I did, I would be deeply troubled by the policy because it treats children – many children, most children in the community, in fact – as means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves.
My sons are not tools to be manipulated by someone else to accomplish his educational objectives, no matter how noble. They are not cogs in a machine. And no twisted interpretation of a constitution or sweeping professiorial assertion can make them into tools or cogs. To the extent that politicians and activists fail to appreciate that basic truth, they will continue to advocate policies that enrage the vast majority of their fellow citizens.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.