Busing Reappraisal

Report Outline
Opposition to Busing for Integration
Black Struggle for Quality Education
Proposals to Remedy Current Situation
Special Focus

Opposition to Busing for Integration

Emotionalism Views on Issue in Election-Year Politics

Busing to overcome racial segregation is a troublesome issue that refuses to go away. The emotions that busing generated in the 1972 presidential campaign are still alive as the nation enters another election year. And the same arguments that have been heard since the courts began ordering busing are being voiced with increasing passion as more districts outside the South are forced to desegregate. Busing, it is said, destroys neighborhood schools, forces youngsters to travel long distances to hostile environments, places them in uncomfortable and dangerous situations where learning is virtually impossible, removes parental control over their education and discriminates against the urban poor.

A new study conducted by a man once closely identified with arguments for school integration, University of Chicago sociologist James A. Coleman, now threatens to undermine the premise behind busing—that the integration of black and white children in the classroom will improve the test scores of Negro pupils. The study seemed to confirm a widespread belief that white parents will take their youngsters out of schools where busing is mandated, thereby causing resegregation. Many of the people who once supported busing as educationally and socially beneficial to both races are questioning or even forsaking it as a remedy.

For the 1976 presidential contenders, outright advocacy of busing for desegregation is considered political suicide. Public-opinion polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans strongly oppose such busing. In a recent national survey, the Gallup organization found that only 18 per cent of those interviewed favored busing. Whites rejected it by a margin of 75 to 15 per cent and blacks by 47 to 40 per cent. Seventy-two per cent of those contacted said they would support a constitutional amendment to prohibit it.