Talk:Desegregation busing/Archive 1

Untitled
The use of the term "Forced busing" was certainly not unique to, or most likely even initiated by the Boston area. The material here, however, seems to be of good quality, so this article should be re-written in a more general viewpoint, with the Boston case used as a good example. -- Kaszeta 19:03, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I am from Richmond, Virginia, and was directly involved as a school employee. Perhaps busing had some worthy goals, but a lot of damaging side effects occurred here. Vaoverland 05:40, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * Good edits. I'll try to add some material regarding my own experiences with Delaware.  -- Kaszeta 23:06, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article should specify:
 * To what extent were white pupils included in busing, or did it mainly affect black pupils being tranferred to predonantly "white" schools?
 * Were private schools ever affected by busing or other desegragtion policies? Were private schools (racially) segregated at all?
 * Were pupils usually forced to visit specific schools, or did schemes exist were pupils were allowed to freely choose their school, irrespective of were they lived or of planned school districts?
 * Did racial desegregation schemes also affect school with strong differentiation between good and weak students, and to what effect?

The values for blacks visiting predominantly black schools are of little relevance given the fact that the proportion of blacks in the whole population, and particularly in northern states, have increased. At least, such values should be supplementes by numbers for the proportion of white pupils that have black (or other) classmates, or a certain proportion of black classmates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meerwind7 (talk • contribs) 06:03, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Redirect
The spelling mistake "bussing" redirects here. It should redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busing
 * It's not a "spelling mistake". "Bussing" is perfectly correct, in fact more logical than "busing" (rhymes with "using"?). A consonant should be doubled in order to avoid the misunderstanding that the vowel is lengthened. 91.85.189.32 14:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually it makes sense to spell it "busing" to avoid confusion. "Buss" means to kiss and it was a frequently used word in newspapers in those days. (Of course, forced kissing might have been more effective than forced busing.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.20.162.46 (talk) 13:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Thoughts From Richmond 33 years since we tried it
I have tried to bring a bit more information and balance to the article. I believe the points to be made are:

1. In the past, it was OK practice for the school districts to assign students for racial segregation purposes and use buses to accomplish the transportation required.

2. Under a plan to desegregate, it should therefore be an equally acceptable practice to assign students to accomplish desegregation purposes and and use buses to deliver them to assigned schools.

3. A problem in making that transition is that more pupils will be riding longer distances to schools unfamiliar to them. Some school of the school are perceived as being located in dangerous and high crime parts of the community.

4. When the assigned school is far away, logistical problems arise with regards to after school activities, PTA meetings, retrieving a sick child from school, and so forth arise with distant assignments.

5. an Elementary pairing strategy would take home school X on one side of town and home school Y on the other side of town. We are assuming each would have about the same enrollment of K-5 grades. When they are paired, all the K-2 from both X and Y attendance zones will to school X and all the grades 3-5 from X and Y will go Y. Assuming that the children live reasonably near their home school, about 50% of their 6 elementary years, they will be cross-bused.

PROBLEM: Say Family Smith has children in grades 1 and 4. Normally, they would expect the 9 year old 4th grader to look after her younger 6 year old sister, especially going to and from school. The pairing plan prevents this from happening. Extra attention from the district to the special needs of younger children in transit may offset this somewhat.

Some thoughts...more to follow Commemnts, anyone?


 * This is a good statement of some of the major issues. Indeed, that's much the experience I remember from my early childhood in Delaware, except that #1 wasn't a huge issue---the schools were segregated since the neighborhoods were de facto segregated (and hence the school funding became segregated as well).  As a result, busing caused a *lot* of school kids got bused around long distances (Newark, DE suburbs <-> Inner City Wilmington) since typically K-3 were in schools in the suburbs, paired with 4-6 at inner city schools.  Results were as you mentioned: extracurricular activities suffered, and it was difficult to get any parental involvement for half of the elementary years.  Much student and family resentment over the often excessive bussing, too.    On the flip side, it did do much of what it was designed to do, which was to get the inner city students out of the delapidated inner city schools for half their elementary years, while simultaneously getting some suburbs to care about the decay of the inner city schools. -- Kaszeta 03:25, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Present situation
The article is very, very fuzzy about the present state of busing. It uses the present-tense to refer to busing in San Fransisco, even though this paragraph is in a section called "Historical examples" and the next section is called "Elimination and aftermath"; doesn't busing still exist in some areas, particularly in the South? I don't know much about this, but this article could definitely use a rewrite for clarity on the present situation. --LostLeviathan 07:34, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert on busing outside Cleveland (and I know a little about Chicago). When I found the article it was it tatters and I did the best I could to make it more readable.  To be honest, I don't know where busing is still used or where it isn't.  We need someone who knows a lot/is willing to research it. DirectorStratton 20:16, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Desegregation Busing is an Orwellian euphemism
The term reminds me of how the death of civilians in an aerial bombing is called "collateral damage." Read Politics and the English Language and Orwell's essay
 * No, it's worse than that. The term is a neologism and is therefore in violation of Wikipedia standards (see WP:NEO). The choice must be made between Busing or Forced Busing. The latter, while POV, is a) the term actually used to describe it by many, and b) more descriptive than the ambiguous "busing." Xuanwu 02:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I was directly involved in the Richmond case, and can attest that the term dates to at least before the 1971-72 school year. The term is proper and more descriptive than "busing". I thought we resolved the most NPOV name for this article 2 years ago. BTW, not all the participants in many busing plans were "forced". Many (but certainly not all) had choices. Vaoverland 05:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Wilmington
I think that it's not true that Wilmington integrated due to Brown. I seem to remember that a few months before Brown, the Delaware Chancery Court ruled against segregated schools. I'll have to look up the decision and make any necessary changes.

Article Focus
I appreciate the improvements and changes to the article, but I think it is important to keep in mind that this article is on desegregation busing and not desegregation. Some sentences in this article are being slowly twisted to general arguments for/against desegregation rather than the act of busing to improve desegregation. DirectorStratton 05:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
I believe that statements which imply that opponents of busing were racist are biased, inaccurate, and unfair. While the court system and the media largely viewed this issue as a racial one, for many families it was an economic and practical issue.

Every responsible and capable parent of every race who can avoid sending their children to a bad school should do so. The "racism" issue should be addressed in a direct and neutral manner rather than allowing this article to be a platform for exposing closet racists and their diabolical coded language.

This article is biased
I've added a paragraph to counter the overwhelming bias in this article. It largely presents one side--that of busing's proponents--and belittles those who present the flaws. (The repeated reference to "no empirical evidence" that busing encouraged white flight, "no empirical evidence" that busing created stresses for parents and schoolchildren, is pure sophistry.) There must be more balance here, as (1) busing has been ended in one community after another since the 1990s, often with the blessing of African American parents who want to return to the community spirit of neighborhood schools, and (2) public school systems from Savannah to Charlotte to Richmond have become minority school systems due to one thing: radical busing plans to achieve a mathematical racial balance.Mason.Jones 23:14, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing the biased opinions expressed. It was wrong and that fact should be defended. 24.218.194.184

This article is obviously biased. almost all of the information in this article is against busing. however, I am against busing myself. so, you may not think much of my post,just thought I'd say that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crochetcat (talk • contribs) 17:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Many Modifications
Please be patient while reviewing my changes. This issue is obviously a touchy subject for many but I believe a few things can be agreed on...
 * Busing is understood to be a failed program
 * The opponents are not necessarily racists
 * The proponents are not necessarily zealots/leftists/whatever

When I found this article it implied that the resistance to busing was secretly racist. That's unacceptable. I removed bias where I saw it in the main part of the article and expanded the "Criticisms" section to cover the major criticisms of busing. I believe that somebody should jump in and offer some sort of "Arguments For Busing." I'm not the ideal person to create that section. I hope everybody finds my modifications to be an improvement. --68.188.177.73 21:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * A point that seems understated is the impact on children. I remember stories of kids having to endure hour long (sometimes more) bus rides to and from school when their closest school was only 5-10 minutes away. Such long rides are damaging to a child's capacity to learn, since it means they had to get up early in the morning and came home later at night. This hurt every student affected by busing, regardless of race. Xuanwu 02:29, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Needs more rework
Just about every reference to "Metropolian area" (and similar phrases) in this article should be changed to city. Much of white flight was moving out of the city (or school district) to the suburban areas of the metro area (and the counties adjoining which in turn resulted in the metros land area increasing.) Jon 22:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Kansas City
I added information about the KCMSD busing program. It really went far beyond just busing at attempting integration, although full details would be off topic in this article, so maybe it should be linked elsewhere (or have its own page for that matter). I didn't have much time, so I kept the addition short. I added an external link to a very good (although probably not so NPOV) analysis from the CATO Institute. There are some good facts there that could be added.--Kagato 06:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Social engineering
A miserable example of a particularly unAmerican era in America. Some ivory tower intellectual theorized that racism could be eradicated if we just forced black and white kids go to school together. Never mind that their freedom is being stamped out or that their education is being ruined. One comment I heard from a busing supporter was that it failed because it didn't go far enough: the court should have forced people to live together too. Ie, take a family out of their house and make them live where the court wanted them to. Unbelievable. Why not force people to marry who the court wanted them to? Why not tear children from their parents and force them to live with another family picked by the court? All in the name of fighting racism.

What actually happened was bad enough. Right at the time when Europe and particularly Japan were kicking our asses competitively, esp. in children's education, the ivory tower types unleashed their massive social experiment on the public schools, creating a huge distraction away from basic education at the worst time. Instead of concentrating on improving reading and math, which was the real need to help our children compete for good jobs, educators and administrators put their energy into transforming the schools into social engineering and social service agencies. No wonder America now has to import huge numbers of engineers and scientists from abroad.

Oh please! Our rights as African Americans were being stomped upon long before busing. Forced segregation is much worse than forced busing. Don't use that as an excuse for a underlying racist ideology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jparham3 (talk • contribs) 22:05, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Two wrongs don't make a right. Anti-busing is not a racist ideology. Actualy it's the other way around as busing proponents seem to believe that blacks can't learn unless in the company of whites. And it's not true that "forced segregation is much worse than forced busing". 41.240.207.145 (talk) 01:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Every parent should have the choice of where to send their own children to school. Schools should be allowed to use only prior academic performance and the ability to pay enrollment fees to restrict enrollments. Assigning any or all enrollment spots using discriminatory ratio's except merit alone is responsible for the crisis in US inner city schools.

Ted Landsmark
This piece says that Landsmark, who was attacked by participants in an anti-busing rally in Boston City Hall Plaza, was an attorney. I believe that he was (and is) an architect. Anyone know for sure? The article also says that an American flag was used as a lance in the attack. While it looked that way from a famous photograph, J Anthony Lukas' Common Ground says that the flagpole was actually swung at him like a bat. This is more consistent with his injuries--he suffered a broken nose, not a stab wound.

Prince George's County - not NPOV
The subsection on Prince George's County makes two references to "logical" boundaries. This is not NPOV, especially as used in, "logical school boundaries were finally restored." Geographical boundaries cannot be logical or illogical, they're just lines. I would edit it, but I'm not even sure what the original author is trying to say -- were the pre-busing boundaries straighter or something?

Additionally, the third paragraph implies that busing was responsible for the change of demographics in the county. Since there were significant demographic changes in many regions of the USA during this time period, such an inference seems unverifiable.

Finally, the tone of the statement, "Even with this, the NAACP was still not satisfied..." is clearly not NPOV.

This is assumed, not supported
The entry to the page:

"Desegregation busing is the practice of remedying past racial discrimination in American public schools "

Remedying indicates a positive thing. I don't agree that busing remedied anything. I believe it is more accurate to say "attempting to remedy," though even that in my opinion assumes too much. One might as easily say "attempt to assuage," since in my opinion it isn't certain at all about the motivations of the busing proponents, and in either event it failed.

how do I go about getting this error fixed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edbarbar (talk • contribs) 03:52, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

A "remedy" is actually a legal term; the injunctions that gave rise to "busing" were remedies crafted by courts to correct past discrimination.

NPOV
Virtually the entire article is written as a critique of the busing programme. While many of the criticisms leveled are, at least in part, justified, the overall tone created is an extremely hostile one lacking in balance, breaching WP:NPOV. There are, for example, many weasel worded and unverified claims, excessive anecdotal focus on atypical extreme cases, as well as an almost complete absence of the perspectives of those who were, or are, in favour of busing, or a neutral explanation of the reasoning behind the programme.FrFintonStack (talk) 14:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you give examples, please? The Criticisms section does need to be cited and I have done so for many of the claims.--Gloriamarie (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

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Chickens Came Home to Roost
Growing up in the South during the 1950's and 60's was a time of court ordered desegregation... including busing. Being a kid, I figured that we deserved the treatment because of our past segregationist policies. At least that's what we were told. Still, it was an ordeal. You might have a school six blocks from your house, only to be bused across town to go to someone else's school. Despite having a school in sight, I've ridden the bus for 2-hours a day many times.

Then, I grew up... and travelled. And, I grew angry. I grew angry because I learned that desegregation and busing was generally a South-only mandate. Yet, the Northern cities I visited were the most racially segregated places I had ever seen. But, there was a difference. In the South the practice was called segregation, while in the North it was quaintly referred to as ethnic neighborhooding. Segregation was illegal, while ethnic neighborhooding was ok.

Then, the Boston Busing Riots of the 1970's!! It was a happy time for me and others like me who had grown up under the yoke of federal court orders, while the identical practices in the North were ignored. Now, at last... the chickens had come home to roost! Everyone in the North was fine with practicing the same institutions that they disapproved of in the South. But, the shoe didn't seem to fit the other foot when the time came. I laughed, I cheered, I celebrated.

Personally, I was always against the busing of school children... anywhere. Education of the young should be the only goal of the public education system... it's certainly wrong to make the institution a place for social experimentation. But, if we have to have it, it needs to be applied equally. As my grandmother always said, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander.".

Indeed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mnpd (talk • contribs) 23:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

--- "I laughed, I cheered, I celebrated." --- Nice to know what an ass you are relishing other people's suffering. I might have "been saddened to see that the lessons hadn't been learned from our suffering and were being repeated" or some such. Indeed, I hope you avoid finding your grandmother's wisdom applied to someone reveling in some tragic circumstance in your life. 108.20.43.129 (talk) 19:02, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Need to replace the term "white" with European-American
I feel that the use of the word "white" to describe Americans of all or predominantly European ancestry† is not only archaic but inaccurate and should be replaced with the term European-American. Just as the term "black" is increasingly being replaced with African-American, which is far more accurate, given not only the variations of skin pigmentation within the latter ethnicity but also since there are many other ethnic groups, e.g. Dravidian Indians, Australian Aborigines and some Polynesians and Micronesians, who have heavily pigmented skin.

Indeed, during the British Empire, it was common for the British to refer to all such persons under their rule as "blacks". And the racial slur nigger was commonly used to abuse to such persons by racist Britons--whether they were African or not.

†I myself am 1/8th Cherokee, as well as fractionally African-American and my daughter is also partially of Spanish, mestizo, Apache, Navajo, Cherokee, Aztec and Mayan descent as well, making a description of her as "white", despite her physical appearance of blond hair & blue eyes, not only inaccurate but offensive.

PainMan (talk) 10:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, we should also ban the word 'blackboard' and call it 'Chinese-American porcelain enamel, silica, wood, steel, and quartz board' lest it be offended. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.169.3.98 (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Painman, while I agree in theory that changes should be made over time in society in racial terminology, I think the status quo in academic works and on Wikipedia today is that "black"/"African-American", and "white"/"Caucasian" are the terms to be used. There is definitely no consensus on whether black or African-American is better as you suggest, and they are generally used interchangeably.  The problem with "European-American" is that many readers may assume that it refers to recent European immigrants to the US.  African-American should by logic have the same meaning too, but due to its frequent use it usually means multi-generational black Americans.  Since Wikipedia is not a place for trying to change racial terminology, and using "European-American" would possibly lead to confusion, I think using "white" here is fine (and generally, I find that it pairs better with "black" than "African-American").Wilytilt (talk) 00:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds good but keep in mind that "White People" are the ones coined the terms white, black, colored, etc. in the first place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jparham3 (talk • contribs) 22:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, then, according to you we can’t use any of their terms, and must undo them, undo everything else that whites have ever done, and according to your logic, must exterminate all whites! 2604:2000:9063:9F00:F4C4:E64B:61B1:60B4 (talk) 08:58, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Segregation/Desegregation logic
Just because the pot wasn't stirred enough on this subject, I was just thinking of some semantic logic: How can something be "de facto segregated"? Wouldn't segregation, by definition, need to be intentional? If, as the article suggests, factors in housing caused segregation in neighborhoods, then the buses aren't segregated, the neighborhoods are. How can you desegregate a bus if it wasn't segregated in the first place? Say if California law decreed "Only people wearing purple shirts can own beach property in California" you wouldn't say that "Los Angeles segregates people by shirt color, let's desegregate Los Angeles". 71.83.198.208 (talk) 09:13, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, as long as segregation is defined to include "self-segregation", there are highly-exact mathematical formulas which can be used to define the degree to which "bird of a feather flock together". In any case, in some northern cities during the 1950s and 1960s, there were no formal laws decreeing where blacks could live in cities, but in practice, it was commonly understood that they were likely to receive a hostile reception if they moved to anywhere except certain "ghetto" neighborhoods. AnonMoos (talk) 08:46, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

NPOV problems, etc.
First of all, this page clearly needs to be called simply "busing". Look up in any dictionary and you'll see this as the main definition of the word. Wikipedia naming principles assert that when a term has a single, most used meaning, the article for that meaning should be titled simply by the term itself, and any disambiguation page goes under e.g. "busing (disambiguation)". Cf. Texas vs. Texas (disambiguation).

In addition, this page has tons of NPOV problems. As others have noted, it's heavily slanted against the idea of busing. It's full of statements like
 * As of 2007, students of Los Angeles Unified School District were predominantly Hispanic (73%) and black (11%), 9% were White. The city of Los Angeles was 49% Hispanic, 29% White, and 9% black.

which are attempting to show the negative effects of busing, but without quoting any sources indicating that busing caused this state of affairs, or even that it's different from what it was prior to busing.

Or this section:
 * The transition was very traumatic as the court ordered that the plan be administered with "all due haste." This happened during the middle of the school term, and students even in their senior year in high school were transferred to different schools to achieve racial balance (not true - I was a senior who would have been bused as a junior, but seniors were exempt). Many high school sports teams' seasons and other typical school activities were disrupted. Life in general for families in the county was disrupted by things such as the changes in daily times to get children ready and receive them after school, transportation logistics for extra curricular activities, and parental participation activities such as volunteer work in the schools and PTA meetings.


 * The white population of the Prince George's County Public Schools was growing until school busing was started; it dropped significantly afterward. The county population is now less than 25% white and more than 65% black. The statistics for the 136,095 student school district changed even more, and it is now less than 8% white and more than 77% black.


 * The federal case and the school busing order was officially ended in 2001, as the "remaining vestiges of segregation" had been erased to the court's satisfaction. Neighborhood-based school boundaries were restored. The Prince George's County Public Schools was ordered to pay the NAACP more than $2 million in closing attorney fees and is estimated to have paid the NAACP over $20 million over the course of the case.


 * Nevertheless, these demographic changes caused by desegregation busing have changed the county, transforming a great number of neighborhoods that were formerly middle-class and white to black and upper-middle class.

Notice all the problems here:
 * Unsourced assertions like "very traumatic"
 * Unsourced claims like "students even in their senior year in high school were transferred to different schools to achieve racial balance" that are then contradicted within the text itself: "(not true - I was a senior who would have been bused as a junior, but seniors were exempt)"
 * Unsourced claims like "The white population of the Prince George's County Public Schools was growing until school busing was started; it dropped significantly afterward." that attempt to show causation without any sources asserting such causation
 * Statements like "The Prince George's County Public Schools was ordered to pay the NAACP more than $2 million in closing attorney fees and is estimated to have paid the NAACP over $20 million over the course of the case." that attempt to paint the NAACP as simply a bunch of greedy lawyers
 * Followed by the equally unsourced "Nevertheless, these demographic changes caused by desegregation busing have changed the county, transforming a great number of neighborhoods that were formerly middle-class and white to black and upper-middle class.", which was obviously inserted by someone in favor of busing who was trying to counteract the POV of the previous paragraphs by adding POV in the opposite direction rather than fixing the POV

Benwing (talk) 04:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

California metropolitan area
In the section tittled, "Effects", this sentence appears:

"Many metropolitan areas, such as Boston and California, where higher land values and property tax structures were less favorable to relocation..."

Surely the entire state of California is not one metropolitan area. I would correct it myself, but I'm not sure of the author's intent. Could someone with more knowledge please correct this? Van Vidrine (talk) 18:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It would either be san francisco or LA, but i do not know enough about the topic to comment.Beefcake6412 (talk) 19:00, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Citation Needed.
I removed all the data that was marked Citation Needed, all of the entries from either 2008 or 2010. Also took the Reference Improve tag off the top. It can be put back if anybody thinks it necessary. GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:39, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

There are numerous spots in the entry that require citation. There are multiple, repeated references to court decisions and their effects without any supporting citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.131.120.1 (talk) 15:25, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

New article on Boston busing crisis?
In the midst of rewriting Boston Police Department, I realized that there's no dedicated article to the Boston busing riots of the 1970s, and searching for "Boston busing crisis" redirects to a subsection here. Honestly, I think the topic is big, important, and notable enough to have its own article (especially given that Boston bomb scare exists... cough). Anybody want to help me work on this? Accedie talk to me  23:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ETA – new article here. Please help make it better! Accedie  talk to me  23:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 02:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Foreigner that doesn't understand what forced busing is about
As an Australian, i have no idea what this forced busing is about, so when i hear about it somewhere, i expect to come to wikipedia wanting to find out what it was without having to go through the entire article to figure it out.

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to include something like this at the top of the article? -

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101018092544AAZtHcX

"It was for Integration of the races. You, if selected, did not necessarily go to your neighborhood school. You got on a school bus, though you could have walked to your neighborhood school, and went to a school where the races would balance out statistically. You helped create that balance by your presence with others of different race. So, whites, blacks, asians, students were bussed all other the area, not just their school district." -- 04:58, 6 August 2013‎ user:HoorayForZo1dberg


 * They men forced bussing - using buses. I thought it was pronounced like 'boosing'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.29.18.153 (talk) 10:35, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Las Vegas
If "This area of Las Vegas had traditionally been a black neighborhood", the fact that most students were black was not segregation, it was demographics. The CCSD "did not see the need to desegregate the schools", as they were not segregated.Royalcourtier (talk) 08:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Cost of the bussing policy
Maybe as a non-American I do not fully appreciate local animosities, racial strife, past injustice and legal battles. Nevertheless, there seems for me one serious thing missing in this article. Noble aim is clear. Controversy is clear. White flight is more or less clear. There is nowhere mentioned the direct cost of such policy, especially in relation to educational spending in affected areas. Shouldn't it also be included to let reader fully understand whether such policy was rational or not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.47.171.175 (talk) 20:24, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Proposed Class Topic
Hello, I'm a student at Rice University and am interested in revising and adding to this topic as a part of a class assignment. I've listed potential sources on my user page, and look forward to enhancing the history section, in particular. Please let me know if you have any comments, critiques, or advice! Cpm5 (talk) 02:15, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Over-reliance on a single citation.
Far, far too much of this article is cited to a single twelve-page excerpt from one book by conservative author David Frum: "Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. pp. 252-264. ISBN 0465041957." As an opponent of busing, Frum's opinions can be cited in support of his own views or to represent opposition, but they shouldn't generally be cited for other things when more neutral and reliable sources are available; and, in any case, it is bad to rely to such an extensive degree on one source. This is an article about busing, not about Frum's views or those twelve pages from his book. --Aquillion (talk) 20:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I definitely second this opinion, which I was going to mention until I saw it here. I read the segment of Frum's book about desegregation busing, and not included in this article are other poll results about black approval for busing, which were around 40-50% rather than the <10% in here.  Also, Frum's book overall is more an opinion piece from a conservative position (Frum is a writer for the Weekly Standard) than a work of history.  While his points certainly can be put in a "controversies" section, I do feel that the main exposition of historical events needs to be based on a neutral historical piece, as Frum's writing focuses exclusively on negative aspects.  I personally don't have any suggestions for good histories of these incidents, but someone who does should try to improve this article by adding more information from a NPOV.  Wilytilt (talk) 00:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

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Use of term "forced busing" and Proposal to Move
In Massachusetts cities, at least, "forced busing" was a political shibboleth used by anti-integration activists. Would "busing" be better? "Forced busing" also primarily used by the more aggressively racist protesters in the city and their elected advocates. - User:MMZach

In Cleveland, busing was the accepted term, and satisfies NPOV. I support the move. DirectorStratton 20:24, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Support the move, for reasons stated by MMZach and DirectorStratton. JamesMLane 12:41, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

"Busing" seems vague to me, but I agree that "Forced Busing" can have POV connotations. In Wilmington, Delaware, "forced busing" or "busing" were the standard terminology by most folks, but if having a formal debate on it this term was considered "loaded", and the more complete term "busing to achieve racial integration" was favored. Perhaps a more elaborate title? -- Kaszeta 01:19, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I do not support the move since the busing was court ordered, police enforced, and against the will of many parents who had children in the  Boston school system the name "forced busing" is accurate. It certainly wasn't voluntary. And since most Boston parents (black and white) who could afford to send their children to private schools shows that it was  never accepted.

To refer to as just "busing" equates it with the use of school buses in rural and suburban areas. Irish Hermit 18:31, 31 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Try to remember that this article doesn't only pertain to Boston; it is true that in most areas the move wasn't supported by many of the people. The key question is what was busing officially known as, ie. in newspapers, TV reports, etc.  If these and other official outlines called it forced busing this might be a valid argument.  In Cleveland such sources used "busing" as the term, I admit that I do not know what is was officially called in other cities.  If there is another article in the future with the name busing a disambiguation such as busing_(desegregation) can be added. DirectorStratton 22:20, July 31, 2005 (UTC)


 * "Busing_(desegration)" sounds good to me, with some mention of what names it went by in different areas. I agree with IrishHermit, in that "forced busing" isn't inaccurate (hey, we didn't have a choice in Wilmington, either), but "Busing_(desegregation)" is definitely NPOV and descriptive. -- Kaszeta 01:22, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * General convention (I don't know if this is codified somewhere) is that if an article's title is unique, it doesn't use an xxxx_(xxxx) name, that is only for instances where two topics share the same name. In this case, there is nothing else named "busing" so busing_(desegregation) ian't needed or used.  I listed that as a counterpoint to Irish Hermit's argument that "To refer to as just "busing" equates it with the use of school buses in rural and suburban areas."  Since there ins't an article on busing in rural and suburban areas, "busing" is still a valid title.  Does this make sense? DirectorStratton 01:29, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * Eventually there will be an article on busing as the normal practice in large districts, where many of the pupils live beyond walking radius of their school. I would prefer to move this article to busing (desegregation) now, and write a stub of the other article, as a place-holder, Since this section appears to have become the general move discussion, I will change its title. If anyone is offended by this, please change it back. Septentrionalis 16:36, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, School bus has a pretty decent background on this. I'd recommend moving Busing to point to School bus (it currently points here), since it has a good overview of the process, and make sure the material in School bus that points here is appropriate.  -- Kaszeta 18:56, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with much of the above. Forced busing is accurate, but a bit icky, while busing seems too general and more aligned with the contents of school bus than with this. How about yet another option? I would suggest moving this to desegregation busing and having busing redirect to school bus. That seems to incorporate the best of Kaszeta's two suggestions and avoids DirectorStratton's objection. Actually, it might even be appropriate to make busing into a disambig for school bus and this. Dragons flight 20:08, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support as long as busing/school bus is given a disambig to here. DirectorStratton 22:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me, too? Anyone else?? -- Kaszeta 22:55, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Hearing no objections, I have moved the page and set up a disambig at busing. People might want to go through and look at the usages of "forced busing" still in the article to see if they are reflective of a neutral tone.  Dragons flight 00:34, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I believe much of the press in Boston have referred to it as "Court Ordered Busing". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.234.133 (talk) 10:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

As an individual who was directly impacted by Boston's desegration 'plans', I confer to the term 'forced busing' as most accurate. We were bused and had no choice of schools or neighborhoods. For approximately 80% of the City of Boston student's, we were assigned the school. 68.5.207.187 (talk) 10:17, 1 January 2012 (UTC)PhoenixKnows

Broader lessons
Not sure how to source it, but I think one of the main conclusions is that middle-class white parents were resistant to any specific concrete worsening of their own children's education in order to serve some general broad overall vague higher social goal, and that any education reform strategy which depended on white middle-class sacrifice was found not to be politically sustainable over the long term... Whether this is considered to be a good thing or a bad thing, it seems to be the reality. AnonMoos (talk) 08:46, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You could source it by using Newspapers.com Thanks for offering to help out. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 19:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Simply "busing"
In the lead there's a "Citation needed" tag on this usage. I tried to find a good source but couldn't. I would remove this tag, but maybe somebody else can find a good source (not just EXAMPLES) that "busing" is the same as "Desegregation busing." Remember, examples of the usage is not the same as a Reliable source that the word and the phrase mean the same thing. Thanks. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't have access to the full paper, but the google preview of this paper says The issue is commonly characterized as "busing" . Regardless, I would support removing "busing" from the bolded list of names in the lead, but retaining the term as a shortened form for subsequent references. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 19:35, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you, BillHP. Good work. One source seems a bit meager, it seems, for a fact that is in the lead. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 21:01, 14 May 2018 (UTC)