The Busing Battleground

I read a book about that Southie thing. They spoiled the whole Boston thing for me.

It resulted in the overnight ghettoization of countless cities across the US caused by panicked white flight and the ensuing tax base decimation.

I did but I don’t remember it.

no

I was bused to my high school in Boston starting in 1977. All was always peaceful and quiet on our route.

I was surprised to learn there was still busing in Boston until 1999.

Southies are the kind of people who are MAGA now.

R6 It’s Boston. When you watch those old tapes people are being interviewed by newscasters using the n word. In the 70s. In public like it’s nothing. Those whites acted more racist than Jim Crow whites.

I noticed that too^^^

Watched this because of this thread. Thank you for the recommendation, OP.

Growing up in the '80s, I had heard about busing and desegregation in the most general terms in the local (Midwest) media. I was very for it.

It's clear why this program was a failure.

They should have started by giving predominantly Black schools the resources white schools had. Equalize the amount spent per pupil, ensure they had basic supplies and permanent teachers.

Putting both Black and white kids on a bus for up to an hour each way instead of equalizing their neighborhood schools' resources — no wonder people were upset. I fucking hated the bus in middle and high school. It was literal torture. I would have revolted too if I had to be bused instead of walking a few blocks to school.

Of course it's more complicated than that, and the racist behavior displayed was horrifying, disgraceful. But the judge who mandated the busing plan seemed to use a sledgehammer when a scalpel would have been better, at least to start.

I experienced it indirectly.. grew up (white) in a suburb just outside Boston that had a ton of “white flight” going on there. Irish mostly, some Italian too, all moved out fast from the Hyde Park / Roxbury / Dorchester areas in the ‘60s. My own family was Protestant and older New England, from the Berkshires on one side and New Hampshire on the other… our white neighbors were almost all Catholic and most had just moved from Boston proper to the ‘burbs. Some had even grown up together in the same city neighborhood.

The casual-yet-intense neighborhood racism all around me growing up was a lot to dig out from, when I went to college.

I was among the first groups of kids who experienced it but never thought much of it.

R11 So you are Greg, I knew it. Love you Torta/Greg.

That little girl was me.....

Someone thinks Torta is Greg? Bless your heart, r11.

R10, you’re welcome. Thanks for your post—I agree with all of it.

The real underlying issue was housing. Open housing. Redlining, mortgage discrimination. But desegregating the schools in and of itself was also a major issue. Public schools were funded by property taxes. The inequities were obvious. So sending white kids to Black neighborhood school and sending Black kids to white neighborhood schools was enacted to make a point. I remember, being from Michigan, how the extreme conservative racist shits set fire to the school buses parked in the bus depot yard in a an attempt to stop busing white kids to the predominantly Black, Pontiac, Michigan school district. It was a very volatile time. But it also accelerated attempts to defund of public schools and popularized the possibility of a voucher system that allowed people to fund private schools with public education dollars. And of course Charter schools and home schooling are all off shoots of this attempt to fight desegregation. Racial Supremacy at it's best.

Kind of a disaster accomplishing not much.

My fellow liberals think lots of problems can be fixed by sledgehammer tactics to force beliefs and outcomes many are simply not interested in. As the earlier poster said, the issue was the disparity in resources for schools, not the skin color of the pupils.

You’re now making replicas on threads about documentaries? You’re a grown man with no job or college education or even a trade. You’ve done nothing with your life yet you’re sitting on Datalounge and Twitter and LPSG and Reddit and weird online boards and forums most people don’t know about posting all day. Saving threads and making duplicates is the strangest shit I’ve ever seen. You’ve even copied and pasted threads word for word at times. Google has the original.

It’s insane behavior like this that scares people off these sites.

We went to private school so I didn't experience it first hand but I remember hearing about it on the news when I was a child. Seems like a dumb idea.

WTF is r19 yammering on about? No Madison Cawthorn and Nick Fuentes do not post here, nor did the late Charlie Kirk.

Grew up in Long Beach CA and we had bussing through most of my school time. They would bus inner city kids out to the suburban schools, and they created a magnet program (PACE) at the downtown high school (Poly) which attracted suburban (white) kids into the city.

Personally, I think it worked very well. I always had completely racially intermixed classmates, and I think everyone was better off for it. And the aforementioned PACE program lives on today.

Jesus Christ, does PBS and NPR do stories on anything else. They’re race-obsessed. And they wonder why their funding was pulled.

No one who regularly listened to NPR or watched PBS would say that, r23. They're not "race-obsessed", you baby.

R18 EVERY elder black person I know who is educated who actually went through K-12 public schools say that all black schools were much better pre segregation in the south. ALL OF THEM.

I think it’s because white people are such stubborn devilish cunts, any forced legislation becomes almost impossible to enforce or play out how it should.

R19, if you’re referring to me (OP), I’ve started three threads since I started coming to DL in 2016. I don’t use Twitter, LPSG, or Reddit, or “save threads and make duplicates,” whatever that means.

But do tell us more about insane behavior.

Black people didnt like it anymore than whites. Everyone had neighborhood schools and it was much easier for all races when their kids could just walk . Plus everyone knew the teachers because most of them lived in the same area or had them as children too. I remember clearly our 1st grade class standing at the bus lane with signs welcoming the new black students. That was in N Fl circa 1966 (?) .Until then i hadnt gone to school with blacks. Most of us hadnt. It was truly no big deal to us kids. And I made 2 black friends that stayed my best friends until 6th grade .Their names were Donna Jean and Lillian . They taught me how to braid hair and during recess there we'd be,this little white fairy boy and 2 black girls braiding hair . Wich said skill actually worked in my favor not many years later when I had my unfortunate incarceration stint . I was popular for more than just sex !

R13, thanks(?) but I’m not “Greg” or “Gerg” and I don’t have a clue what he was like; we have never crossed paths. I left Boston for Brooklyn in 2011 and left Datalounge a few years after that. Came back in June 2024.

Redlining affected more White people than black.

I didn't have to deal with redlining but I spent 2 years in a magnet high school with many black males in a black neighborhood. I transferred sophomore year to a predominantly White school in a White neighborhood. I wish I hadn't wasted my time in the magnet school The difference was quite astounding.

^^^Should have been busing, not redlining.