RESEARCH, POLITICS AND THE ANTIBUSING DEBATE

By

GARY ORFIELD

Reprinted from the Issue on

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION:

LESSONS OF THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
PART II

Published as the Autumn, 1978 issue of

LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS

Duke University School of Law

Durham, N. C. 27706

And so nobody talks to anybody now. So you have a man who is a fine guy but philosophically I have great disagreement with—Mr. Hatch-on the one side, and you have got Senator Kennedy on the other, and never the twain shall meet. So you give the people one of two alternatives, and they are taking a shot at the other one. They know one does not work, so they are going to try the other. That is what I think.

Probably my not being at the Lefever meeting will enhance the prospect of him being defeated. I do not know. But I really thank you for your time. I am going to continue to pick your brain, if I can, as we go along in this thing.

As my dear old friend, the Republican conservative Henry Fulsom used to say: "Politics is the art of the practical. Unfortunately, we are not very practical."

Mr. ORFIELD. Before we finish, Senator, perhaps I could just make one brief remark. In earlier testimony today, there was a claim that the courts in St. Louis are a designing a mandatory plan.

I am the court-appointed expert there, and I know neither judge has been designing a mandatory plan, nor have the suburbs been joined in the case at this stage. They are trying to talk about voluntary approaches and I would just like to make the record straight on that.

Senator BIDEN. As I said, there are several questions, including some that I have. I wanted to know your view about some of the voluntary incentive plans. The most innovative one-and I do not know how reasonable it is-is the college tuition plan. I would like your views on that. We will submit them for the record.

[The material supplied follows:]

I have recommended to the court in St. Louis that there be a trial of the Justice Department's proposal that students voluntarily transferring across the city-suburban boundary line to increase desegregation be given a half-year of free college tuition in a state college for each year in a desegregated school. An outline of possible procedures for testing the impact of this approach on a small scale will be submitted to the court by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in July, 1981.

Senator BIDEN. I thank you for your indulgence in hearing me go on for the last 10 to 15 minutes, but I say it because I respect you very much, and I know that you represent a community of intellectuals in this country that maybe has not been as exposed as much. There is a middle position. They are not all one way or the other. They are not all, "hang 'em," or, "rehabilitate 'em." We are not all saying: "Busing is good and all the programs that go with it," or: "Busing is bad, and, by the way, let's get rid of the programs.' There are some folks who are swimming in between and not getting very far, like me. Thank you.

Mr. ORFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator BIDEN. The hearing is adjourned.

[Additional material subsequently submitted follows:]

GALLUP POLL-WHITES, BLACKS SPLIT ON BUSING ISSUE

(By George Gallup)

PRINCETON, N.J.-The Reagan administration's position on the key domestic issue-busing to achieve racial balance in the schools-is in line with the views of

the majority of white Americans. The latest Gallup survey shows opinion among whites 4-to-1 in opposition to busing.

Blacks, however, are 2-to-1 in favor of this means of achieving a better racial balance in the schools.

While the majority of whites oppose busing, factors other than racial prejudice appear to underlie much of their opposition, as determined by a series of questions on attitudes toward racially-mixed schools.

For example, even among the 45 percent of white parents who say they have NO OBJECTIONS to their children attending racially-integrated schools, eight in 10 (78 percent) are opposed to busing as a means of achieving racial balance. Clearly, much opposition can be explained in terms of objections to the distance children have to be bused and to other factors.

Since 1964, when the Supreme Court ruling went into effect, the Court has been involved in more than 500 school desegregation cases.

On Nov. 17, the Senate passed a bill that would have prohibited the Justice Department from intervening in school desegregation cases involving busing. The Senate bill-which was never approved-would not have actually outlawed busing but by requiring private parties to bring busing cases to court, it would have made it difficult and impractical for pro-busing groups to use busing as an effective antidiscrimination tool.

Following is the question asked to determine the public's attitudes toward busing: "Do you favor or oppose busing children to achieve a better racial balance in the schools?"

Aside from basic dichotomy in the views of whites and blacks, majority opposition toward busing is found in all key demographic groups. However, comparatively more support for busing is shown by young adults and Democrats. Following are the findings in tabular form:

Following are the questions asked white parents to determine their attitudes toward sending their children to integrated schools:

"Would you, yourself, have any objection to sending your children to a school where a few of the children are black? Where half are black? Where more than half of the children are black?"

The results show only 5 percent of white parents would object to sending their children to a school where only a few of their fellow students were black. The figure rises to 23 percent where one-half the students are black and to 55 percent where more than half are black. These figures are similar in racial tolerance from a 1963 Gallup study.

Here are the results:

The inttings red Dday we keer in -esin merews with 1549 adults, mander. if wrom 121 were write and were nack. The nterviews were nducted in nure har 3 semical-eeter ochines as the nation during For suits taser i he ful ample, me an av with 15 percent confidence that de er zbrane a aming ma her room #fects zuid be three percentWe dons a ather nation. For us set in de vite subsample. a 4 percent margir sowa e lowest or suits laset in de Jack sample, a 10 percent nargen i ruud e lower

MACTION OF BLACK AND WHIES PARENTS WHOSE CHILDREN FAVY 38RN BUS80 FOR BACTAL BALANCS BASE CHILDREN FATE BEEN BUS&D)

Question. How Ed the busing off hidren in your family school with white black midren work auc-very scsitory, my arcy sucsactory or not sacsfactory

Basically, roughly 6 in 10 families report a "very satisfactory" experience for their children in their busing to achieve racial balance, with 8 in 10 expressing a positive reaction overall. Put another way, no more than 8 percent of the blacks and 16 percent of the whites feel that having their children bused has not been a satisfactory experience.

As the following table indicates, both blacks and whites report remarkably parallel reasons for their views about the busing experiment:

REASONS BLACKS AND WHITES GIVE FOR FINDING THEIR BUSING EXPERIENCE SATISFACTORY OR NOT (BASE: CHILDREN HAVE BEEN BUSED)

Question. Why do you feel that way about the busing of children in your family?

Note: Some people volunteered more than one answer, so colums add to more than 100 percent.

The litany of no real complaints from the children who have been bused, the ability of white and black children to get along, and the relatively small minority who report fighting and trouble all add up to a quite different picture of how busing has in fact worked out than one might have drawn from the confrontation cases which have received so much attention in the media.

OBSERVATION

The irony of busing to achieve racial balance is that rarely has there been a case where so many have been opposed to an idea, which appears not to work badly at all when put into practice, at least from the testimony of families who have lived through the experience. While it is obvious that there are whites who are still emotionally disturbed at the whole idea, there are incidents of outbreaks of trouble, there are whites who think the distances are too far to travel, and people would never have opted for the experiment in the first place; nontheless the almost automatic claim that "busing is a disaster" simply will not hold in the face of the facts from this study. And, among blacks, there is a clear sense that their children are going to better schools, which was the basic intent of the courts in ordering busing in the first place.