October 25, 2004
1970 and Beyond
Key is stirring the hornets' nest of racial sensitivities, and her point is well taken. I was yanked out of public schools in junior high when desegregation went down for good in the Hell's Half Acre of Georgia I lived in, but I watched the repercussions closely. There were a lot of knife fights, beatings, and incendiary bullshit on both sides. And, eventually, the kids learned thay had some things in common, some things they didn't, and things eventually went from internal segregation within a "desegregated" school to some modicum of mutual grudging respect, and acceptance. That took about twenty years.
Now I see schools getting more segregated both internally and geographically, and it all comes back to the first situation:
A bunch of adults trying to force an extremely combustible sea-change in social construct on children. I am not saying separate but equal was right. It was not. And, yes, the South dragged their feet between 1954 and 1970. But I was also in South Boston in 1975 when the mobs were foaming with the bloodlust. Good people do bad things. Forced busing was a bad idea for a noble purpose. Mixing up entire school districts in one fell swoop was a bad idea.
I wish I knew what the better solution would have been. I just saw the downside.
I grew up on military bases until I was 8, and the schools were naturally "desegregated" by virtue of the demographics of the airbase. Then in Santa Monica, California I encountered the same when living in a very balanced neighborhood where it was split very evenly, black, white, asian and hispanic (Cuban and Mexican).
It wasn't until we moved to Indiana in 1968 that I encountered an all white school, heard my first racial slur, and watched the kind of hate-filled behavior that was caused by forced bussing. Here, too, it is really only beginning to even out, and that's mostly at the hand of neighborhood demographics and not because of the court-ordered integration that was pushed on the city by a court in Chicago.
Riots in High School? We closed for three days for that back in the early 70's.
Posted by: Mamamontezz at October 25, 2004 10:53 PMIt's been on my mind for a while; I only bring it up now because I feel the dems are resegregating in an attempt to hold onto the black American vote.
Posted by: Key at October 26, 2004 9:05 AMI was at Myers Jr. High in 1971 when the school was closed for two weeks due to rioting. We'd rock the busses in the afternoon in retaliation for whatever ass-kicking one of us had taken that day, and meet in the athletic field for morning rumbles the following day. I can't begin to remember how many times I was mugged in the restroom and shaken down for my lunch money by some 17 year old "7th grader" from Hitch Villiage. Fights would break out in the lunchroom with people hurling metal folding chairs at each other and whacking people with swinging belt buckles. Scary times for a 125 pound 13 year old. I can't imagine one of my kids in an environment like that. I was overjoyed to leave that hell hole and wear the red plaid Raider necktie.
Posted by: tybee mike at October 26, 2004 11:19 AMHello,
I agree, I was one of ten whites in a school in the 1970s in Southern Calif and was repeatedly beaten up and the school turned their eye to keep the white students there. Finally I was stabbed and hospitalized. After learning how to walk again, the school expected me to go back! My parents had to pay for four children to go to private schools so their children were not murdered due to this integration bussing process. Why dont we hear why there was white flight during that era???