School Busing

Few issues are as controversial as school busing. Initiated more than 40 years ago as a means to resolve social injustice against African-Americans, busing remains a hotly debated topic. The state of New Jersey is currently embroiled in an emotional school desegregation battle. New Jersey's experience is being watched closely because of its implications for similar communities throughout the country.

In the 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools across the South were perpetuating a system of separate but unequal treatment of African-Americans. Thurgood Marshall, the African-American Supreme Court Justice most closely identified with the Brown case, was a former civil rights activist and chief counsel to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The Brown case involved four class action suits filed on behalf of African-American students in Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia, and Kansas. The Court moved to dismantle the systems of racial segregation allowed under state constitutions and statutes and to replace them with systems that promoted racial balance. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Brown case was unanimous. Although the basic goals and assumptions of the Brown decision have been upheld by courts over the past 40 years, evasive techniques, "years of trickery, open resistance, and white flight from desegregated school districts," have tainted the idea

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es where racial balance is achieved, separate and unequal education is still the reality: " . . . tracking continues to separate mostly black and Hispanic students from white students; social barriers continue to be constructed, thereby maintaining separate social worlds" (Arnold, 1995, p. NJ-11). Critics claim that some of the disparity in the performance of whites and minorities in integrated schools may be the result of institutional racism (Wiggins, 1995, p. NJ-8). The black community is, by no means, united in its support of busing to achieve school desegregation. Although the New Jersey Conference of NAACP Branches supports desegregation of Dwight Morrow High, the Bergen branch dissented and took a stand against school regionalization. The president of the Yonkers, New York NAACP was suspended when he expressed his opinion that school busing was no longer needed in his community. African-Americans differ from whites in their opinions about solutions to the issue of school desegregation. One of the alternatives suggested by blacks is to use the millions spent on busing to improve the quality of education at predominantly black schools. Other African-Americans believe the ultimate solution is total separation from w

Category: Government - S