The Busing Issue Boils Over

TO many Americans, the most important journeys of election year 1972 are not the candidates' peregrinations, or even President Nixon's visits to Moscow and Peking, but the trips that their children--black or white, Northern or Southern--take each day in school buses. The familiar, homely yellow conveyance of the Norman Rockwell past has come to symbolize a bitter struggle over integration. Busing is fast becoming the most explosive domestic issue.

For years, busing was primarily a Southern concern as courts ordered school districts to dismantle dual school systems. But in the past year, court-dictated busing spread to Northern cities, giving rise to boycotts and sporadic violence in such disparate places as Pontiac, Mich., and San Francisco's Chinatown. One reaction to the uproar was a proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting busing.

Freedom of Choice. The amendment languished in committee for months. Then a court order requiring massive busing in Richmond (see box) and other cities reopened resistance. A recent Gallup poll showed that 77% of Americans--black and white--disapproved of busing as a means of racially balancing school enrollment.

George Wallace, running in the Florida Democratic primary, has made busing the keystone of his campaign, lashing the Administration and his opponents alike for approving court-ordered busing. With his candidacy in jeopardy, Senator Henry Jackson has offered an antibusing amendment that would guarantee "freedom of choice to attend neighborhood schools." The other Democratic contenders have refused to endorse a constitutional ban against busing, but have taken increasingly hostile questioning from audiences for their stand. One Republican Senator noted the growing clamor against busing and predicted massive resistance to it. Said he: "If you keep stoking these fires, there's a serious question whether you can enforce the court orders. We would have a serious problem of civil disobedience."

There is already some of that. In Richmond, resistance to the desegregation order is in its seventh week. A white boycott of Augusta, Ga., schools last week left classrooms virtually empty, and Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter endorsed a one-day, statewide boycott to be held next week in sympathy. The Florida legislature drafted an antibusing proposition to be voted on in the March 14 primary. Governor Reubin Askew countered by adding to the ballot a question asking Floridians, however they feel about busing, to assert their commitment to equal opportunity for all races. Thus a presidential primary will incorporate a referendum on busing and civil rights.

Beneath all the emotion was the recognition that the U.S. seemed on the verge of a major new round of court decisions attacking segregation in the schools. The Richmond decision, acknowledging that primarily black central-city school systems can be balanced racially only by reaching out to the suburbs, is probably only the beginning. This spring the Supreme Court will rule on a suit that challenges de facto school segregation resulting from segregated housing patterns. In the past, non-Southern cities have escaped court orders because they were aimed at the de jure segregation of dual school systems. But should the Supreme Court uphold a Denver federal-court decision handed down in January, that ruling could affect virtually every suburban community in the nation and lead to busing on a scale far beyond anything the country has experienced.

With the antibusing brouhaha building, President Nixon took time out on the eve of his trip to Peking to summon seven congressional antibusing advocates. Nixon cautioned them against any move that could turn back the clock on civil rights, but promised some action to limit busing. Banging his fist on the Cabinet Room conference table, he vowed: "We're not going to leave it as it is. It's a responsibility of those who sit in this chair to solve problems, not to do nothing."

Three alternatives were discussed: 1) a constitutional amendment, 2) Justice Department intervention in court cases involving busing, and 3) legislation limiting busing while providing other means to upgrade substandard schools. Nixon promised a decision shortly after his return from China. Barely a day passed before it appeared that the Administration had foreclosed one of the three possibilities. Vice President Spiro Agnew voiced his personal opposition to a constitutional amendment. HEW Secretary Elliot Richardson followed up the Agnew argument, noting that any amendment might well nullify landmark civil rights decisions. The word spread on Capitol Hill that John Mitchell, too, opposed an antibusing amendment. Senate Leaders Hush Scott and Mike Mansfield registered disapproval. Congressional conservatives and liberals alike were in agreement with Yale Law Professor Alexander Bickel's view: "There is no way to fine-tune a constitutional amendment to deal solely with busing. It is beyond the wit of the most articulate draftsman, and it trivializes the Constitution."

Barring Busing. Congressional leaders then turned to a search for legislative answers, since the second alternative--intervention by the Justice Department--would probably not be visible enough to voters to take the heat off either the White House or politicians standing for re-election in the fall. Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale made an impassioned floor speech urging Congress to avoid "standing in the schoolhouse door" by barring busing. Mondale did not advocate busing in all situations and condemned it in some, but upheld "the use of reasonable transportation" as one tool to achieve integration "where it can be accomplished." Privately, congressional liberals advised civil rights groups to back down from rejection of any antibusing legislation; sentiment against busing is simply too strong, they argued, to prevent passage of some sort of bill, and it would be best to collaborate on a compromise statute.

Almost buried in the antibusing rhetoric is the fundamental issue: ensuring equal education for all children. This is impossible without integration, according to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, which still seems to embody a moral imperative as well as sound logic, even though many blacks themselves are disillusioned by the idea of integrated education. But given the country's mood, integration will obviously not be brought about by massive busing. Draft legislation has been drawn up by Bickel and North Carolina Congressman Richardson Preyer that would allow one-way busing --ghetto to suburbs--or permit students to transfer as part of a national plan to end segregated schools.

There are other methods of removing the inequities in education: better funding for substandard schools, special programs, a student "voucher" system and traveling teaching teams. Yale's Bickel believes that imaginative programs can be devised to equalize educational standards, noting that the courts are insisting on busing partly because no other alternatives for bettering schools are available to them. Says Bickel: "The remedy for unequal education is a fluid concept. What is needed is for school districts to make the courts deal with a changed problem. I hope men of good-will will address the problem creatively."

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