Yeah it was. But you know what? It worked. It was never about making anybody feel good or getting getting folks to hang out on the weekends. That's not what any of this is about. Bussing just took a meat ax to the structures of segregation & Jim Crowe. It wasn't just the south either. The biggest bussing fiasco was in Boston. It was happening all over. It was just the death throes of aparthied in America.Quote:
Bussing in the 1970s was crazy.
America got over it. Brown overturned Plessey & the Civil Rights Act (CRA) overturned all of Jim Crowe. It all caused some consternation, especially among the Klan remnants hiding in the trailer parks. But so what? Forced segregation was/is illegal. The reason bussing happened is because 20 years after Brown & 10 years after CRA, everybody's patience ran out. After all those years of balking, it only took a couple of years for the whole country to find ways to comply with law of the land once the courts got serious.
As for the sociology of it all: Holder's a bit light on tact, but he's right somewhat. Everybody walks on eggshells when the subject of race or any kind of prejudice comes up. All that gets heard are the shrieks from the fringes. It's nice if the stereotypes can be shattered all at once, but time & generations destroy them anyway. My grandkids have no idea what the fuss was all about. I never understood it fully because I was a navy brat & Truman integrated the services a couple of years before I was born. It wasn't part of my world until we moved off base. My pal Freddy's dad saluted my dad because of the stripes on his sleeve. So did all the other sailors. Social changes take time. Rational discussion of problems just speeds up the process.
Well the question can be framed many ways. I wasn' affected because I was class of '69. I wonder though: What was more traumatic for the kids, the actual bussing or the crazies trying to stop it?Quote:
Just ask the kids who lived through it.
