The Busing Nightmare Continues

By Genevieve Mitchell

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Spring 1996]

Under the aegis of the failed social experiment of mandatory busing for public school children, we have for 20 years witnessed the most malicious mechanism ever put forth for the sake of ameliorating segregation. This mechanism, forced busing, legally erected and politically mandated at the federal court level, has undermined quality education for all children in the public education system in urban communities.

In Cleveland, desegregation represents a one billion dollar taxpayer investment, which has facilitated the exodus of over 80% of the city's families and children. It has brought about the economic bankruptcy of the public school system and the deterioration of curriculum, quality programs and services. It has imposed misery and profound hardship on the parents of the most vulnerable--our children--and has strategically destroyed any possibility of creating a fair and equitable education system. I know from my experience as a mother of three students in this system that forced busing is a miserable failure.

Most of the people making decisions about the manner in which our children will be educated don't even live in Cleveland. From distances far removed, they know so well what's best for the rest of us! Black children's educational futures have essentially been mortgaged by those who do not speak for us.

Busing has not only destroyed good schools, it has obliterated effective parental involvement. It has placed parents in the ridiculous predicament of having to request a "special transfer" to have their children sent to a school around the corner! It has required the redistricting of neighborhood schools, enabling them to be taken over for magnet programs. In these programs, small groups of students are part of what, in effect, are private schools--operating under the auspices of the public school system. These magnet schools were created to deter the flight of parents who wished to circumvent court-ordered busing.

Because of the depletion of white children from the city schools and, therefore, a change in demographics, black children are now bused out of their communities to predominantly black schools in other parts of town. The busing nightmare has left some poor black children walking long, unnecessary distances to schools outside their neighborhoods. They are held hostage to repeated and unnecessary school reassignments, which are designed to justify "race ratios."

Masses of black families are being exploited in the promotion of a civil rights agenda that services only the needs of special interest and a non-authentic black leadership. Our rights as parents have been derided by people who would die and go to hell before they placed their own children in these inferior schools.

Our children do not belong to the attorneys, the unions, the school districts, the state or the courts. My only priority is for my children to receive an education that is not defined by the federal courts or civil rights attorneys, or other bureaucrats, whose children thrive in private schools. Educating children should be the only goal of the public school system, not justifying this ruse that is misnamed "desegregation."

-- Genevieve Mitchell is a member of the Cleveland Board of Education. She also heads the Black Women's Center, 1419 E. 80th Street, Cleveland, OH 44103; (216) 881-6637.

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