Now, I’m liberal, but to a degree
I want ev’rybody to be free
But if you think that I’ll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I’m crazy!
Tanner Colby at Slate.com has written a thoughtful piece on one of the blind spots that most of us on the left share. We think that because we are on the side of justice and equality, our remedies must be correct. In the case of busing to achieve racially balanced schools, we had the wrong approach.
In the early seventies when the forced busing issue peaked I was single and concerned to see a fair solution to the problem of unequal education opportunities. As a liberal white guy, I thought busing was the only way. I watched the protests coming from the people who were "wrong". I wasn't at ease with what was happening, but like most, I didn't have to think too hard about it.
By the mid-eighties when my children were starting school my wife and I had to move to a new city. A good education for our kids was our main concern. We looked at the city boundaries and noted that it was under a court ordered busing mandate. We did what so many other middle class families did. We bought a house in the suburb with the best schools.
I didn't feel like a hypocrite. I felt like a responsible parent. And so I have to agree with Colby. We wanted what black parents wanted - good schools. Only we didn't know a better way to get them.
In the years that followed I had the opportunity to play in an over-50 basketball league with mostly African-American players. There were doctors and lawyers and guys who had done hard prison time. The whole spectrum.
We more than got along. We all shared the feeling of having come this far in life with our bodies in one piece and able to play at a decent level. And yet at the end of the day we got in our cars and went home to different neighborhoods.
We needed to come together forty years ago, but time proved that forced busing wasn't the way to do it.