In the recent Democrat primary debates Senator Kamila Harris chastised Senator Biden over his anti-school busing stance back in the 70's and has thereby gained significant ground in the polling. Ms. Harris gave an emotional speech, pretty clearly pre-arranged, about how much being bused to an alternative school changed her life. Ms. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both well paid academic scientists, and grew up in an upper middle-class family in Berkeley, California, probably the most "progressive" city in the country. It seems unlikely that in her childhood she ever suffered significant racial animosity. Mr. Biden's response was that in the past he was agreeable to the concept of busing, but not when it was imposed by federal court order, probably an untrue statement when you look at the record, but the best he could do. The subject of court ordered school busing is interesting to me because it is one of the foundations of my conversion from a youthful liberal to a mature conservative.
School busing started in San Francisco right when my son was entering first grade. When all the buses came on the first day there were only a handful of kids, most families having found other alternatives. I resolutely convinced a reluctant Emily to let him go, that it was all for the good, and that "there was nothing to fear but fear itself". So off he went every day to Hunter's Point, a predominantly black area, without incident. In fact, down the line he was put in a "gifted" program which was shifted from one school to another and so wound up being bused to 3 different schools.
As it turned out we made the difficult decision to return home to Scranton after 14 years in California. Making the decision involved a temporary stay in Scranton, and on returning to San Francisco, we enrolled my 2 kids for a couple of years in a Catholic school a few blocks from our house. My liberal eyes were opened! Now they walked to school. And when they came home, they played around with schoolmates who lived nearby. We got involved with neighbors for fund raising events for the school. What busing did was to rob my kids of the blessing that I had experienced of growing up going to a neighborhood school. Racism had nothing to do with it. There was no way to live in San Francisco, even back in the 1970's, without mixing with people of other cultures. The Catholic school enrollment was largely Hispanic, and my son's best friends were Pancho and Miguel, who lived down the street.
This was one of many experiences that taught me that society was the way it was for many complex reasons and that simplistic ideas for change, introduced abruptly without thinking through the consequences, often did more harm than good. Liberals have a tendency toward what Thomas Sowell calls one stage thinking. They perceive a problem and agitate to apply a direct solution without more than a superficial analysis of cause and effect. If you do not agree with what seems to them to be obvious it is either that you are ignorant or have some nefarious motive. I understand that way of thinking well, having indulged in it when I knew no better. Most who reason that way are I think well intentioned, but some are merely opportunists, taking advantage of their more sincere comrades for personal benefit. I can't read anyone's mind, so I'll leave it to you to decide in which category Senators Harris and Biden belong.
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