INSIGHTS

MORE THAN 25 years of desegregation litigation, underlined by 10 years of busing experience, have given the residents within the Dallas Independent School District an education -in futility.

Dallas, like every other major city in the nation, has discovered that NAACP-inspired, court-ordered busing plans have been destructive of the municipal fabric as a whole and of the minority community, in particular.

It is not surprising, then, that black organizations and black leaders throughout the country have been repudiating the pro-busing position of the NAACP and demanding local, neighborhood control of their schools and of their lives. For years, William Raspberry, the black columnist of The Washington Post (his column appears locally in the Times Herald) has argued that the NAACP’s intransigent position on busing is a vestigial remain of the early Seventies that is doing great harm to black communities and to black children. The same strain is now being heard in Dallas.

In a remarkable series of meetings, chaired by school board President Kathlyn Gilliam (who is black), a broad coalition of blacks, whites, school board members, former combatants, and present litigants has forged a desegregation package that everyone hopes will end the school district’s 25 years in court.

While the plan recognizes the need for increased resources (personnel, finances, curriculum, etc.) to be targeted toward educationally deprived subdistricts, it also emphasizes the damage that forced busing has done to both the white and minority communities. It calls for an end to forced busing and a return to neighborhood schools.

Looking back to 1971, when Federal District Court Judge William M. Taylor, Jr., delivered his first busing order, we have seen our school system deteriorate and our student population disintegrate. Busing has transported the DISD from a majority white system, numerically reflective of the population as a whole, to a predominantly minority system wherein the only students still being educated within the DISD are those who cannot afford to leave it.

If the current student population trend continues – and it is continuing -we will within this decade have an almost all-minority school system dependent upon a clearly white majority population for its financial support.

Putting aside the paternalistic nature of such a system, it is an untenable arrangement. Already public education is being relegated roughly to the same status of public housing: an inferior service underfinanced by the majority and utilized by the minority.

A quick look at the numbers illustrates the urgency of the problem. In 1971, the first year of court-ordered busing, the DISD student population was 70 per cent white. Just four years later that number had plummeted to 41.1 per cent. In 1978, the number was 35.38 per cent, and today it is 30 per cent -and declining.

As Supreme Court Justices Powell, Stewart, and Rehnquist wrote in a dissenting opinion last year, “It is increasingly evident that use of the busing remedy to achieve racial balance can conflict with the goals of equal educational opportunity and quality schools. In all too many cities, well-intentioned court decrees have had the primary effect of stimulating resegre-gation. The experience in Dallas during this litigation presents a striking illustration of this problem.”

Not that this in any way has deterred the federal courts. In an extraordinary case (Lee v. Macon County Board of Education), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (the same body that hears appeals in the Dallas case) approved a plan “that will probably result in an all-black student body, where nothing in the way of desegregation is accomplished and where neither the white students nor black students are benefited.”

That case takes on additional interest, since the former NAACP counsel in the Dallas case took the identical position to that of the court regarding Dallas. According to Justices Powell, Stewart, and Rehnquist, “Counsel was asked if he still would support the remand ordered by the Court of Appeals if he were certain that additional busing ’would result in these black children next year or the year afterwards … going to an all-black school because there wouldn’t be any whites or any people of any other color to go to school with.’ Counsel replied that his clients’ position would be no different in that situation.”

It is this “busing at any price” attitude that has led to the NAACP’s losing its credibility in local desegregation cases. Thinking people, be they black, white, or brown, cannot logically follow the NAACP position to its illogical conclusion.

Therefore, it is not surprising that in the present Dallas desegregation suit, again before Judge Taylor’s court, there appear to be only two vocal parties encouraging more busing within the DISD: Sam Tasby, an original plaintiff in the present case, and the NAACP, represented by its national attorney.

Mr. Tasby’s position is understandable, if regrettable, since it would be difficult for him to renounce his long-held position that has caused so much havoc and disarray within his own community.

But the national headquarters of the NAACP must be held accountable. It is time for Dallas to solve Dallas’ problems, and the hidden agenda of a national civil rights organization operating out of New York has no place in this issue. The national position of the NAACP has been repudiated by Dallas’ whites and blacks.

If the purpose of Judge Taylor’s busing order is to desegregate the Dallas schools, it is clearly having the opposite effect. If the buses continue to roll, there will soon be only minority students to board them. If we condemn purposeful segregation – and we do-we cannot, then, condone purposeful resegregation, the end result of court-ordered busing.

ADDENDUM: We are pleased to report that the Texas Legislature has unanimously mandated November 1981 SchoolBoard elections within the DISD, andGovernor Clements has signed the bill. Inlarge part, D’s readers, who responded toour editorial request to write the governorwith their views on this issue, deserve thecredit. Additional recognition should begiven to State Reps. Lee Jackson andChris Semos and State Sen. John Leedomfor shepherding the bill through theirrespective legislative bodies.