Busing failed then, would fail now

Terrance L. Green and Mark A. Gooden made the unassailable point in their commentary in the Free Press last Sunday — “Here is how we can truly desegregate Detroit schools” — that racial integration is a core educational value in our post-Brown v. Board of Education nation and that its promise has yet to be fulfilled.

But their historical view of 1974’s Milliken v. Bradley case fails to grasp the complexity of Detroit’s educational past and future.

Milliken is often portrayed as a heroic effort to break Northern school segregation in an era in which Detroit schools, like other Northern systems, were largely segregated by neighborhoods and suburban schools were almost exclusively white as a result of race-based real estate, banking and housing development practices within Detroit and the suburbs.

The story is that the Supreme Court shot down regional desegregation in a decision that stands as a premiere example of the court’s unwillingness to provide the protections of Brown v. Board of Education to African-American school children in the North.

In reality, Milliken was a poorly conceived, risky roll of the dice. Plaintiffs commenced their case against the state and Detroit Public Schools with regional busing in mind, but with citywide busing as a fallback position if a regional plan were rejected. However, not a single suburban school district was included as a defendant in the case, though discrimination was as rampant in the suburbs as it was in the city.

• Commentary: Here's how we can truly desegregate Detroit schools 

Believing that a Detroit-only busing plan would accelerate white flight and lead quickly to much greater segregation within Detroit schools, DPS board members asked its legal counsel to bring in the suburban districts, but were told that the case would be won. When DPS lost, the federal trial court and Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered regional busing based upon a finding that a Detroit-only plan could not create an integrated system, because Detroit schools were only 36% white and busing would accelerate the exodus of white children. The Supreme Court attached no relevancy to this finding in overruling the lower courts. It held that, because the suburbs were not parties to the case, there was no legal basis for including them in the plan.

What is lost in portrayals of Milliken is that the case was pursued in the context of deep divisions between African-American leaders in the city on the topic of integration, divisions that sparked the suit itself. Then, the system was comprised of racially identifiable African-American, integrated and white schools. In 1969, DPS adopted a plan to further integrate Detroit high schools by reassigning 12,000 students. Then-state Sen. Coleman Young strongly opposed the move. He believed that African-American children did not have to be sent to white schools to be educated, and he favored a system of greater local control. He sponsored state legislation blocking the DPS integration plan and ordering the creation of local regional school boards within DPS. The unconstitutionality of this legislation blocking further high school integration was one of the principal grounds of the Milliken decision.

When the Supreme Court rejected regional busing, plaintiffs might have sought more modest integration within the city, such as implementing the board’s original high school plan, but they pressed for busing at all grade levels. As predicted, this resulted in the Milliken case contributing more to white flight from the city than the 1967 riot. It guaranteed the accelerated segregation of all Detroit schools.

Young’s view that neighborhood schools and greater local control are preferable to regional busing deserves thoughtful consideration today. I know of no practical way to desegregate Detroit schools and create “racially and socioeconomically diverse” schools across metro Detroit as the authors advocate, than to institute busing.

But busing would subject many Detroit children to long hours of travel weekly. It would also place parents of Detroit children long distances from their schools, teachers and administrators in a city where many families don’t have easy access to transportation. Moreover, children performing below grade level may not get the special attention that they need, setting them up for failure. Detroit neighborhoods would lose schools as community resources because most schools would have to be closed. This would accelerate the dismantling of city neighborhoods as families would come under pressure to leave Detroit to be closer to their children’s schools.

There is much momentum today in Detroit to stabilize and revitalize neighborhoods and improve city schools. Dismantling Detroit schools by busing children to the suburbs has the potential to be destructive to them and to the city. Let’s be careful that we do not pursue yet another poorly conceived and risky roll of the dice.

John Mogk, a Wayne State University Law School professor, served on Detroit Public Schools’ board in 1970, when the suit to desegregate DPS was filed.