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Even though I had barely set foot upon this Earth when desegregation busing took effect in my city of Akron, to this very day, I still hear stories relating to it, and I can see how it has affected entire communities around the city.
Anyone who knows anything about the Akron Public Schools system knows that it is divided into "clusters" of schools that generally center around one of the district's several high schools. When desegregation took place, Akron had nine high schools. The South Cluster, which centered around South High School in Akron's predominately African-American near-west side neighborhood, felt the brunt of the desegregation order. South High School, West Junior High and Thornton Junion High schools, and most of the South Cluster's elementary schools were decommissioned and shut down. The neighborhood once served by those schools was arbitrarily divided up among the "whitest" of the surviving eight clusters, and the students were bussed to those clusters.
Sounds like a good idea, right? Well, many students who lived less than a 5 or 10 minute walk from an old South Cluster school found themselves on daily, 30 to 45-minute bus trips to the edges of town, transported to predominately white neighborhoods with predominately white schools. To say they were somewhat less than warmly received during the early years of busing would be a very mild statement. Racial tensions flared in well-to-do Northwest Akron, and the one-time Akron suburbs of Ellet and Kenmore, which to this day still jealously guard their pre-annexation identities (and remain close to 95% caucasian in population). African-American students faced daily reminders of their "inferior" and "outsider" status, from harassment, threats and even violence in school hallways and at bus stops, to discrimination and exclusion from school clubs, councils and extra-curricular activities. Despite these things, the would-be students of the South Cluster were still expected to make the grade and make it to graduation. The 1980s were troubled years for bussed minority students in Akron.
Akron's near-west side neighborhood, without schools, suffered through its own problems. Without immediately local schools to serve their children, many of the parents who could afford to move, did so, packing up their families and heading to other neighborhoods and suburbs where their children wouldn't be bussed. They left behind impoverished families with limited options to dominate the demographics. The neighborhood today remains among Akron's poorest.
Flash forward two decades to the present day. The old South Cluster neighborhood is experiencing a renaissance thanks to several major urban renewal projects and a growing desire amongst its residents for erstwhile community services -- particularly neighborhood schools. The general consensus around the city is that busing and closing schools to meet the desegregation order was perhaps not the best solution. Interestingly enough, however, racial tensions have significantly subsided in many of the former hotbed areas, though it arguably may have more to do with general increase in level of tolerance and acceptance of diversity among the up and coming generation, than years of community exposure and desensitization to minority presence. But I'm not so naive to think that we've become a multicultural utopia. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It's still only been a mere five years since an African-American student was shot while waiting after school for the bus home in Akron's Kenmore neighborhood. He recovered, fortunately. However, the city's wounds are still healing.
So, in short, I can see where desegregation busing may have been good for my town in the long haul, by forcing integration of traditionally segregated schools, and interaction among so-called racial groups. But I can also see where it has done some significant damage and impeded progress in my town, namely by robbing a viable neighborhood of its schools -- it's very lifeblood. I also know that if I had been a South Cluster student facing busing, I would not have wanted to be taken to a neighborhood or a school where I would have confronted the darker side of human ignorance on a daily basis.
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