Michael Biesecker, News & Observer (Raleigh), March 1, 2009
Those working to dismantle the Wake schools’ assignment policy should expect a fight from the new chairman of the county board of commissioners.
For Harold H. Webb, 83, continuing the busing of students to achieve economic diversity is merely the continuation of a lifelong struggle for racial equality.
A former Tuskegee Airman and educator who traveled the state during the 1960s to help integrate local school systems, he knows firsthand why the policies many parents now find onerous were established a generation ago. He helped create them.
The inconvenience suffered by families with students shuffled between schools, he says, is subordinate to the greater good achieved by avoiding the clustering of poor, minority children in schools in their urban neighborhoods.
{snip}
Joe Ciulla, an organizer for the Wake Schools Community Alliance and the parent of two students, said the alliance is not counting on Webb’s support in its quest to end the system’s reassignment policy. But he hopes Webb will keep an open mind.
{snip}
Through his work helping to desegregate North Carolina’s schools, Webb got to know Jim Hunt. When Hunt became governor in 1977, he appointed Webb as the state personnel director. Webb, the first black to hold the position, served eight years, retiring from state government in 1985.
He stayed involved in Democratic politics, however. Webb was a key statewide organizer for John Edwards’ successful 1998 U.S. Senate campaign and helped run numerous local campaigns, including those of state Sen. Vernon Malone.
{snip}
Webb has since won re-election twice, both times soundly defeating Republican candidate Venita Peyton. She said the iron grip on political power retained by aging veterans of the civil rights struggle such as Webb and Malone impedes the rise of younger blacks with fresh ideas.
{snip}
In the most recent election, Democrats won a majority on the county board for the first time since 2002. At a ceremony in December, Webb was sworn in by his daughter, Kaye R. Webb, a lawyer. His wife of 50 years, Lucille Webb, was at his side.
Original article
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Michael Biesecker
at michael.biesecker@newsobserver.com .
(Posted on March 2, 2009)
Comments
I simply cannot believe that most Americans would allow the failed idea, proved to be a failure after forty years of testing, that of governmental forced busing to continue to affect their families friends and relatives.
As is typical in these kinds of article postings, the original on line reader comments at the original linked article will prove to be just as instructive (if not more) as the article itself.
We may be witnessing the last wheezing gasp. One can only hope.
Because deseg has worked so well, we certainly can’t get rid of it. The Federal courts in St. Louis overseeing St. Louis’s inter-district deseg commissioned a study, called the Lisset Study, that showed that desegged blacks were worse off than non-desegged blacks.
Harold Webb may think that busing children hither and yon to achieve somebody’s idea of “diversity” is a good thing worth inconveniencing thousands of children and parents — but a heckuva lot of other people would beg to differ with him.
He and other civil rights “leaders” who insist that black kids can’t learn adequately unless they’re sitting cheek by jowl in the classroom with White kids, must not be able to comprehend what a damaging admission they’re making. In effect, they’re saying, “Our kids aren’t smart enough or motivated enough to learn in an all-black classroom, no matter how good it is otherwise. We’ve got to have White kids there, too, for us to learn.”
The damning admission about their own kids aside, it implies that the White kids are good role models that the black kids need to “inspire” them. If that’s true, why are we Whites such nasty old racists any other time they’re describing us?
My “inconvenience” was being threatened every day by black thugs, being attacked by a mob, having a knife to my throat and losing 4 years of productivity. That was my first hand experience of busing. This “Webb” character knows nothing of busing unless he himself experienced it from a non-black (i.e. victim) perspective. He was a perpetrator and I was a victim. When will I get my day in court and when will my voice be heard?
Having personally experienced the effects of busing for desegregation, all I can say is the targeted white schools will slide into anarchy and chaos.
However, there are some benefits I gained from this diversity experiment:
1. Increased proficiency with edged-weapons
2. Increased proficiency in punching, kicking and joint-locks.
3. Increased awareness and ability to translate from Afro to English such as gibitup milk (translation: Provide your wallet, keys and girl fiend Mr. Caucasian)
4. Preparation for entering the military where once again the Afros caused chaos and mayhem.
“We’ve got to have White kids there, too, for us to learn.”
I don’t get it. Assuming that black schools are inferior, why would any white person agree to send their children to an inferior school just so some blacks can go to their superior schools that they have paid for?
They miss the major point. If the measurement of a school is the performance of the students, it would stand to reason that the biggest difference would be the quality of the students. You could bus all of the white kids to the black schools and vice versa and quess what? The former black school would far out perform the white school.
The people in the white neighborhoods are financially better off because they are more intelligent. It stands to reason that their children would also be more intelligent and perform better in school.
If you were to bus half of the white children to the black school and vice versa I would imagine the shcools would be equal i.e. the same graduation rates and test scores. Voila! We have achieved school equality.
However, considering both schools as a whole, the same number of blacks would fail to graduate and the same number of whites would be out performing blacks on test scores. This will not create equality of the students. White students perform better because they are more intelligent and not because they go to a white school.
Geeez!
- Real
“For Harold H. Webb, 83, continuing the busing of students to achieve economic diversity is merely the continuation of a lifelong struggle for racial equality.”
Someone should mention to Mr. Webb, 83, that screwing white girls and leaving behind black girls with a 75% ‘illegitimacy rate’ does not create economic diversity. Unless by economic diversity you mean a big difference between the rich and poor. Mr Webb is 83 years old, of all people, shouldn’t he know that by now? Or is there something to genetic IQ differences after all?
“Busing and integration have done a great deal to destroy black communities. Most blacks sense it but their ‘leaders’ refuse to give up on a failed ‘dream’.”
Depends what the dream is…
From personal experience, I know that Harold Webb is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Why he keeps getting re-elected is due to voters who are in the same IQ boat.
“…For Harold H. Webb, 83, continuing the busing of students to achieve economic diversity is merely the continuation of a lifelong struggle for racial equality…”
The government-controlled educational system is littered with one disastrous program after another—and I cannot think of one that was more destructive and more costly than the failure of forced busing.
Busing put the focus of education on social engineering rather than teaching children—implemented by unelected, unaccountable judges (Boston’s late Judge Garrity in particular).
The Hoover Institute reports:
“…[Judge] Arthur Garrity ruled over Boston like a reincarnated King George. In the school system, his word was law and integration without representation had become the new tyranny…”
Meanwhile in the schools:
“…Police had to escort and unload buses at several Boston high schools every morning and afternoon while snipers stood guard on the surrounding rooftops. Metal detectors were installed and troopers patrolled the cafeterias, hallways, and stairwells, and still racial brawls broke out daily…”
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3563642.html
Busing was an unmitigated disaster—a program that should never be resurrected under any circumstances as it benefited no one and proved to be a colossal waste of money that would have been better spent educating children.
In a sane world, the whole sordid story of busing would be studied in ed schools and mentioned in high school text books as a failed policy to be scorned, debased and ridiculed as the folly it was.
Bon
The ultimate goal of the leftists is “The abolition of the white race by any means necessary.” One of the means they want to use to accomplish this is to breed the white race out of existence. Thus they have launched a massive campaign to persuade white females to have children with blacks instead of whites. That’s a major reason why they want busing. They want to increase the contact between white females and black males. They don’t care if anyone learns anything.
This plan to breed the white race out of existence was mentioned in Michael Moore’s extremely racist book Stupid White Males!
