Sen. Kamala Harris and her ultra-liberal cohorts want to strip the last vestiges of parental control over their children’s education by reviving the hated practice of bussing.
The premise for promoting the practice is that, according to progressives, schools in the United States are becoming segregated, and therefore students must be forced to integrate with each other even if they may not want to. There’s nothing quite like bringing back a policy that everyone hated in the 1970s…but Harris seems to remember things differently.
In fact, Senator Harris thinks that schools today may be even more segregated than they were in the 1960s and it is, therefore, the federal government’s responsibility to take action. She made her feelings on the issue crystal clear when she told journalists a few days after the second Democratic primary debate that the federal government must to use “every tool” in its arsenal, including bussing, to desegregate the school system.
It’s hard to overstate just how much parents from all walks of life hated bussing when it was instituted in the 1960s and 70s. Some children, such as Sen. Harris herself, were only bussed a few miles away from their homes. Others were bussed more than an hour away from their neighborhoods — often to substandard schools. In such instances, parents had to put their kids to bed extra early, and then wake them up far earlier than usual. They also had to figure out how to pick their kids up from school if the bus wasn’t able to bring them back.
Children naturally hated being pulled apart from their school friends just because the government said it was good for them. Liberal, conservative, black, and white parents alike rose up against the practice by either moving out of cities and into suburbs, or putting their children in parochial or private schools. In fact, the widespread hatred of bussing is so well-known, that even mainstream media journalists couldn’t help but note that Sen. Harris’ call for bussing is not a savvy political move.
Not surprisingly, the senator walked back her statement several days later, stating that she thinks bussing is only called for when local districts “actively oppose integration.” However, her second comment is almost just as dangerous as her original assertion. Sen. Harris hasn’t taken back her remarks stating that schools are more segregated today than ever before, so no-one really knows which districts she thinks would be “actively opposing integration.”
Perhaps these would include any districts in states that wouldn’t vote for her. Maybe they include gentrifying districts where prices are rising due to middle and upper-class investments in homes and businesses. Such districts could even include regular suburbs that only have houses for middle-class buyers rather than building a mix of housing for both middle- and lower-class homeowners and renters.
In essence, Sen. Harris hasn’t walked back her comments on bussing, even though it appears that she did. Instead, she is telling voters that she won’t institute bussing everywhere as she knows how unpopular the measure would be. Instead, bussing would just be for “other people” who she doesn’t think are “integrated” enough.
Sen. Harris’ call to bring back bussing in order to forcibly integrate students is yet another reminder that far-left Democrats don’t think that regular people can make important decisions for themselves. Instead, these progressives running for president think that choice should be eliminated in the name of creating an “equal” society. If far-left liberals think that parents shouldn’t even be able to choose a public school for their children, it’s hard to believe that they will honor the choices of parents who opt to homeschool or send their children to a private, religious or charter school.
