"times they are a changin' ", not really

During the Civil Rights Movement an oft quoted bromide was:
Whites in the North say of the Blacks: Come up but don't come close.
Whites in the South say: Come close but don't come up.

Now it seems as if the quote should be changed to:
Whites in the North and the South: Don't come close, don't come up.
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Racial segregation has morphed from enforced to voluntary in four decades. We no longer have the specter of "Whites Only" signs, cattle prods and fire hoses but something else has taken their place. Something light years more subtle, just as divisive.

I believe it started with LBJ's Great Society shuck. The powers that be had no intention of creating such a utopia but wanted to "keep the Blacks from rising". By proffering the Civil Rights agenda one obstacle would be removed from President Johnson's "Guns and Butter" scenario and maybe the cities would no longer burn.

The first, and to my mind greatest, error was that school integration was to be accomplished by compulsory busing. This, as LBJ himself was heard to say, will cost the Democrats, the South. The loss has haunted race relations to this day. A natural constituency of Blacks, the Democratic South, was gradually forfeit and empowerment given to hordes of rabid reactionaries. If the Congress had a little foresight and enough gumption to resist LBJ regarding the effect of such coercion on a multitude of reluctant citizens, it would have died in committee. Instead a "gazillion" bus miles have been traveled only to find the kids still huddled in comfortable homey enclaves even at university level decades later. They are also less, rather than better, educated.

Busing has been used historically to give remote or rural kids access to school. That's not where the problem lies. I grew up in a city in New Jersey during the forties when students from the townships were bused in to the central high school. City kids who lived at a distance caught metro buses at discounted fares. It all worked. That included the black and ethnic kids as well. De facto geographic segregation existed in the lower grades but not at the high school level..

Wherever it's being done solely to foster integration, busing hasn't worked as intended. However, it's still not too late to bring it to a halt, then begin

BUSING THE TEACHERS AND NOT THE STUDENTS!

Phase out those thousands of big yellow buses, their drivers, maintenance and insurance costs and put the money saved where it belongs: quality of education. Double the salaries of the best teachers where hazard duty pay is indicated and stand back as the lines of eager applicants form.

Let voluntary desegregation and actual integration begin, finally!