U.S. supreme court finds a way in “Milliken” (1974) — school desegregation between suburb and city.

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https://www.npr.org/2019/07/25/7394...-school-district-lines-a-tool-for-segregation

[per recent study]

“ . . . identifying nearly 1,000 school district borders where schools on one side receive at least 10% less money per student than schools on the other side and where the racial makeup of the two sides' students varies by 25 percentage points or more. . . ”
Yeah, sounds like school discrimination to me. Even though a bare 10% difference isn’t huge.

In addition, upper-middle-class parents have arguably withdrawn from the rest of society, at least to some extent. In their swanky subdivisions with good suburban schools and the like.

Okay, roll back the clock and have a 5-4 Supreme court find a way.
 
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Whatever the merits of finding in favor of cross-district busing in Miilliken, it will be a political disaster for the Democrats. To give you an example of the political effect of Milliken in the Detroit suburbs:

In 1972, when the busing order was pending, some Detroit-area districts came very close to defeating Democratic Representatives who had previously won easily. In MI-12, James G. O'Hara who had won 76.1 to 22.9 in 1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Michigan only narrowly survived with 50.8 percent to 49.2 percent in 1972. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Michigan In 1974, with Milliken decided and the voters of Macomb County assured that their children would not be bused to Detroit schools (and Detroit children would not be bused to their schools) O'Hara went back to winning with 72.2 percent! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Michigan O'Hara had disappointed his old liberal friends by coming out strongly against busing, but even that was almost not enough to save him in 1972.

In 1970 in MI-14 Lucien Nedzi won 70.0 to 30.0. In 1972 his district was extended further into the suburbs but they were largely Democratic UAW-organized blue collar suburbs and it was thought that he would still be safe. He won, but only by 54.9-45.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Michigan In 1974, with the busing issue gone, he got 71.2 percent of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Michigan

In 1972, Democrats expected to win the newly created suburban MI-18, consisting of Democratic-leaning suburbs in southwest Macomb and southeast Oakland Counties. Instead, right-wing Republican Robert J. Huber won it 52.6 to 47.4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections#Michigan In 1974, with the busing issue gone, Huber was defeated by Democrat James Blanchard 59.0-40.4--an unusually large margin of defeat for an incumbent.

There is no reason to expect the busing issue to play out politically any differently in other suburbs throughout the nation.
 
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. . . it will be a political disaster for the Democrats. . .
I’m going to be very slow coming to the conclusion that the majority of my fellow citizens, whether R’s or D’s, are dyed-in-the-wool racists.

And if it’s a Court with 4 Nixon appointees—Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist—that may change the politics.
 
You'd get the 1994 shift of local loyalties in dixie going from dem to GOP happening 1972-74 n ttl.
In addition to the Court appointees, you are aware that Nixon’s point person on school desegregation was George Shultz and that 1969 and 70 was about when southern states started desegregating for real, right?
 
youtube: ‘Humans Need Not Apply’

And to throw a curve ball . . .

I am a believer in the slow motion crisis of automation. And like a drought, humans are likely to be at their worse, not their best.

And anything like universal income will be a very tough sell politically.

But on the plus side, if we get education right in which all American children are getting a quality education with approximately equal money, we may see that’s nowhere near a complete answer.

And the refrain of ‘education, education, education’ may not be so much the go-to answer when talking about the decline of middle-income jobs.
 
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DougM

Donor
Of course the little fact that local school districts in Michigan voted in local school taxes and that a school in the suburbs voted FOR taxes and Detroit and other larger cities voted AGAINST taxes may have had something to do with different per student spending is i guess something we will just ignore.
ALos how we were going to pull off bussing when my school district would have had a 30 to 45 drive after getting picked up to get to the inner city school. Thus I would have had something in the range of 2.5 to 3+ HOURS a day on a bus.
And of course the expressways going into to cities were (and still are) over crowded so let’s add hundreds of busses.
And let’s not forget that cities like Detroit don’t have very many busses and NO district has enough busses or drivers to be able to transport the students to other districts. Think about it in my school we averaged 30 or so minutes per bus route so on average each student was on a bus 15min in the morning and the same in the afternoon (some longer some shorter) Now your need buses for a large percentage of your students for about 2 to 4 TIMES as long. This is going to see huge increases in the busses needed. And who is paying for this. Because you will NEVER get a local school tax increase (or renewal) passed ever again.

We also had local communities ready to sue about the taxes. As the tax rates had been voted on to pay for their children’s schools and not someone else’s schools so odds are if bussing was allowed huge legal battle would ensue over basically having local taxes taken. For instance my school district had just approved a new Elementary school a re Odell of the middle school a new high school and converting the existing high school to a junior high. All on a bond that had something like 15 or 20 years of taxes. And basically the state wanted to take control of all that very expensive property without paying for it.

Meanwhile Detroit had refused to increase taxes as the value of the property dropped thus giving Detroit schools less money each year and ultimately putting the school district into bankruptcy twice. In part because the population dropped like a rock but they would not close schools. Meanwhile in the older suburbs as the population aged they closed schools.
Frankly this was the stupidest idea ever put forward.
And if it had somehow been allowed to go forward the taxes would have been cut in the so called wealthy districts. The state taxes would have been voted against and the suburbs would have seen massive numbers of private schools started.
And one final issue. In Michigan (and presumably other states) our local school districts effect the value of our houses. So if a house is in a district with good schools it is worth more then the same house in a bad school district. This will cause two problems. As the value drops (because your kids are not necessarily going to the local “good” school so why pay extra for a house in that district) you see first someone going after the state for causing the devaluation of their property but even if that fails you still will see the property taxes drop with the decrease. So the local, county and state will get less money when they are spending more. And Michigan requires the state to have a balanced budget. So good luck with that.

This was blatantly a case of you refuse to pay what good schools cost, you refuse to cut schools that you no longer need and you run your district into the ground then you want to take over someone else’s school... This is never going to last.
The governor and all the idiots that voted for this would have seen every district outside the few large cities rebel in the next election and this would have been overturned in a heart beat. Assuming the various other legal arguments could be settled.

I am surprised this idea got as far as it did. And if it had been pulled off you probably see Michigan go Republic. With knock on for federal politics. And that is ignoring what it does in other states if they try this dumb idea.
 
Of course the little fact that local school districts in Michigan voted in local school taxes and that a school in the suburbs voted FOR taxes and Detroit and other larger cities voted AGAINST taxes may have had something to do with different per student spending is i guess something we will just ignore.
ALos how we were going to pull off bussing when my school district would have had a 30 to 45 drive after getting picked up to get to the inner city school. Thus I would have had something in the range of 2.5 to 3+ HOURS a day on a bus. . .
I embrace these types of challenges. Fact is, this is 2/3’s of the reason AH is so good! :p
 
I suspect you'd see the response to this being a faster and harder shift right in the GOP, both in dixie and nationally. You'd get current polarizations happening early imo.
 
Being Nixon: A Man Divided, 2015.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...om, just across from the Oval Office”&f=false

‘ . . . blandly named State Advisory Committees [with both black and white members] . . . ’

‘ . . . The group, starry-eyed, would be led to the Roosevelt Room, just across from the Oval Office. “I let them argue and get it out of their systems,” said Shultz. At about the two-hour mark, Shultz would call in Attorney General John Mitchell, who was known as a no-nonsense law-and-order type and “by whites as ‘their man’,” as Shultz described him. . . ’
John Mitchell in his gruff way would say that he was going to enforce the law.

And in the afternoon, the group would meet President Nixon and he would also say he was going to enforce the law. And this is how the Nixon administration desegregated southern schools in 1970.
 
Would a way for states to abide by Milliken be to ban municipalities from using property tax to fund education and instead do it through a state income tax, with the money being divvied up based on enrollment per district?
 
I’m going to be very slow coming to the conclusion that the majority of my fellow citizens, whether R’s or D’s, are dyed-in-the-wool racists.

Did anyone say they were?

Is there anything particularly racist about the assumption that being bused past a nearby school to a more distant one will not bring your kid any advantage when it comes to getting into the college and/or career of his choice?

In addition to matters already discussed, expect the rapid growth of homeschooling to get underway a decade or so earlier.
 
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I’m going to be very slow coming to the conclusion that the majority of my fellow citizens, whether R’s or D’s, are dyed-in-the-wool racists.

And if it’s a Court with 4 Nixon appointees—Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Rehnquist—that may change the politics.

(1) No doubt many opponents of busing were motivated by racism but the fact remains that busing was an unpopular policy. "Even blacks were sharply divided." https://books.google.com/books?id=CwPrAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26

(2) What if it's a 5-4 decision with all the Nixon justices dissenting? The majority would consist of Marshall, Brennan, Douglas, White and Stewart (who seems to me the most likely of the OTL majority to switch).

This pattern--"all four Nixon appointees dissent"--was not unknown to the Burger Court, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia including in school desegregation cases: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/407/451.html

Unless the Democrats clearly repudiate it, people are going to associate this unpopular alt-decision with the Democrats and opposition to it with the Republicans.
 
I am surprised this idea got as far as it did. And if it had been pulled off you probably see Michigan go Republic. With knock on for federal politics. And that is ignoring what it does in other states if they try this dumb idea.

Michigan actually did go Republican in the 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988 presidential elections. (Though the Democrats did win the US Senate election in MI in 1976, which would have been hard for them to do if the decision had gone the other way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_Senate_elections#Michigan) What would hurt the Democrats most in 1976 would be the effect of the precedent in establishing cross-district busing in states Carter narrowly carried in OTL--OH, WI, PA, etc.
 
No doubt many opponents of busing were motivated by racism but the fact remains that busing was an unpopular policy. "Even blacks were sharply divided." https://books.google.com/books?id=CwPrAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26

The last opinion poll I ever saw on this subject (in Time or Newsweek, iirc sometime in the late 1970s) had busing opposed by about 90% of Whites - but also by 43% of Blacks. Sounds like the country was moving toward a consensus on the subject.
 
The damage to the Democrats might be relatively short-run if in 1975 Ford appoints a Supreme Court justice who will vote to overrule the case, though.
 

bguy

Donor
The damage to the Democrats might be relatively short-run if in 1975 Ford appoints a Supreme Court justice who will vote to overrule the case, though.

The Democrats might also end up nominating an anti-busing candidate in 1976 as (Henry Jackson?) which would help minimize the damage. (And especially if liberal Republican senators help block the efforts to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over the busing issue as they did IOTL.)
 
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