An issue in the 60s and 70s in Boston. A judge decided that because in Boston more than any other city in America, ethnic groups tend to live together, that this was de facto segregation. To allieviate this, the State Congress passed an Unconstitutional law. It stated that any school with over 80% black was to bus many of its students to other parts of the city and those parts would bus to the black dominated schools. It was unconstitutional because it made a law based on race. It was passed because it wouldn't affect the suburban schools.
So a plan was drawn up. While it was far from a popular plan anywhere in the city, it was most reviled in Southie. South Boston is an Irish - Scot Catholic neighborhood. You aren't from Southie unless you've lived all your life there, or at least been born there. Dorcester and Charlestown boys are permitted, but anything farther out from that is an outsider. Southie is and was also the poorest white part of the city. However, there was almost no crime. More than half the city cops came from Southie or Dorcester or Charlestown, so crime wasn't allowed. Start screwing up and you got sent to the Marines.
Then some Mastermind decided that Southie would bus to Roxbury. Roxbury was (and still is to some extent) one of the worst neighborhoods crimewise in the country. It lead the city in murders, drugs, assault and almost every other serious crime.
So some of the most violent high schoolers in the country are being shipped into this xenophobic neighborhood and your kids are being sent to one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country, especially for a pasty mick. Mass protests ensued. It made national news and Southie was labeled as racist. Few realize how bad this almost was. Boston was close to burning. My father ( a bartender in Southie) grabbed a Captain he knew to stop 8 uniformed cops from joining the protests. Since most of the cops were pretty pissed, and most would've joined if someone had struck a spark, the city would've been screwed.
Busing has recently been stopped in Boston. It wasn't before Southie was destroyed. Most old time families moved to the suburbs to get good schools. Within ten houses around mine we have 7 displaced Southie clans. Southie is held by old men and teens who are killing themselves(a lot) and shooting up heroine as much as Roxbury.
Just because something seems to be good because its "equaling the playing field", doesn't mean its good. White guys can be poor, too.

So should the judge have allowed the Boston Public Schools to continue to be run by a school board consisting of irish folks who gave exactly two shits about the black kids in roxbury? The way the plan was implemented was terrible, more so because in addition to screwing with the xenophobic irish kids (if you sense I'm bitter here, it because these nice irish kids used to beat the crap out of me in high school for being a faggot), it closed a bout a dozen schools contributing to overcrowding. Busing from the suburbs was really the only way to deal with it, but that would never happen; people living there were doing so partly because they wanted to use their money to isolate themselves from the city and all the scary negroids living there. I can't even imagine how much people in Newton would've whined if their perfect children were forced to go to school with dark skinned people. Hell they would've screamed bloody murder if their kids had to go to school in Southie.

Bastards.

Ok, I've calmed down a bit and looked at what I just wrote. It's really really obnoxious, but I'm going to leave it here anyway as a good example of how pissed off people were about this stuff. I was born in '81 after the worst of all this, and I still get angry. Boston is a funny place, and I'm sort of bitter lately about the gentrification in my neighborhood (Jamaica Plain) that will virtually gaurantee I can never afford a home there. I will say now that I am inherently biased against people who live in suburbs.

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