Our Ideas Are The Change
Hannah-Jones states, “The term ‘busing’ is a race-neutral euphemism that allows people to pretend white opposition was not about integration but simply about a desire for their children to attend neighborhood schools. But the fact is that American children have ridden buses to schools since the 1920s.” Hannah-Jones dwells on this idea because our world has been struggling with segregation for years, and it still is a relevant problem today. But she faces the fact of negating how busing is the symbol of segregation yet it also was one of the major push to desegregation in schools. Busing is a complex idea that parallels the ideas of good and bad. She was able to use this piece to explain the bad and how it was meant for privileged kids in certain neighborhoods, but then laws changed and it became one transportation where two races collided and caused a movement. It was the start of ending segregation, and yes, this has caused havoc for both races but without it, we wouldn’t have been able to start the change as fast as we did.
But what caused this movement? Was it just the buses or was there more to it? The buses were a major part of segregation but flipped the idea around because of the case Brown vs. the Board of Education. In this case, they “Struck down segregation”, as said in It Was Never About Busing by Hannah-Jones. This started when Oliver Brown brought up segregation due to his daughter not being able to attend a neighborhood school. This small act got to the supreme court and was able to make a change for multiple lives that will impact the world and society forever. Although the South was opposing to the idea, the government tried its best to take the Brown case seriously but it was hard to change the society so quickly, and many believed busing to end this desegregation failed but really, it started the movement.
“It transformed the South from apartheid to the place where black children are now the most likely to sit in classrooms with white children. It led to increased resources being spent on black and low-income children. There’s a story black people ruefully tell of the day they knew integration was coming to a black high school in Charlotte, N.C.: A crew of workers arrived to fix up the facilities because now white children would be attending. This is how two-way busing worked and why integration was necessary — white people would never allow their children to attend the types of inferior schools to which they relegated black children.”
Hannah Arendt wrote how your beliefs only come true if you add an action with them. She saw thinking as “deeply intertwined with the world, with the flux of world changes. It was an active thinking.” She sees busing as an action that was someone’s belief but it wasn’t enough active thinking. “While often thinking is conceived of as a form of retreat from the world, disengaging from the flow of events and shifting to a silent introspection, active thinking is like a commitment to think responsibly: to move away from the comfortable bystander perspective and understand that it is only through engagement that we can rightly judge.” She helps promote that we can’t daydream of a world where segregation doesn’t exist. Busing seems to “fail” in some eyes because they gave up on the idea. You need to think through your beliefs and find the reason as to why they are your beliefs and do something to make those daydreams become facts. Busing “failed” in some eyes because those people lost hope and were bystanders to the idea of change instead of making it for themselves. You need to active think that’s what philosophers do. She fell in love with one but was unattracted when seeing his lack of motivation towards his own teachings. You need to be determined in your opinions, enough to the point where you work for them because that is the only way change happens. That’s philosophy. It is writing your opinions out, but it is using your words, thoughts, and ideas into the start of a movement for your audience. It is to become a philosopher. It is to become a movement. It is to be the change.
We are dangerous in our thoughts. We are what will challenge the status quo. We are the ones who decide our future.
My community partner is definitely segregated because I work with Canal ESL and Canal is often segregated from the rest of Marin. This is shown through how Marin is mostly a wealthy location except the Canal is often overlooked and many people who live at the Canal are struggling. Society looks over this and pretends like this isn’t a problem in our lives. Many of the people who live here are Hispanics and some Vietnamese who may not speak the best English and are trying to learn English better in order to better their lives. They are segregated not only y being overlooked on, but many of them are not U.S. citizens and therefore could not finish school. This means they had to find other resources in order to finish and it seems like Marin is not making this problem shown in society. If not for my class where volunteering is mandatory in these locations, I would have been oblivious to this problem. Not only this, but I was informed that the 2020 census is coming up and this Canal community is considered a hard to count community because they are looked over, and scared to put their information in the hands of the government. Which to me, is totally understandable because the way the government has treated them, I would be scared too. This community in which I have the opportunity to be a part of is something that I hope is changed for the better and the structural bias and stature is changed because these people must be acknowledged for their strength, determination, and involvement in the community.
