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Why Are Progressives so Bad at Governing?


Muda69

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6 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Death washes away sins. Indy schools were kept segregated by Lugar.

How racial bias helped turn Indianapolis into one city with 11 school districts: https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/08/03/how-racial-bias-helped-turn-indianapolis-into-one-city-with-11-school-districts/

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The racial segregation and declining enrollment that plagues Indianapolis Public Schools today can be traced back to the decision made 46 years ago to merge Indianapolis with its surrounding suburbs.

The celebrated unified government, or “Unigov,” law brought together about a dozen communities in Marion County into a single large city in 1970. The idea was to put a bigger, more powerful Indianapolis onto the national map, simplify city services and grow the city’s tax base.

Indianapolis was not the only city in the country to merge with its surrounding county at that time — but it was the only one to explicitly leave schools out of the deal.

It was a decision that courts would later call discriminatory. It was, in fact, a primary argument a federal judge cited in 1971 when he ordered desegregation busing of IPS students across school district lines into the townships.

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The judge who ordered the busing, Samuel Dillin, stated bluntly that a merged city that left 11 separate school districts was racially motivated at a time when a majority of the region’s African-American and minority students lived in the city center while the surrounding school districts primarily enrolled white students.

“Unigov was not a perfect consolidation,” then-Mayor Richard Lugar told Chalkbeat. He went on to be one of Indiana’s most legendary political leaders as a six-term U.S. Senator. “A good number of people really wanted to keep at least their particular school segregated.”

Lugar said he knew the 162-page Unigov bill would die in the Indiana General Assembly if schools were included. But he still thinks the merger was worth it, despite the effects it has had on schools.

“Historically (Unigov) was really the turning point in history for Indianapolis,” Lugar said.

Some residents and politicians argued at the time that their opposition to a school district merger stemmed from economic interests, not racism. Conversations about consolidating districts had been happening since the state’s School Reorganization Act of 1959, which set out to help small rural school districts combine to be more efficient and equitable.

“There were other factors that were more important to the residents of the suburban areas than race,” said Harmon Baldwin, superintendent of Wayne Township for five years in the 1960s. “If you live in the rural areas, you are suspicious of what’s happening in the city area. They were proud of their individual high schools.”

But Landrum Shields, the first black president of the Indianapolis School Board in 1967, argued that it was no coincidence that schools were left out of Unigov. The merger happened at a time when the district was facing a lawsuit alleging it intentionally discriminated against black students.

To have included schools in Unigov would have raised the spectre of racial integration,” Shields said in the 1985 book “Governing Metropolitan Indianapolis: The Politics of Unigov,” by C. James Owen and York Willbern. “A desegregation suit brought by the (NAACP), joined by the Justice Department, already is pending in court here — and would have meant instant death for the plan.”

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So the late Mr. Lugar sacrificed the forced racial integration of government schools on the altar of Unigov?

 

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16 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Lugar also kept Indy schools segregated in practice.

Busing was court mandated for the city of Indianapolis in 71. In 2016 it was court ordered to stop. So is busing good or bad? In 1967 IPS had it's highest number of students, 109Kish. By 1981 when court mandated busing to the townships took affect IPS enrollment had dropped to about 57K, nearly half. Today's enrollment is around 30K. Is that Dick Lugar's fault? Unigov's fault? Or is it that natural progression of folks leaving the city for the burbs, as we have become a more mobile nation with more expendable income. 

I can remember going downtown back in the day, it was depressing. Now it's a vibrant happening place. My wife and I frequently get a hotel and hang out for the weekend down town, it's a good time. Whether you choose to believe it or not, Lugar and Hudnut both had incredible vision and leadership for laying the foundation for what is now downtown Indy. 

 

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3 hours ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Or is it that natural progression of folks leaving the city for the burbs, as we have become a more mobile nation with more expendable income. 

I guess we need government laws forcing adults of different racial and/or ethnic backgrounds to live with a certain geographical proximity to each other.  

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21 hours ago, Muda69 said:

How racial bias helped turn Indianapolis into one city with 11 school districts: https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/08/03/how-racial-bias-helped-turn-indianapolis-into-one-city-with-11-school-districts/

So the late Mr. Lugar sacrificed the forced racial integration of government schools on the altar of Unigov?

 

Pretty much.

21 hours ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Busing was court mandated for the city of Indianapolis in 71. In 2016 it was court ordered to stop. So is busing good or bad? In 1967 IPS had it's highest number of students, 109Kish. By 1981 when court mandated busing to the townships took affect IPS enrollment had dropped to about 57K, nearly half. Today's enrollment is around 30K. Is that Dick Lugar's fault? Unigov's fault? Or is it that natural progression of folks leaving the city for the burbs, as we have become a more mobile nation with more expendable income. 

I can remember going downtown back in the day, it was depressing. Now it's a vibrant happening place. My wife and I frequently get a hotel and hang out for the weekend down town, it's a good time. Whether you choose to believe it or not, Lugar and Hudnut both had incredible vision and leadership for laying the foundation for what is now downtown Indy. 

 

White flight.

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