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The Boy On The Bus
[My story in the Outlook section.]
Every morning when I was in fifth grade, I walked a mile down the road to Stephen Foster Elementary, my neighborhood school. Then I got on a yellow school bus and rode across town. The Supreme Court had issued a desegregation order. It was 1970. Men had landed on the moon twice. Now white kids and black kids would go to the same schools.
The court order roiled Gainesville, Fla., and the rest of Alachua County. Private academies sprouted overnight to accommodate white families that bailed on the public schools. But most white folks hoped for the best, and their kids headed to what many of them had always considered the wrong side of the tracks.
The Supreme Court has recently revisited school integration, declaring, to gasps from many liberals and academics, that the government can't use race as a criterion for assigning students to schools. But 37 years ago, the government not only took race into account, it also assembled a fleet of buses and began hauling white kids and black kids back and forth across town like so much cargo.
It was, in retrospect, an ambitious social experiment. It was also clumsy, and at some level outrageous, reducing all of us to a single characteristic of white or black.
For me it was ultimately a good experience, a chance to
get outside the bubble of the white Southern Baptist neighborhood where my eccentric Unitarian, single-parent family had always lived. But I know that others experienced it differently. And I wonder to this day whether it was truly a major step toward a more egalitarian nation, or just a momentary spasm in a society that has remained essentially befuddled by race.
This much is certain: Those buses were slow, loud, crowded. You could feel every shift of gears. Railroad crossing: Gotta stop, yank open the bus door, make sure no train is coming. Day after day, we growled along 39th Avenue, due east, then turned south on Waldo Road, past a sun-blasted terrain of pine trees, gas stations, warehouses, radio towers, overgrown lots -- a chaotic jumble of stuff on the ragged boundary between the city and the scrub.
Eventually we reached our goal: Charles W. Duval Elementary School.
Here's something one 9-year-old couldn't have imagined in 1970: That four decades later, society would remain segregated in many respects, including public schools. That busing would be abandoned as a tool for achieving racial balance. That Duval would become nearly all-black again. That "integration" would become a dated word.
As the Rev. Thomas Wright, a pioneer in the struggle for school integration in Alachua County, told me last week,
"We wound up with a dual system all over again."
--
Hark back to 1970. The Vietnam War was dragging along, bleeding into Cambodia. Student protests shut down campuses. National Guardsmen gunned down four students at Kent State. Feminism found its voice. The environmental movement took off.
And the Jim Crow era was finally ending. Racism remained. It was like humidity -- always there, saturating the atmosphere. North Florida is part of the Deep South. Even a college town -- Gainesville is home to the University of Florida -- wasn't immune. Alachua County was among the last places in America to integrate.
All through the 1960s, the white public schools had just a token black student or two. For every KKK lunatic, there were countless good folks who were frightened by the idea of mixed-race schools. To put it in perspective: Even the Florida Gators, the university football team, didn't field a single black player until wide receiver Willie Jackson got his chance in the fall of 1970.
Desegregation came about only through much trauma and struggle by a few idealistic civil rights leaders -- among them the Rev. Wright, whose daughter, LaVon, was one of three black students to integrate Gainesville High School. The FBI told Wright that it wasn't safe to let LaVon take the bus to school. He had to drop her off and pick her up. White students called her every name in the book. She was beaten up.
"We had to know what integration was like," Wright said. "It was not exactly what we thought it would be."
Then came busing. Most whites lived on the west side of town, most blacks on the east. In a 1971 decision upholding forced busing, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote: "The remedy for such segregation may be administratively awkward, inconvenient and even bizarre in some situations and may impose burdens on some; but all awkwardness and inconvenience cannot be avoided in the interim period when remedial adjustments are being made to eliminate the dual school systems."
Yes, I found it rather awkward going to Duval, but only because I found it rather awkward being alive, being 9 years old, being kind of brainy and very skinny and self-conscious about our family being poor (though probably not as poor as most of the kids who walked to Duval from the neighborhood). I was 57 pounds of insecurity.
And those girl creatures: transfixing, terrifying.
But racial tension? None. I'm not suggesting that we were ultra-enlightened, that we were little angels of egalitarianism. Just that race didn't matter as much as other things. My Mom's second marriage broke up: That mattered.
My older brother, Kevin, who was in sixth grade at Duval and aspired to rock stardom, remembers the biggest news that year: "Black Sabbath came out with their first album." Also, marbles were huge. The sixth-graders spent all of recess trying to win marbles, one precision thumb-flick at a time. Cat's eyes were big. Baby blues. Kids were judged not by the color of their skin, but by the contents of their marble pouches.
I had a great homeroom teacher, Mr. Terrell. He'd been in the Army and knew how to maintain discipline. He was also young, hip and fun. You didn't see a lot of male teachers in those days. That he was black didn't seem as important as the fact that he played touch football with us every day for a solid hour after lunch. He played quarterback on both sides of the ball. (Trust me when I report that Terrell-to-Achenbach was the Montana-to-Rice of Duval Elementary.) Mr. Terrell seemed to believe in me; he would tell me that I could do anything I set my mind to -- a potent spell from a teacher's magic wand.
Another blessing: Mr. Cliett, the vice principal, who had been the first white administrator to arrive at Duval, several months earlier. He was full of experiments, like a chess tournament in which the students dressed up as knights and bishops and rooks and whatnot and marched around on a giant chessboard on the softball diamond. He also taught a special "enrichment" class for a select group of us with good grades. We began with logic, straight from a college textbook.
Bill Cliett is now retired and -- he told me when I called -- working on a book about James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake." Which seems like exactly the kind of thing Mr. Cliett should be doing.
"Things went very smoothly with the kids," he recalled. The teachers had some difficult adjustments. Many were called on a Sunday night and informed that they'd be working at a new school across town the next morning. Some had to teach subjects outside their expertise. Discipline could be tricky; some teachers were reluctant to paddle students of a different race.
Mr. Cliett told me something I'd forgotten: Every bus that first year had an adult along for the ride. To keep an eye on things and to ease parental nerves.
And we did have one incident, it turns out: On the last day of the year, older black kids from a junior high school threw rocks at the cars of some white parents. The cops came. The students were held in the classrooms until we got a police escort to the buses.
But for all the hysteria among adults, and the fulminations by racists, desegregation at Duval didn't prove traumatic for the students. It was, frankly, anticlimactic. Perhaps this is because children at that age have so much in common that race recedes into irrelevance.
Kind of like what you'd want for society writ large.
--
There were many things I didn't know then, or couldn't appreciate. Like the fact that Duval had been, for decades, a central element of the African American community. The principal, Mr. Jackson, lived in the neighborhood. Then, overnight, a school that was nearly 100 percent black turned something like 65 percent white. Kids who walked to Duval became minorities in their neighborhood school.
Meanwhile the "black" high school, Lincoln, had been closed, amid much protest and rage. Black students were dispersed to white schools amid flaring violence. The smooth transition at Duval wasn't the norm. And the court plan played favorites with elementary school kids: Only the older white kids, in fifth and sixth grade, were bused, but younger black children, in first through fourth grades, had to make the trek across town.
African Americans turned against busing, according to the Rev. Wright. When the schools began to segregate again, he said, "there was no real fight from the African American community."
Nationally, according to stastistics cited by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent in the recent integration case, one in six black students go to schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority. Additionally, three in four black and Latino students go to schools where most students are minority. Whites go to schools that are, on average, 80 percent white.
It's easy to find fault with the ham-fisted ways that the government deals with race. Shaping social interactions by bureaucratic fiat rarely works. There's something absurd about labeling people "white/nonwhite" or "black/other," the binary choices employed by the school systems that recently ran afoul of the Supreme Court. But all the talk about creating a "race-blind" society seems naive, too. Race-blindness can be used as an excuse to ignore difficult racial issues. A way to turn away from troublesome things.
If my 46-year-old self had a frank discussion with my 9-year-old self, I'd probably have to apologize for all that we didn't get done in the past four decades. I'd tell him how we got a little lazy, selfish, cynical. How segregation is oddly persistent after all these years. How we remain, not only in America but around the world, a stubbornly tribal species.
And if the 9-year-old pressed me for a solution?
Um, let me get back to you on that, kid.
--
The era of forced busing now seems a period piece.
"It was a transition that had to be done, to get kids involved with each other, parents involved."
That's my old teacher Frank Terrell talking. I reached him on his cellphone in a pasture in Florida where he keeps a few cattle. I told him he'd made a big difference in my life. He said he remembered me and proved it with specific stories. He revealed a shocking fact: In 1970 he was only 23 years old.
When the schools were preparing to desegregate, he said, Mr. Jackson called him in to the principal's office.
"There will be no issues here at Duval," Mr. Jackson told Mr. Terrell.
And he got that right. Other schools had issues. We had touch football.
Mr. Terrell had a successful teaching career and wound up back at Duval before he retired, just in time to help the school go through a renaissance. Duval has a magnet program in the arts. Rated as a failing school in 2002, it has since been acclaimed for its turnaround.
"Black kids at Duval have some of the highest scores in the state of Florida," Mr. Terrell said. He said it had "nothing to do with black and white. If you've got committed parents, and you've got teachers who are on the ball -- that's how you do it."
Agreed. We need more good parents, more good teachers. More Mr. Clietts and Mr. Terrells.
Roswell Aliens; Hot Mermaids
The other night I got a call from Australia and soon found myself on Richard Glover's radio show, "Drive." Glover is very smart and funny and clever -- why does he have to work at the bottom of the world? In any case, he told me about this new revelation about the Roswell flying saucer crash. It seems that the fellow who first sent out the bulletin saying a crashed disk had been recovered by the military --Walter Haut -- declared near the end of his life that he actually saw a couple of dead aliens.
"Also from a distance, I was able to see a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin. Only the heads extended beyond the covering, and I was not able to make out any features. The heads did appear larger than normal and the contour of the canvas suggested the size of a 10 year old child. At a later date in Blanchard's office, he would extend his arm about 4 feet above the floor to indicate the height."
OK. I'm now convinced! Creatures got in a flying saucer and crossed 900 trillion miles of interstellar void and ran into some turbulence over New Mexico and the saucer crashed and they tragically perished, though with their bodies nicely intact for subsequent examination "from a distance" by a guy who FAILED TO MENTION THIS DETAIL for, let's see, about 55 years or so.
That's what we call proof.
Um, is there a photo? Or was photography not yet invented in 1947? How about a tissue sample? What happened to the bodies? How about the crash debris? Is there anything here that we can examine with modern forensic technology and scientific methodology?
And as Richard Glover puts it: How come the aliens never visit countries like India or China?
Happy Anniversary, Roswell Flying Saucer Crash. Sixty years and still going strong.
--
More Starbucks: A friend sends me this great link to a mermaid site. Note how the Starbucks mermaid -- excuse me, siren -- has really cleaned up her act. Much more demure:
'As some readers may know, Starbucks had to change their corporate logo because some consumers found the suggestive split tail of their topless siren too lurid and sexually suggestive. A simplified logo was introduced, hiding the siren's breasts under waves of hair, and that in turn was cropped and enlarged so the split in the siren's tail would no longer show. The only indication now that the female icon is a sea creature is in the wavy lines, which originally were part of the representation of the two tails. And yes, although the image is that of a split-tailed sea creature, it is a siren. More specifically, it is a double-tailed siren, a baubo siren, which The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects points out, is "a cross between a mermaid and a sheila-na-gig" and is found as a decorative motif in many European churches and cathedrals. "Her suggestive pose, like that of the sheila-na-gig, referred to female sexual mysteries in particular."'
--
Michael Gerson has a column today on Second Life, an online role-playing game/world/universe. Not surprisingly, people use it for uninhibited sexual capers and random acts of violence. (Why does technological progress depend so much on sex and war?)
'... Second Life, as you'd expect, is highly sexualized in ways that have little to do with respect or romance. There are frequent outbreaks of terrorism, committed by online anarchists who interrupt events, assassinate speakers (who quickly reboot from the dead) and vandalize buildings. There are strip malls everywhere, pushing a relentless consumerism. And there seems to be an inordinate number of vampires, generally not a sign of community health.
'Libertarians hold to a theory of "spontaneous order" -- that society should be the product of uncoordinated human choices instead of human design. Well, Second Life has plenty of spontaneity, and not much genuine order. This experiment suggests that a world that is only a market is not a utopia. It more closely resembles a seedy, derelict carnival -- the triumph of amusement and distraction over meaning and purpose.'
[Don't tell the editorial page editors of The Wall Street Journal!]
My Lawsuit Against Starbucks
I've been nosing around the Web looking for evidence that Starbucks, with its "Life's Better On the Porch" ad campaign, shamelessly stole the whole idea from the Achenblog. Because then I can sue the pants off of them. Millions of dollars. Free coffee. AND I want them to throw in free T-mobile wireless access so i can blog while drinking the comped java.
You have to understand that porching is what this blog would be famous for were it to have ever developed into something with more than a few dozen readers. Life's-better-on-the-porch is as close as we've ever gotten to a central organizing principle. To a theme. A gimmick, to use the Schemer's word. [I will add links later today to prove that the porch concept is our intellectual property here on the Ablog.]
Moreover, as I creep toward 50 I sense that the creative, productive, and society-enhancing portion of my career is coming to a close, and that I need to get ready for the next big phase, which is suing people.
Sue them coming and sue them going. Sue them eight ways from Sunday. Make them rue the day they ever crossed my path or dared to open a business whose doors I choose to darken.
You call it frivolous, I call it fun! This could be the hobby I've always dreamed of. Also I wouldn't mind getting some of the money back that I've deposited over the years at Starbucks.
Fact is, I'm in a Starbucks right now! Though a big fan of Java House, and warming to Caribou, I think my palate still finds the Starbucks brew to be the most agreeable. But the soullessness of most Starbucks coffee shops (what do you call them? Is the correct term "Starbuckses"?) is a drag. As you know, I abhor and abominate the condiment station. [Any excuse to say "abominate."] And apparently there are many people who are concerned about Starbucks soullessness.
Note that the link includes an excerpt from an email from Starbucks boss Howard Schultz:
"Clearly we have had to streamline store design to gain efficiencies of scale...However, one of the results has been stores that no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store. Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee."
Howard, they're horrible. Except the one I'm in now, which is anomalously excellent, to the point that I'm not willing to reveal its location lest the masses show up. [Do we still have "the masses" or is there a new term?]
Calling lawyers now. Will send updates.
--
Do you ever wonder what happens to the ash and debris of a fireworks show? Where the charred bits of fireworks casing and the glowing embers wind up? I can now tell you: On my head. And in my eyes. Last night we were directly under the explosions, on Constitution Avenue near 18th Street. It was the fallout zone. Shmutz rained from the sky for 20 minutes. I don't know what kind of magnesium and cadmium and uranium and Californium and whatnot goes into those rockets, but I hope it's not toxic. [Or maybe I should follow Boswell's advice, claim I'm sick, and go watch Tiger!!]
--
Rick Hertzberg throws some love to the Gellman/Becker series. (But in praising the Post series, can't the New Yorker take the next huge technological leap and add an actual link to it? Or does the New Yorker abjure linking to other publications?) [Any excuse to use "abjure."]
'Given the ontological authority that the Post shares only with the New York Times, it is now, so to speak, official: for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John Adams called "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived," has been the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable "war on terror." '
Linklaters Revenue Passes £1 Billion Mark
Linklaters is the latest U.K.-based firm to unveil massive increases in fee revenue and profits per partner, as London continues to underline its strength as an international finance center. In the last three years, the firm's revenue has increased by 57 percent, while profits per partner have risen by 108 percent. Linklaters now has higher PPP than several of New York's leading firms, according to managing partner Tony Angel, who points to the upsurge in cross-border work as a driver in the firm's growth.
Judge Grills Prosecutors in First Stock Option Backdating Trial
By lunchtime Friday, federal prosecutors on the first stock options backdating trial must've known their weekend was ruined. Three days after the two Assistant U.S. Attorneys rested their securities fraud case against former Brocade Communications CEO Gregory Reyes, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ordered them to justify their case in writing. The prosecutors must file a brief explaining what evidence they presented in trial showing that Reyes acted with criminal intent.
Supreme Court Justices Hit the Road for the Summer
If it's summertime, it's travel time for the U.S. Supreme Court justices. Several Court members have teaching gigs in choice European locales, including Vienna, Salzburg and Sorrento, Italy. Justice Anthony Kennedy will attend the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco to receive its highest honor, the ABA medal. And Justice Stephen Breyer's summer itinerary includes an Eagle Scout ceremony -- yes, Breyer is an Eagle Scout.
Executives Rank Law Firms on Service and 'Arrogance'
More and more, American corporations are dissatisfied with their law firms. Citing spiraling costs, poor communication, lack of urgency on important matters and general arrogance, just 32 percent of executives responding to a recent survey said they liked their outside counsel enough to recommend the firm to someone else. The BTI Consulting Group survey also identified a "Client Service A-Team" of 30 firms that rate highly with their customers, as well as a list of the "most arrogant" law firms.
Shhh! Pro Bono's Not Just for Liberals Anymore
Contrary to popular wisdom, pro bono isn't just the province of liberals. Bolstered by influential organizations and pro bono advocates, some big firms regularly champion libertarian causes, while others challenge race-based policies and represent opponents of gay rights and abortion. As the politics of pro bono become more fluid, distinctions between liberals and conservatives are also blurring. The shift, seen in recent Supreme Court showdowns, is a quiet phenomenon that's 20 years in the making.
Ethics Opinion Allows Attorneys to Work With Nonlawyers to Create Business
An ethics opinion says New Jersey lawyers can refer clients to investment companies in which they own stock and can receive a share of commissions from the client's dealings. The opinion appears to authorize a potentially lucrative method for attorneys to use relationships with nonlawyers to create business for both, and seems to move toward a form of multidisciplinary practice the state Supreme Court has resisted and that one former State Bar association president calls "a minefield."
Judge Who Lost $54M Suit Not Giving Up Pants Fight
An administrative law judge who lost a $54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner over a missing pair of pants is not giving up his fight against the South Korean immigrant owners of the business. Roy L. Pearson notified their defense attorney of his plans to file a motion next week asking that District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff reverse or clarify her verdict. Bartnoff ruled last month that Pearson should be awarded nothing.
Ex-Legal Aid Lawyer Arrested for Videotaping Female Colleagues
A six-year veteran of the Legal Aid Society was arraigned Friday on charges of spying on his female co-workers to capture them undressing. According to a 10-count information, Peter Barta spied on his co-workers on five occasions over 29 months and in one instance captured a female attorney partially undressed. As detailed in court documents, suspicions were raised when a female attorney discovered in October 2006 a Sharper Image alarm clock in her office containing a hidden motion-activated video camera.
PricewaterhouseCoopers Settles Fraud Suit With Tyco for $225 Million
PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to pay $225 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by shareholders of Tyco International Ltd. over a multibillion-dollar accounting fraud that sent Tyco's top executives to prison. The settlement with Tyco's former auditing firm comes on top of the $2.975 billion settlement reached with Tyco -- possibly the largest ever by a single corporate defendant. The total settlement of more than $3.2 billion from Tyco and PwC concludes a four-year legal battle.
Lawyer Reprimanded for 'Vulgar' Comments About Judges
The Michigan Supreme Court has reinstated a formal reprimand against attorney Geoffrey Fieger over "vulgar and crude" comments he made about three judges on a radio show several years ago. In a 4-3 ruling, Michigan's high court held that Fieger's comments, which included calling the judges "jackasses" and likening them to Nazis, were not protected by the Constitution.
Calif. Supreme Court to Hear Contentious Gay Rights Case
A war of the amici is under way as California justices prepare for what could be one of their most controversial cases in years. Forty groups have filed amicus curiae briefs in the case, which pits doctors' rights to religious expression against patients' rights to treatment without discrimination. The case involves two doctors who, based on their Christian beliefs, refused to provide artificial insemination to a lesbian. The case hasn't been set yet for oral argument, but emotions are already running high.
Ex-Corporate Head at Milberg Weiss Joins Moses & Singer
The former head of the corporate practice at class action firm Milberg, Weiss & Bershad has jumped to his second firm in a year. Arnold N. Bressler officially joined Epstein, Becker & Green last July -- but on Thursday, Moses & Singer announced that Bressler would become a partner in its corporate practice, as well as a newly formed legal ethics and law firm practice. Meanwhile, Milberg Weiss is reportedly in plea discussions with federal prosecutors, as is individually charged partner David J. Bershad.
U.S. Attorney Joins Broad & Cassel
Robert Nicholson, former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has switched to private practice, joining Broad & Casse's white-collar criminal and civil fraud defense and health law practice groups. Broad & Cassel maintains eight offices throughout the state of Florida.
Did a Federal Appeals Court Avoid Tackling the Real Issues Behind Football Fan's Lawsuit?
Appellate litigator Howard J. Bashman examines a recent 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision involving a sports fan who had challenged the lawfulness of pat-down searches of ticket-holders arriving at Tampa Bay Buccaneers home games. The federal appeals court held that the plaintiff had voluntarily consented to the searches by using his season tickets. Bashman concludes that the 11th Circuit dropped the ball in this case.
Big Law Firms Have Faith in Big Churches and Big Billings
The economics of large churches and their leaders make them desirable clients for big law firms. But they can require more sensitivity than most corporate deals. That's where Channing Johnson comes in. A partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Johnson has developed a strong niche practice representing African-American churches and other faith-based enterprises. He has parlayed his own roots in faith communities with his expertise as a corporate lawyer to become the go-to lawyer in California and beyond.
Name: SyroBro