Back of the bus

August 25, 2006

Simply stunning.

Nine [tag]black[/tag] children attending Red River Elementary School [in Coushatta, La.] were directed last week to the [tag]back[/tag] of the school [tag]bus[/tag] by a white driver who designated the front [tag]seats[/tag] for [tag]white[/tag] children.

After [two families] filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms said. “But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus,” she added.

And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.

In 2006. In the United States.

The driver was forcing black children to sit in the back of the bus, and when asked to correct the problem, the same driver assigned seats — forcing more black children to sit in the back of the bus.

As of this morning, the school district has suspended the bus driver while it investigates the situation. The NAACP is considering filing a formal charge with the Justice Department.

Noted NAACP District Vice President James Panell, “We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?” It’s a question that deserves an answer.

When I went to school we fought over the back seats. I wonder how the white kids feel about having to sit up front? I know that I’d be pissed.

  • Well, they suspended the bus driver. How they managed to hire and train a bus driver and not explain that one does not direct anyone to sit in the back of the bus, I don’t get.

    Why is this happening? Because we have Republican’ts in charge everywhere and the racists think (George Felix Allen Junior’s remarks being a good indication) that they can be the massas again.

  • Meet the New South, same as the Old South.

    The comments on the story are really telling. The “discussion” degenerates into blaming the victims and calling each other race traitor.

    Is it too late to let the South secede again?

  • Further proof that monkeys are a higher form of life than southern white trash, the morons who still think somehow that they were fighting for freedom in the War of Southern Treason (every time I hear one of them call it the War of Northern Agression I want to kick them in their teeth), and their treason continues to this day. Mules are easier to reason with.

  • Oh, and by the way (totally self-serving personal advertisement here), my partner Ryan Oddey at That’s Another Fine Mess was the first blogger in the country to catch this, yesterday. I’m very glad CB has picked it up, given the larger audience, because this story needs all the play it can get. But I’m really proud of my young partner at TAFM and the research he does.

  • Un-Be-Effing-liev-able!!!!! IMO, this only happens because people who are inclined to do this feel they have general support and can get away with it.

  • Former First Lady Barbara Bush would have these consoling words for the kiddies: “”And so many of the people …, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.” See Editor & Publisher.

  • This is the state of David Duke. The state where deputies from the white suburbs prevented black people, while letting tourists out, from leaving New Orleans.

  • I’m sort of surprised that this is 1) surprising and 2) news. Do you know where Coushatta is? It’s rural. Very rural. And do you know what bus drivers make? Virtually nothing. I’m not saying all poor people in rural Louisiana are racists by any means. Definitely not. But is it really all that terribly surprising that one racist in that part of the country would get this job, and then do something this stupid? I don’t really think so. This is an isolated incident. One that needs to be fixed, but I don’t think one that tells us all that much about race problems in the country today. If we want to focus the nation’s attention on the effects of inequalities and race it strikes me as much more valuable to look at issues tied to Katrina where you see the product of governmental action (or inaction) than to get lost in the dumb behavior of a lone racist bus driver in Red River parish.

  • Also from the same story:
    A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.

    Well *that’s* a creative solution. Who’s their superintendent of schools? Donald Rumsfeld?

  • Every Dem challenger to a GOP incumbent in purple border states (yes, I’m specifically thinking of Virginia) should bring this issue up load and clear, forcefully denouncing the racist bus driver *and* asking their opponent to go on the record with their thoughts. I’d love to watch ol’ Felix squirm on that hook.

  • It’s worth noting that Coushatta has a notorious place in history as the site of an 1874 massacre in which members of the Ku Klux Klan killed 60 African Americans, and where violence was used to defeated Reconstruction and its promise of equal rights for all.

  • Also from the same story:
    A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.
    –Jim Strain

    So now the bussing is “separate but equal”? And how’d that work out the last time they tried that?

  • I’m from Louisiana, and even I found the comments after that article shocking, if not the incident itself. (The ones in the newspaper article, I mean.) The KKK is apparently alive and well.

  • It should also be remembered that the Republicans didn’t really want to renew the Voting Rights Act, either, but felt they had to in order to avoid overtly revealing their latent racism to public view.

    Given the long and growing stream of blatantly racist statements from a whole host of Republicans, this is just the first public glimpse of that ugly specter raising its head after so many years in hiding.

    “If you’re sitting in the back of the bus,
    I’ll be sitting right there.
    Oh, oh ,oh,
    Come on over to the back of the bus,
    I’ll be sitting right there……”

    God bless you, Pete Seeger, wherever you are.

  • ***Is it too late to let the South secede again?***
    ————————————————————Comment by prm

    Seeing as how there’s a shortage of fodder for Iraqi streets and Afghani foothills, maybe we could slap idiots like this bus driver into an off-the-rack uniform—and “send them to their destined glory….”

  • Our minister of Music knows the lady. She is not a racist. In fact, one of her former passengers, who is black and overseas in the military, told her he’d testify on her behalf if he needed to. Everyone knows she is not a racist. This thing just got way out of hand. We live about 30 minutes away from the school she drives for.

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