Busing Fails to Bring Blending on Campus

Every school day six buses stop in front of Granada Hills High School and unload about 400 students from inner-city Los Angeles.

Most of the students are black, voluntary participants in the Permit With Transportation program. Another 40 are Latinos, transferred to Granada Hills to relieve crowding at Belmont High School.

In theory, these students stand at the vanguard of racial integration in the Los Angeles School District. Their presence transforms Granada Hills High from a predominantly white and decidedly upper-middle-class school, in which Asians make up the only sizable resident minority, into an economically diverse cultural melting pot with more than 25% of its students from minorities.

A More Complex Picture

Yet even a cursory observation of the typical school day at Granada Hills yields a more complex and somewhat disturbing picture. It is a picture of separation, of a place where bused-in students cannot be found on the staff of the student newspaper, on the cheerleading team or in student elective office.

Relations between the races seem peaceful, even friendly. Friction between racial groups has never been a problem, school officials say. Sometimes there are even scenes of warm interaction.

But most of the time, the groups at Granada Hills divide themselves by race and home neighborhood.

“I don’t think that necessarily just throwing them all in the melting pot is going to cause them to melt,” said Granada Hills’ principal, Al Irwin, in an unusually blunt summation of the interaction between the racial and cultural groups on the campus. “They tend to stay with their own kids, their own kind. That isn’t what you want to happen. But that’s what happens.”

Pattern at Lunch

This phenomenon is most visible at lunch.

When the lunch bell rings, there is a noisy, chaotic rush of students across the campus.

Then, quickly and without apparent mechanism or plan, the chaos settles into a clearly definable pattern of race.

Some black students cluster in groups of three to a dozen in the outdoor eating area. Others drift around the campus, joining other groups, breaking off, restructuring.

White students do much the same.

Groups of white and black students stand in close proximity, often back to back. There is no sense of hostility or rejection, but little or no conversation across the racial line.

A basketball game on the athletic field comes closest to dissolving the line. A few white students are playing on largely black and Latino teams. But nearby, where the break dancers are dancing around a blaring radio, only one or two white students stand at the edge of the crowd to watch.

Students, teachers and administrators generally acknowledge the students’ isolation from each other.

Many teachers suggested that bused-in students feel intimidated in an environment to which they are not accustomed.

“I think a lot of that is probably peer pressure and just trying to feel safe,” said Granada Hills’ band director, Paul Sims.

“They will stay as much to themselves as we will go for,” another teacher said. “They feel more at home, at ease. I think it’s just a comfort zone for them.”

‘Perhaps Exaggerated’

Others minimize the racial question or are reluctant to talk about it.

“I am not aware that there is any barrier,” said English teacher Harry Berejikian, Granada Hills’ teachers’ union representative. “I think it is perhaps exaggerated by the very visibility of the minority students. It is true that, particularly when PWTs come here for the first time, they will tend to keep to themselves a little bit. Those things tend to melt away.”

But Granada Hills’ resident students are distinctly aware of the separation.

A group of them, all wearing green-and-white athletic letter jackets, recently addressed the subject of black students’ isolation bluntly as they stood in a circle under the eating pavilion one lunch hour.

“You really can’t get that close to them,” football player Mark Kessler said. “We’re only with them during school.”

“There’s nothing wrong with them,” another student said. “But at lunchtime they hang around together. They got raised there, and we got raised here.”

PWT Students’ Reaction

The reaction from bused-in students is less direct. Most said they ride the bus to the Valley because their parents told them to, or because they want to get a better education or go to a safer school. Few said they expected any benefits from integration.

In contrast to the white resident students, many of the PWT students disputed the idea that there is substantial separation on campus. They said they had many white friends and that they frequently stay with them overnight in the Valley.

“I come out here all the time and stay over at my friend’s house,” one student said. But he had difficulty recalling his friend’s name. “What’s his name? Ollie, I don’t know his last name.”

He was one of a group of black PWT students who gathered around a reporter during the lunch hour and answered questions excitedly, often interrupting each other to get their points in. Over the course of a few minutes, many other black students broke into the conversation and then moved on. But, although the sight of a strange adult on campus talking to students usually attracts a broad audience, not a single white student stopped to join in.

1983 Program Evaluation

The pattern of separation is apparently not uncommon in Valley high schools.

A 1983 evaluation of the PWT program conducted by the school district suggested that significant social “resegregation” occurs as students progress to high school.

Students who ride the bus to Valley schools tend to start in the voluntary integration program early, either in elementary or junior high school, and stay with it until high school graduation.

The school district study found that the interaction between white students and other racial groups was highest in the elementary grades and lowest in high school.

It characterized relations between the races as “warm and friendly” at the elementary and junior high school level, but only “mixed to somewhat friendly” at the high school level.

Several Possible Causes

The evaluation made no attempt to explain the problem. However, conversations with resident students and school officials brought up several possible causes.

Bused-in students, they say, perceive racial prejudice against them, whether it exists or not. They don’t have the same interests, either social or academic, as their Valley classmates. They are discouraged by the lost time and inconvenience of coming to school by bus from joining extra-curricular activities where friendships are formed.

“We’re talking poles,” said Granada Hills High college adviser Rita Hymes. “There is a difference, a vast difference, socially and academically. Different parts of the city, different values. The Valley Girl is not a myth. They’re not going to come up to you and say, ‘Why don’t you join our group?’ Kids in the PWT program need help with socialization. They’re not as sophisticated as the students here. Nobody takes time to plan that type of thing.”

Encouragement Offered

Hymes said she has found that PWT students often are unaware of the techniques for choosing and gaining admission to colleges. So she has set up a system to help them. Once a week a volunteer pulls PWT students out of class to go over college requirements, pre-admissions tests and entrance requirements.

“This is what it takes with PWT students,” Hymes said. “You can’t just inform them. You have to encourage. We push them. We check on them.”

That attitude is not shared throughout Granada Hills’ administration, interviews with several officials suggested.

Head counselor Dorothy Carter, for example, said she makes no attempt to learn what classes PWT students take, how well they do or what activities they join.

“We treat all students alike,” she said shortly.

Leadership Class

In the absence of any special tracking or assistance, PWT students have not worked into the school’s most prestigious groups.

The leadership class, consisting of student office holders, is where the school’s most socially capable, brightest and most popular students congregate.

The class meets before lunch hour in a festive atmosphere with a lot of camaraderie.

The leadership teacher this year is a black woman. But there is only one black student in the class. She was appointed by the instructor to represent PWT students.

During one session, the students played something called “Warm and Fuzzies.” They wrote admiring notes to each other and placed them in a basket. Two of the more dramatic students read the notes out loud, to much laughter and joking. The black girl showed little reaction.

‘None Ran for Office’

When the bell rang, she left. A dozen of her classmates stayed behind to answer a reporter’s questions about the racial makeup of their class.

“They have to want to be here,” one student said in reference to the leadership class. “Not one PWT student ran for elective office.”

“There’s no communication,” another said.

“Maybe they don’t know about the opportunity,” one student suggested.

“Usually a lot of PWT students vote,” someone else said.

“They’re so afraid they’re going to be defeated and that we’re going to be prejudiced, they’re intimidated.”

“I think the PWT students are prejudiced against us. I think they’re more afraid that we’re not going to accept them.”

“We don’t go out of our way and they don’t go out of theirs.”

“I don’t think they consider student council a cool activity.”

Even in the most racially mixed classes at Granada Hills, students often recede across the race line on their own.

This was apparent in one food preparation class.

Conflicting Ideas

At the beginning of the semester, the students were assigned to working units called kitchens. But, over the weeks, the students have been allowed to switch kitchens if they wanted. Near the end of the semester, out of four kitchens, only one had both black and white students mixed in it. One consisted entirely of blacks, Latinos and the only Asian in the class. Two kitchens had only white students.

Asked why this was so, the black students said there was no reason, but thought anyway that they were fairly well integrated into the classroom.

White students had a different idea.

“They’re just more comfortable together,” one said.

“We used to be mixed,” another said. “But they didn’t want to wash dishes.”

Some teachers seem to have a knack for breaking down racial barriers.

In a speech class taught by Joan Lewis, black and white students mixed freely, engaging in animated conversation and highlighting their differences without inhibition.

Pantomime Incident

One day Lewis’ students did pantomimes. A black girl was assigned the subject “walking in a dark alley.” She turned off the lights and crept across the room, occasionally jumping back as if in terror.

A black classmate jumped up in her seat and waved both arms.

“You’re walking home,” she shouted. “You’re in Watts. There should be a dirty trash can there.”

There was laughter all around.

Another black girl drew the assignment “teaching a friend how Michael Jackson dances.”

She started to ask a black friend to be her partner. But then she changed her mind.

“No, I have to get somebody that’s white,” she said. And she did.

However, that boldness and spontaneity didn’t seem to be carried outside the classroom. The inhibitions can be imposed subtly, it appears.

On one rainy day when students pressed into the Highlander Auditorium for a traditional high school pep rally before a game, several of the black PWT students from Lewis’ class stood with a couple dozen other blacks along one wall of the auditorium. They watched intently but cheered little as a dozen girls in white-and-green outfits--one black, one Asian, the rest white, but all resident students--danced energetically to the school’s fight song. Most of the seats in the front were occupied by white students.

Asked why PWT students did not try out for the cheerleading team, the black girl who had done the Michael Jackson pantomime with her white friend replied, “There’s always one black and one Chinese to make sure you don’t get upset. The blacks say, ‘Oh, since they don’t pick us, why should we try out?’ ”

The remark was an example of how subtle inhibitions and peer pressures keep bused-in students out of the school’s prestigious cliques.

Crossed the Barrier

There can be criticism for those who cross the barriers.

The school’s one black cheerleader found that out.

Jackie Bobo is a girl of picture-perfect beauty. She is one of the best-known students on campus, both praised and scorned because she is an example. The Louisiana native used to ride a bus from Los Angeles to Granada Hills High. Then her mother moved to the neighborhood.

She is active in school affairs. She volunteers as a peer counselor in the career counseling office. She tends to circulate with whites and has dated a white student.

When her name came up in a gathering of black students, one said she is considered an Oreo cookie. He raised the back of his hand.

“On the outside, she’s dark like this,” he said. Then he turned up the palm. “On the inside she’s as light as this.”

‘Started Reaching Out’

Bobo knows the term has been applied to her.

“I never heard it directly,” Bobo said. “I don’t pay any attention to it. In the seventh grade I was hanging around with the bus people. I started reaching out.”

She said what she heard was: “Oh, she’s changed. Why can’t she stay with her kind? She’s totally turned now.”

“They have this inferior attitude,” she said. “I still have a problem with a lot of bus people. I’m trying to change the way I am. I must admit I don’t have as many close black friends as I used to.”

Problems With Dating

Interracial dating is rare. When it occurs, there are often problems, students said.

“I went out with a PWT student,” one of the white cheerleaders said. “A lot of the students said that was bad--like I was a traitor almost. Word gets around.”

She said she heard that some white boys were saying they would never consider going out with her because she had gone out with a black.

She said she also faced resentment from black girls.

The strongest reaction, though, came from her own parents.

“They forbade me to go out with him any more,” she said. She obeyed.

As much as attitudes, divergent interests and distance may enforce racial distinctions in some activities, they exert virtually no effect on other areas of student life.

Cooperative Pursuits

At least two institutions at Granada Hills bring racial groups together in tight-knit cooperation.

They are the band and the football team. Inner-city students make up a third or more of the members of both groups. Special buses take these students home hours after the rest of the inner-city students have left.

Not coincidentally, some of the school’s closest cross-town friendships have developed on the band and the football team.

One of Granada Hills’ most popular students is football player Darius Powell, an upbeat, all-around achiever who intends to attend a military academy.

The football team, he said, is a place where students join in a common goal.

Unlike many other PWT students interviewed at Granada Hills, who said they had enrolled to get away from a violent neighborhood or because their parents had told them to, Powell said he came because “I wanted to meet new people, have different experiences, grow in maturity.”

Now many of his closest friends are resident Granada Hills students.

“It starts with the football team,” he said. “We’re not in competition with each other. We’re happy for each other. I got the best of both worlds.”

Friend Who Disappeared

The best of both worlds doesn’t always last forever at Granada Hills.

For some cross-town friendships, wistful conclusions seem inevitable.

A white student named Peggi Gross told of that experience.

She met a black PWT student named Michelle.

“I really liked her and we became friends,” Gross said. “She called me and stayed overnight at my house. Then something happened. She got pulled out of the busing program. I never saw her again. My dad asks about her, what happened to her. I don’t know.”

Those who can accept its limitations may get the most out of integration. Like John Jordan, a black PWT student who is not an honor student, not an athlete, not a high-achiever like Darius Powell.

Late one afternoon, Jordan sat on a bench with a black girl on one knee, a white girl on the other, an Asian girl at his left side and a white boy at his right. They weren’t doing anything special. In their words, just kicking back.

Jordan said he has lots of friends at Granada Hills. He knows their paths are unlikely to cross again after graduation.

But that’s okay, Jordan explained. He is into the here-and-now: “When we be together, we be cool.”

Granada Hills High, Granada Hills Ethnic Breakdown

1983 Neighbor- 1973 1979 1983 hood Census Black 0.9% 7.4% 14.0% 1.6% Asian 1.5% 4.3% 8.8% 4.2% Latino 2.5% 7.4% 7.2% 6.6% Anglo 95.0% 80.5% 69.7% 90.8%

1983 PWT Enrollment -- 20%