The Vagaries of Discrimination: Busing, Policy, and Law in Britain

Between 1950 and the present, Britain acquired a sizable nonwhite population. The proportion of nonwhites-predominantly Indian, Pakistani, West Indian, and West African-rose from seven-tenths of 1 percent to nearly 3 percent. A similar shift is detectable in the school-age population, presently nearly 4 percent nonwhite. Britain's response to this influx of nonwhites is noteworthy for several reasons. Britain has consistently minimized the relevance of race to social policy generally and educational policy specifically; it has also demonstrated a reluctance to treat the issue as having a significant legal dimension. In both respects, Britain chose a policy course at variance with that pursued by the United States, which at least since the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education' has treated racial issues in explicit and primarily constitutional terms. In these respects, busing in Britain (or dispersal, as it is more commonly termed) constitutes an apparent and conspicuous exception to the British policy norm. Busing does treat explicitly with race, for how else is one to determine who is to be bused. The fate of busing also rested, at least for a time, in the hands of the courts, which have otherwise had no say in race and schooling matters; in that sense too, it is exceptional. The evolution of busing policy in Britain has received almost no attention. This disinterest is, in a sense, readily understandable. Only a tiny minority of British nonwhites have ever been bused. The proportion of nonwhites remains relatively small; and, of these, a goodly