Massachusetts is Inherently “Racist” Says State Rep
           Lobbying for more state money, more than a hundred students, parents and teachers from the METCO program marched the halls of the State House yesterday with the hope of securing an extra $5 million to cover a budget shortfall.   The keynote speaker for their meeting was Rep. Byron Rushing (D-Boston) who explained that programs like METCO were necessary because the “residential segregation” and racism in Massachusetts caused inequities in the Bay State's public Education system.
           “There is more integration in Georgia than there is in Massachusetts,” Rushing said, blaming further inequities in education on the “racist” nature of the state. “When we can say the same thing about everybody and nobody’s eyes roll, nobody’s jaws get tight, then we won’t have a racist society.”
           The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO program, is a voluntary busing program that began in 1966 with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation.   They bus exclusively “non-white” students from the urban schools to more affluent suburban schools every day.   They started in 1966 serving 220 students in Boston, and today they send more than 3,100 inner city students to 32 suburban communities.
           Dr. Kahris McLaughlin, METCO president, said yesterday that  "housing segregation" is the main issue in causing a racial imbalance in school districts.  Yet many questions remain as to whether a race-based program of busing a select few children out of the inner city is really an effective measure to remedy the situation.
           Many states with similar programs to METCO have had to dismantle them by court order, since state programs that deny services to Caucasian children are themselves, by definition, racist.  METCO in recent years has spent millions of dollars in legal fees staving off lawsuits that contended that their race-based policies only perpetuate racism, rather than effect real solutions.  
           The METCO budget for fiscal year 2007 is $17.6 million dollars.  Critics have contended that if the money was spent in improving the urban schools in question, rather than just having a few non-white students leave the troubled schools, there might be greater benefit to more children, of every skin color.