Looking Back: Past opinions provide perspective

Looking Back reviews opinions published in The Spokesman-Review during this week in history.

Forced busing, Sept. 9, 1975

An S-R editorial commented on the outbreak of violence in Boston and Louisville at the outset of a school integration plan.

“The intention of forced busing has been to bring racial integration and to give blacks and other minorities suffering under inadequate education the chance to attend better schools.

“What is it likely to do is chip away at the already crumbling cement of neighborhood life. And the result may well be increased violence and the continuing deterioration of urban schools.

“It is one thing to strive for equal educational opportunities but they don’t come on the trip to and from school. They come through an improvement in the quality of education – something that busing can’t achieve in Roxbury.”

It continued: “It is clear that racial inequality is still very much a problem. It is also clear that students in urban ghettos probably can get better teachers and facilities through busing.”

The editorial concluded: “A far better approach than forced busing would seem to be to allow neighborhood cohesiveness to remain intact. Citizens aren’t going to want to improve their schools and school environment if their children are in schools in other neighborhoods. And neighborhoods, in turn, are not going to improve if an important feature in the form of local school identity is removed.”

Wildland fires, Sept. 10, 2001

An S-R editorial weighed in on the increasingly dangerous and expensive practice of building homes in remote areas.

“The risk goes along with the rewards when you build or buy a home in the backwoods. The rewards are obvious: solitude and stunning surroundings. The risk is also obvious, but is too often ignored. Every summer there are wildfires in our tinder-dry neck of the woods, and every year homeowners decline to take precautions that can protect their investments. If homeowners in the wild won’t think of themselves, perhaps they could think of others.”

It continued: “Gone are the days when crews could focus on containing wildfires while keeping a safe distance. Now, when homes are threatened, crews are pulled off other duties and placed on the front lines. With homes increasingly scattered throughout the countryside, nearly every wildfire is a potential threat to man-made structures.

“In August, 76 firetrucks from cities and towns throughout Washington state converged on Leavenworth to protect homes built in the Icicle Creek area, just west of town. That’s expensive.”

It concluded: “The frustration for firefighters is that their heroic efforts would be less necessary if more homeowners would take responsibility for safeguarding their homes. As a fire chief in Chelan County said, ‘They either don’t understand, or they don’t care because they want their scenery, their aesthetics.’ For those who do care, local, state and federal governments have programs that provide free inspections and advice to protect rural homes.”