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Title: Desegregation in Boston and Buffalo: The Influence of Local Leaders (Suny Series in Afro-American Studies) by Steven J. L. Taylor ISBN: 0-7914-3920-8 Publisher: State University of New York Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95

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Summary: Deplorable Analogies with Frequent Contradictions!
Comment: Stressing a contingent and interconnected historical process while clogged with Marxist rhetoric and apologetic to judicial decree; the mechanistic study: 'DESEGREGATION IN BOSTON AND BUFFALO: The Influence of Local Leaders' (c. 1998) by political science professor Steven J. L. Taylor, ostensibly compared the leadership of two disassociate events - court ordered forced busing in Boston and Buffalo.

Bafflingly admitting that "Between Boston and Buffalo there are differences in geographic location, economic structure, size, and neighborhood identification" (p. 9) then insisted that in order to form the basis of a study "There must be some geographical propinquity between the two locales" (p. 201), the author ignored the 500 mile distance between Boston and Buffalo yet continued with his logical inconcatenance. Professor Taylor further expounded that "Few American cities could have been different from one another as Boston of 1974 was from Boston of one century earlier" (p. 13) without explaining how Boston and Buffalo could correspond under such circumstances.

Methodologically, as well as internally, inconsistent; DESEGREGATION IN BOSTON AND BUFFALO, contained over 104 books and 45 magazine & journal articles in its bibliography, but Professor Taylor saw fit to cite less than 35 throughout his text. Of the tens of thousands of anti-forced busing protesters in 1974 Boston, this researcher interviewed the statistically insignificant amount of three (3), relying instead on anecdotal information, and dogmatic assertions supported by non-sequiturs to bolster his thesis.

One of the dozens of examples of contradictions scattered throughout DESEGREGATION IN BOSTON AND BUFFALO was the author's claim that "One would also be hard pressed to label Judge W. Garrity as a stranger to Boston" strangely followed by the observation that "Garrity was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, just 45 miles east of Boston." Federal Judge Arthur Garrity was born in Worcester, went to college in Cambridge, and settled in Wellesley - the man was never from Boston, and this little factoid seems to have escaped Professor Taylor's selective research.

Omission of relevant data also marred this work as Professor Taylor ignored the 240 Afro-American families living in South Boston in the summer of 1974 (and some were enthusiastic rock throwers at buses!); as well as the small colony of Mic Mac Indians from the Canadian Maritimes; coupled with the fact that the Irish American was a vocal minority in South Boston, outnumbered since 1950 by the Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Polish, and Albanians fleeing communist persecution from the former Soviet Union (and whom the racists would label as 'white'). Today, South Boston High School is 95% Afro-American & hispanic in a 90% caucasian neighborhood; South Boston High had been declared officially 'dysfunctional' by the Massachusetts Board of Education; Boston's population has dropped from 620,000 to 580,000 due to white flight; and what was once an adequate school system has been reduced to a wasteland directly thanks to an insipid court order - which costs Boston taxpayers $25 million a year to implement!

Further weak in his research and vague in his conclusions regarding court-ordered forced busing, Professor Taylor surmised that "One of the major lessons is the futility of trying to seek the reversal of a decision when the violations are blatant" (p. 215) in obvious oblivion to the judge's own advice that "The only routes available are a judicial appeal or a constitutional amendment." [Boston Evening Globe Oct. 10, 1974 p. 1] which was what Boston's elected representatives where attempting in the first place!

In his devotion to determinism, the author implied a 'causal necessity' by stating on page 167 that "Historical factors motivated Boston's leaders to behave in the manner they did when faced with the desegregation order" but neglected to explain exactly what those mysterious "Historical Factors" were! Rather than treating intelligent residents as implements in an abstraction called history, Professor Taylor would have been more scholarly if he attempted to explain Boston's politicians behavior due to the recognition of the Federal Judge's egregious violation of the Separation of Powers Act with the busing decree, and of elected officials operating within their training under the tenets of the democratic process.

Geographically and demographically challenged, as well as tendentiously written, illogical, unsupported by evidence, and useless as a scholarly text, DESEGREGATION IN BOSTON AND BUFFALO presented a slanted story which was well below the standards of research for someone in the author's occupation. With his aspiration that "This thesis has implications beyond academia, it is also relevant for practioners in public policy" (p. 215) Professor Taylor revealed his study to be a mere political pamphlet written by an ideologue.