Coleman Says Busing to Achieve Racial Balance Causes Segregation Through White Flight

James S. Coleman, author of a 1966 report that called for school integration as a means of achieving racial equality, said last night in Boston that he disapproves of court-ordered busing as a means of promoting integration.

Coleman's 1966 report was used by courts and civil rights groups as evidence to promote the busing of students to desegregate schools.

Blunt Instrument

However, Coleman, professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, said last night on a televised news program that busing is too "blunt an instrument" because it encourages whites to flee from the cities and move to predominantly white suburbs.

Coleman said white flight would normally cause Boston's city school systems, now about two-thirds white, to become 90 per cent black by 2008.

But he said with the current court-ordered busing that exists in Boston the system will become 90 per cent black much more rapidly.