SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
As late as 2007 he called busing a "liberal train wreck" in an autobiography. (Photo: Illustrated | REUTERS/Jim Young, EvgVect/iStock, -slav-/iStock)
Joe Biden's Record on Race Is Even Worse Than Kamala Harris Lets On
When African-Americans arguably needed his help the most—Biden has repeatedly wielded his power to devastate the black community
Jul 02, 2019
The standout moment in either of the first two Democratic primary debates was unquestionably the showdown between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden over school desegregation. Harris came prepared with her own story being bused to an integrated school as a young girl and attacked Biden over his fond recollections of being friendly with the vicious racist James Eastland.
Naturally, this has the Biden camp on the defensive. "We can be proud of her nonetheless, but her ambition got it wrong about Joe," former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Il.) told Politico. But this is an absolute crock -- on the contrary, Harris barely scratched the surface of Biden's awful civil rights record.
Let's start with "busing." As I have written before, the focus on busing per se as being the essence of school desegregation is wildly misleading. Buses are merely a way of moving children around; they were common under Jim Crow and they are common now after desegregation efforts have been largely abandoned. The real controversy was over jumbling up school district populations -- through boundary adjustments, transportation, or other means -- to mix black and white children and thus provide the former the same educational resources as the latter. (It's important to remember that educational equality was the main goal of desegregation, not simple rubbing shoulders between the races.) For a few years after the civil rights victories in the 1960s, there was enough consensus around the horror of Jim Crow that the political class widely agreed on desegregration.
But a huge fraction of white people both in and out of the South didn't want black kids anywhere near their own children, nor did they want to share school resources with black families, and so they ginned up excuses to obscure their real motivations. School integration was smeared as "forced busing," and stopping it a mere defense of "community schools" -- thus following the classic American tradition of portraying a change in government policy as the imposition of a new policy and racist whites the helpless victims of Dread Government Coercion.
After being elected in 1972, Biden quickly moved right on desegregation, capitalizing on and heightening this white backlash. In one speech, he called busing a "bankrupt concept," and suggested in an interview that "I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace." He sought support from outright white supremacists like James Eastland, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and James Allen to pass amendments banning federal funding for transport-based school integration. As late as 2007 he called busing a "liberal train wreck" in an autobiography.
Read full article here.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
© 2023 The Week
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is the Managing Editor of The American Prospect. Formerly, he was a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
The standout moment in either of the first two Democratic primary debates was unquestionably the showdown between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden over school desegregation. Harris came prepared with her own story being bused to an integrated school as a young girl and attacked Biden over his fond recollections of being friendly with the vicious racist James Eastland.
Naturally, this has the Biden camp on the defensive. "We can be proud of her nonetheless, but her ambition got it wrong about Joe," former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Il.) told Politico. But this is an absolute crock -- on the contrary, Harris barely scratched the surface of Biden's awful civil rights record.
Let's start with "busing." As I have written before, the focus on busing per se as being the essence of school desegregation is wildly misleading. Buses are merely a way of moving children around; they were common under Jim Crow and they are common now after desegregation efforts have been largely abandoned. The real controversy was over jumbling up school district populations -- through boundary adjustments, transportation, or other means -- to mix black and white children and thus provide the former the same educational resources as the latter. (It's important to remember that educational equality was the main goal of desegregation, not simple rubbing shoulders between the races.) For a few years after the civil rights victories in the 1960s, there was enough consensus around the horror of Jim Crow that the political class widely agreed on desegregration.
But a huge fraction of white people both in and out of the South didn't want black kids anywhere near their own children, nor did they want to share school resources with black families, and so they ginned up excuses to obscure their real motivations. School integration was smeared as "forced busing," and stopping it a mere defense of "community schools" -- thus following the classic American tradition of portraying a change in government policy as the imposition of a new policy and racist whites the helpless victims of Dread Government Coercion.
After being elected in 1972, Biden quickly moved right on desegregation, capitalizing on and heightening this white backlash. In one speech, he called busing a "bankrupt concept," and suggested in an interview that "I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace." He sought support from outright white supremacists like James Eastland, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and James Allen to pass amendments banning federal funding for transport-based school integration. As late as 2007 he called busing a "liberal train wreck" in an autobiography.
Read full article here.
Ryan Cooper
Ryan Cooper is the Managing Editor of The American Prospect. Formerly, he was a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
The standout moment in either of the first two Democratic primary debates was unquestionably the showdown between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden over school desegregation. Harris came prepared with her own story being bused to an integrated school as a young girl and attacked Biden over his fond recollections of being friendly with the vicious racist James Eastland.
Naturally, this has the Biden camp on the defensive. "We can be proud of her nonetheless, but her ambition got it wrong about Joe," former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Il.) told Politico. But this is an absolute crock -- on the contrary, Harris barely scratched the surface of Biden's awful civil rights record.
Let's start with "busing." As I have written before, the focus on busing per se as being the essence of school desegregation is wildly misleading. Buses are merely a way of moving children around; they were common under Jim Crow and they are common now after desegregation efforts have been largely abandoned. The real controversy was over jumbling up school district populations -- through boundary adjustments, transportation, or other means -- to mix black and white children and thus provide the former the same educational resources as the latter. (It's important to remember that educational equality was the main goal of desegregation, not simple rubbing shoulders between the races.) For a few years after the civil rights victories in the 1960s, there was enough consensus around the horror of Jim Crow that the political class widely agreed on desegregration.
But a huge fraction of white people both in and out of the South didn't want black kids anywhere near their own children, nor did they want to share school resources with black families, and so they ginned up excuses to obscure their real motivations. School integration was smeared as "forced busing," and stopping it a mere defense of "community schools" -- thus following the classic American tradition of portraying a change in government policy as the imposition of a new policy and racist whites the helpless victims of Dread Government Coercion.
After being elected in 1972, Biden quickly moved right on desegregation, capitalizing on and heightening this white backlash. In one speech, he called busing a "bankrupt concept," and suggested in an interview that "I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace." He sought support from outright white supremacists like James Eastland, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and James Allen to pass amendments banning federal funding for transport-based school integration. As late as 2007 he called busing a "liberal train wreck" in an autobiography.
Read full article here.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.