[ April 23, 2024 ]
The Biden bill “heave[d] a brick through the window of school integration,” said one of the lawyers who had won the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended legal school segregation 21 years earlier. And according to Greenberg, Biden was the man with his hand on the brick.
“You Ain’t Black’ and Joe Biden’s 10 Other Acts of Racism
Joe Biden didn’t just compromise with segregationists. He fought for their cause in schools, experts say.
Joe Biden helped give America the language that is still used to oppose school integration today, legislative and education history experts say.
By Janell Ross, NBC News, June 25, 2019:
Story continues below advertisementIn a 1975 Senate hearing, the legendary civil rights lawyer Jack Greenberg had something to say to freshman Sen. Joe Biden.
Greenberg, longtime director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, took Biden to task for sponsoring a bill that would limit the power of courts to order school desegregation with busing. It was a move that followed the wishes of many of Biden’s white constituents in Delaware.
The bill “heaves a brick through the window of school integration,” said Greenberg, one of the lawyers who had won the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended legal school segregation 21 years earlier. And according to Greenberg, Biden was the man with his hand on the brick.
Biden’s role in fighting student busing more than four decades ago has received renewed attention after the 76-year-old presidential candidate touted his ability to compromise with segregationists during his long Senate career. Biden said he disagreed strongly with these Southerners’ views but needed to work with them to get things done. Biden’s comments set off a firestorm among his political rivals and some political analysts, who described his language as offensive and anachronistic.
But political experts and education policy researchers say Biden, a supporter of civil rights in other arenas, did not simply compromise with segregationists — he also led the charge on an issue that kept black students away from the classrooms of white students. His legislative work against school integration advanced a more palatable version of the “separate but equal” doctrine and undermined the nation’s short-lived effort at educational equality, legislative and education history experts say.
“Biden, who I think has been good overall on civil rights, was a leader on anti-busing,” Rucker Johnson, author of the book “Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works,” said. “A leader on giving America the language to oppose it despite it being the most effective means of school integration at that time.”
That, of course, is not how Biden sees it.
On Saturday, Biden defended his work with segregationist senators in an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC: “You got to deal with what’s in front of you and what was in front of you was a bunch of racists and we had to defeat them.”
Joe Biden responds to controversy over his segregationist comment
June 23, 201912:07After this article was originally published, Biden’s national press secretary, Jamal Brown, emailed a statement saying that Biden was never opposed to integration, and in fact supported the concept. But he said Biden opposed Delaware’s busing methods, and included statements from black activists in Delaware who also opposed busing.
In March, Biden’s spokesman, Bill Russo, said the former vice president believes he was right to oppose busing.
“He never thought busing was the best way to integrate schools in Delaware — a position which most people now agree with,” Russo told The Washington Post in March. “As he said during those many years of debate, busing would not achieve equal opportunity. And it didn’t.”
In 1975, Biden was representing a state where one of the first major urban school desegregation plans had been ordered by a court. Many white parents in the Wilmington area were angry. In response, Biden sponsored not just the bill limiting courts’ power but also an amendment to an appropriations bill that barred the federal government from withholding funding from schools that remained effectively segregated.
The amendment went beyond the busing issue, affecting school systems that effectively separated students by race whether or not they used busing. Co-sponsors included segregationist Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. The amendment passed the Senate on a 50-43 vote, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. (Biden was not alone among northern Democrats who supported it — in that group, 14 supported the amendment and 26 opposed it, according to the Congressional Quarterly.)
Foreign Relations Business Meeting
Sen. Joe Biden shakes hands with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., at the Capitol on Oct. 8, 2002. In the 1970s, Helms supported some of Biden’s legislation to limit school integration.Scott J. Ferrell / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images fileWhen Biden rose to defend the amendment, he said that the “assignment of schools and/or classes because of a person’s race … is a counterproductive concept that is causing more harm to equal education than any benefit.”
Biden’s anti-integration efforts didn’t end in 1975. Two years later, he co-authored a bill that barred federal courts from ordering busing plans unless courts found evidence of discriminatory intent. That legislation failed.
A 1977 report on school desegregation by the Civil Rights Commission, a federal agency, described Biden’s activities as stymieing school integration.
Federal data analyzed by Johnson and other researchers shows that busing succeeded in narrowing racial achievement gaps before frontal assaults and legislative maneuvers by Biden and others rendered it easier for districts under court order to be released from integration demands. America’s school integration efforts lasted, all told, no more than 15 years, Johnson said.
Johnson has reviewed data on more than 10,000 students from this period, who were studied for decades afterward. He found that black adults who spent the most time in integrated schools attained more education, completed college, maintained better health and earned higher incomes than peers who spent less time or no time in integrated schools. All of this happened without any reduction in white student grades or outcomes, the data shows. And white adults who attended integrated schools reported better understanding of issues affecting nonwhite Americans.
“Integration is a social good which also happens to make for high-quality education,” said Johnson, an economist and professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is also the one thing that has worked but the one thing most people don’t want to talk about and many people fight if we even try.”
The Truth Must be Told
Your contribution supports independent journalism
Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more.
Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible.
Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too.
Please contribute here.
or
Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best.
Quick note: We cannot do this without your support. Fact. Our work is made possible by you and only you. We receive no grants, government handouts, or major funding.Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s essential NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America's survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Follow Pamela Geller on Gettr. I am there. click here.
Follow Pamela Geller on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social. It's open and free.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spammy or unhelpful, click the - symbol under the comment to let us know. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.
If you would like to join the conversation, but don't have an account, you can sign up for one right here.
If you are having problems leaving a comment, it's likely because you are using an ad blocker, something that break ads, of course, but also breaks the comments section of our site. If you are using an ad blocker, and would like to share your thoughts, please disable your ad blocker. We look forward to seeing your comments below.
14 Comments
3 years ago
Is Joe going backwards or forwards? It seems that segregation is now the desired goal of black Americans. Special privileges, free money, no laws to restrain crime, the best of everything without working for it. What a great country America is becoming. I guess us old white guys don’t qualify, we just have to pay for it. .
3 years ago
Reply to
old white guy
Your first mistake was trying to apply logic and reason to America’s longest running social train wreck. Biden is the poster child for self-serving Leftist politicians who have flip flopped and pandered to Black America for their vote, for over 50 years.
Once the anarchist smoke clears this Summer, Trump’s advertising is going to tear Biden another one over his record on black issues and China. Stock up on popcorn and enjoy the show.
3 years ago
Reply to
Worsethanitlooks
Others have lied about issue before but Biden is a lying machine. Most of the time Biden doesn’t know what he is talking about.
I wonder if they will allow Trump to advertise anywhere. Social media is already nit picking to CENSOR him while giving a free run to those advocating violence. What cable show will allow Trump advertising? FOX is not dependable. I am becoming more and more concerned over this issue.
3 years ago
Reply to
CARRENO BARTOX
I want to say yes writ bold but I and old Joe are of the same generation.
3 years ago
Who knew?
Biden is whoever you want him to be!
3 years ago
3 years ago
Reply to
Anthony Silvio
Did Joe MOLEST her too?
Never mind. I have NEVER seen racist Joe fondle any black female.
If you have, show me a picture or a video of it.
Joe is a die hard racist even when it come to being “creepy Joe”.
3 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
That’s Kamala Harris ……….. waiting for her bus to skool ?!!
Hard life she’s had ….. NOT!!
3 years ago
Biden will say anything at any time to anyone so that he looks like he is on their side. He was once filmed stating that he lies all the time to get his point across, like telling people he graduated at the top of his law class. Good thing there are records proving him a liar, all the time.
As he once said to a man in a wheel chair at a rally, “Stand up and take a bow!” Really want to give him the nuclear codes?
3 years ago
next out of the leftards gaping maw, we need a black police force…
3 years ago
it’s not Dementia Joe Biden on the pic but fashion madness Karl Lagerfeld with a black mask
3 years ago
Joe evolved.
