It's a Twofer today - Two Liberal High Ranking Politicians are exposed as Racists.

Joe Biden embraced segregation in 1975, claiming it was a matter of 'black pride'

[www.washingtonexaminer.com]

Joe Biden, weighing a 2020 White House bid, once advocated continued school segregation in the United States, arguing that it benefited minorities and that integration would prevent black people from embracing “their own identity.”

Biden was speaking in 1975, when he opposed the federally mandated busing policy designed to end segregation in schools. In the past few decades, he has claimed he wanted desegregation but believed the policy of busing would not achieve it. Last year, he stated he had voted heroically to protect busing.

But 44 years ago, facing a backlash against busing from white voters, the future vice president voiced concerns not just about the policy of busing, which he had supported when first seeking election in 1972, but about the impact of desegregation on American society. He argued that segregation was good for blacks and was what they wanted.

“I think the concept of busing … that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest, is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride,” said Biden. Desegregation, he argued, was “a rejection of the entire black awareness concept, where black is beautiful, black culture should be studied; and the cultural awareness of the importance of their own identity, their own individuality.”

Dunn said opposition to busing was largely motivated by racism and that without the court-ordered policy “we likely would not have had a black president.” Had Biden's arguments prevailed, he might well not have become vice president in 2009. “What I find ironic is that [Biden] was the vice president under a president who, if it hadn’t been for the social interaction that occurred during the era of busing, I argue we likely would not have seen the election of Barack Obama," said Dunn.

The NPR interview provides new insight into a little-explored chapter of Biden’s political career: His curious role as a leading opponent of a liberal cause celebre: federal school integration efforts in the decades following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

Biden said in the interview, during which he was speaking with Brooke, the African-American Republican senator, that "busing doesn’t work," but he went on to say he had a philosophical as well as a practical objection to it: Busing would lead to "a totally homogeneous society" that would be to the detriment of black people.

In September 1975, Biden supported an anti-busing amendment to a federal bill. It was proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a segregationist until at least the 1960s and regarded by most to be a racist. Delighted by Biden's shift, Helms welcomed him "to the ranks of the enlightened."

Dunn, the urban studies professor, said: "I was really taken aback to find that he had actually introduced legislation with Jesse Helms. I was really struck by that. So he’s going to have to answer for his position on this matter on the campaign trail if he does in fact seek the presidency."

Biden also supported an anti-busing amendment by Sen. Robert Byrd, a senator from West Virginia and a Democrat who had renounced his racist past, which included being a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan and rising to the title of kleagle and exalted cyclops of his local chapter.

Tom Atkins, a Boston NAACP leader, said in March 1975 that opposing busing was racist: "An anti-busing amendment is an anti-desegregation amendment, and an anti-desegregation amendment is an anti-black amendment."

Biden had emerged as the first of a small group of liberal Democratic senators to support anti-busing laws in the 1970s and 1980s. He sponsored legislation on the issue, promised to fight for a constitutional amendment against the policy, and was profiled in the Washington Post as the “liberal who fights busing.”

Larry Sabato, founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the busing comments could be a major problem for Biden in 2020. Biden would be “running against 15, 20, 25 other Democrats who are much younger and who grew up in a more politically correct time, when you didn’t say x or y or z," he said. "He’s going to have to explain [his position on busing] ... and a lot of other things, really, because he served for so long."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2019 12:47AM by Jennifer.