[ Joe Biden is a fucking racist. Libtards don't care. ]
Joe Biden worried in 1977 that certain de-segregation policies would cause his children to grow up 'in a racial jungle'
Former Vice President Joe Biden is facing increased scrutiny over his record on busing and racial issues, and this week old comments resurfaced in which he said, in 1977, that non-"orderly" racial integration policies would cause his children to "grow up in a racial jungle."
The quote was originally discovered by University of Southern California Law School professor and scholar Daria Roithmayr and first reported by The New York Times, which published a lengthy story on Biden's record on busing and school de-segregation on Monday morning.
In the quote, which appears to come from a congressional hearing related to anti-busing legislation, Biden emphasized wanting to "insure we do have orderly integration of society," adding he was "not just talking about education but all of society."
He then said: "Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this."
Biden's decades-long opposition to federally mandated busing came back into the spotlight during the first round of Democratic primary debates on June 27, when Sen. Kamala Harris took a targeted shot at him over the issue.
"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day," Harris said. "That little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats."
In the debate, Biden maintained that he didn't oppose voluntary busing programs, only busing ordered by the Department of Education. But new evidence uncovered from that period from The Times revealed Biden to be one of the Senate's most vocal advocates opposing court-ordered busing as well.
Reviewing thousands of documents from the time, The Times reported that Biden preferred expanding affordable housing in suburbs as a tool of integration over busing, and that he teamed up with the famed segregationist Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina on an amendment that would take away the federal government's ability to withdraw funding as a punishment for school districts that did not sufficiently integrate their student bodies.
Biden also took aim at court-ordered busing, bringing forward multiple items of legislation to curb the federal Department of Justice from litigating cases that could result in court-mandated school busing, The Times reported.
Read more: Joe Biden's past work with segregationist senators is a major deal breaker for lots of Democrats
In comments reported on in The Times' story, Biden further worried that court-ordered busing would lead to a "race war" and engender resentment among both white and black students.
"You take people who aren't racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children's intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school, and you're going to fill them with hatred," he said of a busing plan that would bus white students from the suburbs to urban schools.
He extended his concerns to a hypothetical black student from Wilmington too, wondering, "you send him to Alexis I. DuPont, bus him through Centerville every day, then send him back to the ghetto. How can he be encouraged to love his white brothers?"
Joe Biden worried in 1977 that certain de-segregation policies would cause his children to grow up 'in a racial jungle'
Former Vice President Joe Biden is facing increased scrutiny over his record on busing and racial issues, and this week old comments resurfaced in which he said, in 1977, that non-"orderly" racial integration policies would cause his children to "grow up in a racial jungle."
The quote was originally discovered by University of Southern California Law School professor and scholar Daria Roithmayr and first reported by The New York Times, which published a lengthy story on Biden's record on busing and school de-segregation on Monday morning.
In the quote, which appears to come from a congressional hearing related to anti-busing legislation, Biden emphasized wanting to "insure we do have orderly integration of society," adding he was "not just talking about education but all of society."
He then said: "Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this."
Biden's decades-long opposition to federally mandated busing came back into the spotlight during the first round of Democratic primary debates on June 27, when Sen. Kamala Harris took a targeted shot at him over the issue.
"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day," Harris said. "That little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats."
In the debate, Biden maintained that he didn't oppose voluntary busing programs, only busing ordered by the Department of Education. But new evidence uncovered from that period from The Times revealed Biden to be one of the Senate's most vocal advocates opposing court-ordered busing as well.
Biden also took aim at court-ordered busing, bringing forward multiple items of legislation to curb the federal Department of Justice from litigating cases that could result in court-mandated school busing, The Times reported.
Read more: Joe Biden's past work with segregationist senators is a major deal breaker for lots of Democrats
In comments reported on in The Times' story, Biden further worried that court-ordered busing would lead to a "race war" and engender resentment among both white and black students.
He extended his concerns to a hypothetical black student from Wilmington too, wondering, "you send him to Alexis I. DuPont, bus him through Centerville every day, then send him back to the ghetto. How can he be encouraged to love his white brothers?"
Racist Joe Biden speaking of repairing legacy of slavery:
The exchange began when Ms. Davis, pointing out Mr. Biden’s past comment, asked him whether he currently thinks Americans need to repair the legacy of slavery in the United States.
DAVIS: Mr. Vice President, I want to come to you and talk to you about inequality in schools and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter, “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/us/politics/biden-record-player.html
The exchange began when Ms. Davis, pointing out Mr. Biden’s past comment, asked him whether he currently thinks Americans need to repair the legacy of slavery in the United States.
DAVIS: Mr. Vice President, I want to come to you and talk to you about inequality in schools and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter, “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/us/politics/biden-record-player.html
[ Racist Joe Biden the kiddie sniffer won't apologize for bragging about working with avowed racist segregationists ]
A defiant Joe Biden on Wednesday refused to apologize for citing two Southern segregationist senators as people he “got things done” with in the U.S. Senate, emphasizing his record on civil rights at a pair of fundraising stops and striking a confrontational tone when asked about the controversy swirling around his comments.
Several of Biden’s 2020 Democratic opponents, including Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, who are both African American, criticized Biden for speaking fondly of working with segregationists. Asked by reporters on Wednesday night outside a fundraiser in suburban Washington whether he should apologize, Biden replied: “Apologize for what?”
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said, briefly imitating the Mississippi senator’s accent. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”
Biden’s opponents for the 2020 Democratic nomination harshly criticized him on Wednesday. “You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys,’” Booker said in a statement.
“Men like James O. Eastland used words like that, and the racist policies that accompanied them, to perpetuate white supremacy and strip black Americans of our very humanity,” the New Jersey senator continued. “Frankly, I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted in response to Biden’s comments, saying, “It’s 2019 & @JoeBiden is longing for the good old days of ‘civility’ typified by James Eastland. Eastland thought my multiracial family should be illegal.”
Rep. John Delaney of Maryland said: “Evoking an avowed segregationist is not the best way to make the point that we need to work together and is insensitive; we need to learn from history but we also need to be aggressive in dismantling structural racism that exists today.”
Biden did not overhaul his message. When he attended the two fundraisers in wealthy suburbs of Washington on Wednesday, he spoke about issues including inequality and race, and even tweaked his comments on Eastland and Talmadge — but he offered no apology.
As a crowd of 150 enthusiastic supporters packed shoulder-to-shoulder in Tim Shriver’s Chevy Chase, Md., living room, Biden spoke about his time on the Senate Judiciary Committee and said: “We had to put up with the likes of, like, Jim Eastland and Hermy Talmadge and all those segregationists and all of that. And the fact of the matter is that we were able to do it because we were able to win — we were able to beat them on everything they stood for.”
“We in fact detested what they stood for in terms of segregation and all the rest,” Biden said. Because Sen. Ted Kennedy let him take the helm of the Judiciary Committee, “we were able to do so much. We restored the Voting Rights Act, we did it, and over time we extended it by 25 years not just five years.”
But asked by a camera crew before the event whether he would apologize for his comments, Biden insisted he would not.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/19/biden-apology-segregation-race-1372576
A defiant Joe Biden on Wednesday refused to apologize for citing two Southern segregationist senators as people he “got things done” with in the U.S. Senate, emphasizing his record on civil rights at a pair of fundraising stops and striking a confrontational tone when asked about the controversy swirling around his comments.
Several of Biden’s 2020 Democratic opponents, including Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, who are both African American, criticized Biden for speaking fondly of working with segregationists. Asked by reporters on Wednesday night outside a fundraiser in suburban Washington whether he should apologize, Biden replied: “Apologize for what?”
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said, briefly imitating the Mississippi senator’s accent. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”
Biden’s opponents for the 2020 Democratic nomination harshly criticized him on Wednesday. “You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys,’” Booker said in a statement.
“Men like James O. Eastland used words like that, and the racist policies that accompanied them, to perpetuate white supremacy and strip black Americans of our very humanity,” the New Jersey senator continued. “Frankly, I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted in response to Biden’s comments, saying, “It’s 2019 & @JoeBiden is longing for the good old days of ‘civility’ typified by James Eastland. Eastland thought my multiracial family should be illegal.”
Rep. John Delaney of Maryland said: “Evoking an avowed segregationist is not the best way to make the point that we need to work together and is insensitive; we need to learn from history but we also need to be aggressive in dismantling structural racism that exists today.”
Biden did not overhaul his message. When he attended the two fundraisers in wealthy suburbs of Washington on Wednesday, he spoke about issues including inequality and race, and even tweaked his comments on Eastland and Talmadge — but he offered no apology.
As a crowd of 150 enthusiastic supporters packed shoulder-to-shoulder in Tim Shriver’s Chevy Chase, Md., living room, Biden spoke about his time on the Senate Judiciary Committee and said: “We had to put up with the likes of, like, Jim Eastland and Hermy Talmadge and all those segregationists and all of that. And the fact of the matter is that we were able to do it because we were able to win — we were able to beat them on everything they stood for.”
“We in fact detested what they stood for in terms of segregation and all the rest,” Biden said. Because Sen. Ted Kennedy let him take the helm of the Judiciary Committee, “we were able to do so much. We restored the Voting Rights Act, we did it, and over time we extended it by 25 years not just five years.”
But asked by a camera crew before the event whether he would apologize for his comments, Biden insisted he would not.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/19/biden-apology-segregation-race-1372576
[ Racist kiddie sniffer was probably a secret member of the KKK ]
Jonathan Kozol: Joe Biden Didn’t Just Praise Segregationists. He Also Spent Years Fighting Busing
Former Vice President Joe Biden made headlines last week when he fondly reminisced about his “civil” relationship in the 1970s and 1980s with segregationist senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. While Biden’s recent comments made the news, far less attention has been paid to the former vice president’s actual record. In the 1970s, then-Senator Biden was a fierce critic of Delaware’s attempts to bus students in an effort to integrate its schools. We speak with National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol about Biden’s track record.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Democratic presidential candidates are preparing for the opening debates of the 2020 presidential race this week, with 20 candidates slated to face off in a two-night forum starting Wednesday. Former Vice President Joe Biden will participate in the second of the two nights, Thursday night debate, where he’ll likely face questions about his recent praise of segregationists. He’ll be debating, among others, Senator Sanders and Kamala Harris.
Last week, Biden made headlines when he fondly reminisced about his “civil” relationship in the '70s and ’80s with segregationist senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. Biden reportedly said, quote, “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. … He never called me ’boy'; he called me 'son.'”
Biden was widely criticized by his Democratic rivals, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who said, quote, “Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people, and for everyone. Frankly, I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans. He should,” Cory Booker said. Biden has refused to apologize for his remarks.
While Biden’s recent comments made the news, far less attention has been paid to the former vice president’s actual record. In the 1970s, then-Senator Biden was a fierce critic of Delaware’s attempts to bus students in an effort to integrate its schools. In a recently unearthed interview from 1975, Biden said, quote, “We’ve lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown v. School Board desegregation case. … To 'desegregate' is different than to 'integrate.'” He went on to say, quote, “The real problem with busing is that you take [white] people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school,” unquote. CNN recently revealed that in 1977 Biden wrote a letter to the segregationist Senator James Eastland thanking him for supporting his anti-busing legislation.
We’re joined now by the National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol, whose recent article for The Nation is headlined “When Joe Biden Collaborated with Segregationists.” Kozol wrote this weeks before the latest Biden controversy. Jonathan Kozol is the author of many books, including Death at an Early Age, Savage Inequalities, The Shame of the Nation and other books on race and education. He taught fifth grade for two years in Boston’s suburban interdistrict program, the longest-lasting voluntary integration effort in the nation.
Jonathan Kozol, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So, you write this piece about the now-presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden’s record with segregationists, and then this whole story blows up, with Vice President Biden speaking at a fundraiser in New York for his presidential campaign, where he praised Eastland and Talmadge, the segregationist senators, and talked about the civility of the old days and said that Eastland didn’t call him “boy,” he called him “son”—to the shock of many, especially African-American Senator Cory Booker, who talked about what it meant for African-American men to be called “boy.” Of course, Joe Biden, not an African American. Jonathan Kozol, your response to all of this and what you feel the media has missed with senator, vice president, now-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s extensive record over the decades?
JONATHAN KOZOL: Well, Amy, the most troubling point, from my point of view—and this is a point that most of the mainstream media has completely dodged or missed—is that, you know, Joe Biden didn’t simply reach out, in consensus, some kind of civility, to these Southern racist senators. It wasn’t hard for him to reach out, because he shared their views in the first place. He didn’t just support legislation introduced by James Eastland, Jesse Helms. He thanked them for supporting his legislation and his own anti-busing legislation. He called busing “asinine.” And worse than that, at one point he even came to the point of saying—I want to get his words exact—of saying, “I’ve gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing is a constitutional amendment.” Just stunning words.
Last week, he said he has no apologies. And the media has quoted him repeatedly saying, “I’ve been involved with civil rights my whole career.” But this is simply—I don’t know how to word this politely, but this is simply not the truth. To the extent that he’s been involved in civil rights, it hasn’t been as an advocate. It’s been as an opponent. And, you know, like other careful centrists, Biden threads the needle on the subject of diversity by saying that he favors it in principle; he simply opposes the only way in which to make it possible. In a nation in which residential segregation and redlining on the part of banks and mortgage lending institutions remain absolutely unabated, Biden knows absolutely well—he has to know—that by opposing the use of transportation, he’s making school integration virtually impossible.
And I just—you know, I’d go on, just briefly, for a moment, about his antipathy to the bus, because it’s remarkably selective antipathy. All over America, every single day, we see the good old yellow school bus stopping by the road to pick up kids in front of their homes and take them to school, and around 3 in the afternoon we see the bus again. Some of those buses—not enough, but some of them—are transporting inner-city children from virtual apartheid schooling systems into very well-funded, beautiful schools in affluent suburban communities.
Now, I’m very close to this issue because way back in the 1960s I first taught for a year in inner-city Boston, in a nightmarish school, a classic separate-and-unequal school. But a year or two after that, I was hired to teach in the first major interdistrict integration program in the country, which involves today about 30 suburbs close to Boston. And I had a very close friend in that struggle, one of the activists in Boston, an African-American woman named Julia Walker, who’s now 86 years old. And she sent her kids and her grandkids, and now she has a few great-grandkids, on the bus in that program to some really marvelous schools, where 95% of the black kids who ride the bus—this is an amazing statistic, where more than 95% of the black and Latino kids who ride the bus have a four-year high school graduation rate, as you can compare to the classic segregated urban school where it’s more like 60%. And the overwhelming majority of those kids go on to college, go on to four-year colleges. I know a number of the first students in that program who went on to become teachers, and they’re now the first black teachers in suburban public schools, so they can serve as role models for the next generation of kids.
When I hear Joe Biden stand up and say busing is a terrible mistake, it just breaks my heart. I mean, these aren’t perfect programs, but the program in Boston, for example, has long had a waiting list of 15,000 children. And, you know, the way I see it, as long as African-American and Latino parents, who still believe in the dream of Dr. King, are lining up to get their children into these programs, I don’t want to see a Democratic nominee who’s going to slam the gate in their face and lock them out. And he’s said nothing to indicate that he’s changed his views.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go back to some of the things he’s said, that you also have pointed out, to specifically address them.
JONATHAN KOZOL: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: In October 1975, U.S. News & World Report published a special feature on busing, featuring political leaders with opposing views on the issue. Ed Brooke argued in favor of busing, Joe Biden against. When asked whether busing caused more harm than good, Biden replied, quote, “Absolutely. … It implies that blacks have no reason to be proud of their inheritance and their own culture.” In a recently unearthed interview from '75, Biden said, quote, “We've lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown v. School Board desegregation case. … To 'desegregate' is different than to 'integrate.'” He went on to say, “The real problem with busing is that you take [white] people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school.” Again, those are the words of Joe Biden.
JONATHAN KOZOL: I don’t—
AMY GOODMAN: And it will be very interesting—go ahead.
JONATHAN KOZOL: I don’t—I mean, the notion that a school in which black and white children or children of multiple ethnicities sit together in class is doomed to be an inferior school is what I find most offensive, and ignorant. It’s simply not so. His concern for the stunting of white children is awfully selective. The stunting of black children in badly underfunded, often physically decrepit, disgusting, separate-nonequal schools doesn’t seem to elicit the same sense of alarm.
You know, I’m 82 years old. I’ve been at this since I was 28. And I just—I find it almost unbearable to see a Democratic candidate who has been willing through the years to trample on the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer; Thurgood Marshall; those three young men, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, who went down to Mississippi in 1964 to try to break the back of apartheid and gave their lives for their beliefs. When Biden—you know, he’s very good at waffling, depending on what audience he’s in front of. The talk he gave last week about developing an amicable relationship with these Southern racists, he gave that talk in front of a group of very wealthy donors at a fancy party, a fundraising party. I think it was at the hotel Carlyle in New York. I wonder if he dare to give that same speech in front of an audience of young black and Hispanic voters.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, interestingly, he gave that talk last Tuesday night. Wednesday was Juneteenth, the day African Americans, enslaved African Americans, in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation and were freed. That day, Juneteenth, there were two historic hearings on Capitol Hill. One was around poverty and extreme racism in this country, that was led by the Reverend Barber.
JONATHAN KOZOL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The other was a hearing, the first in 12 years, on reparations. The leadoff speaker was Ta-Nehisi Coates. And the next morning, we spoke to Ta-Nehisi, the critically acclaimed writer, about Joe Biden’s comments.
JONATHAN KOZOL: Yeah, well, there are three points about that. One is, Biden didn’t just agree with Southern segregationists. He, in a way, helped to let Northern senators, who might have been reasonable and enlightened on this issue—he helped to steer them away from integration. He helped to give them a convenient rationale for not supporting integration in their schools. And he did it by saying that in the North, de jure segregation—sorry, de facto segregation was not intentional, and therefore could not justify court-ordered integration. In other words, it was just demographic happenstance that people happen to live on the opposite sides of town.
And he also—on the subject of reparations, he was very clear. He said, “I do not buy the concept that we have suppressed the black man for 300 years.” No reference to black women. And he went on, “And that as a result”—that’s my paraphrase—”we have to give the black man a head start,” which he inferred—actually, stated—would hold the white man back. I mean, these are absolutely unspeakable positions. And, you know, if he had the courage to stand up today and not waffle about it, but say openly, “I was totally wrong. Forgive me,” that might—that might be reassuring, although, because he changes his tune so frequently, one cannot be sure. I just—
AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Kozol, we have to break, but I want to ask that you stay sitting there in the studio in Boston. We’d like to do Part 2 of our conversation after the show, and we will post it under web exclusives at democracynow.org.
Jonathan Kozol is the National Book Award-winning author of Death at an Early Age, also Savage Inequalities and The Shame of the Nation, among other books on race and education. We’ll link to your piece in The Nation, “When Joe Biden Collaborated with Segregationists.”
When we come back, we go to Oregon, where the state government is in a standoff after 11 Republican lawmakers, supported by right-wing militias, have fled the capital of Salem—Salem, Oregon—to avoid voting on landmark climate change legislation. Apparently, some have fled to Idaho. We’ll speak with a Democratic lawmaker in Portland. Stay with us.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/25/joe_biden_anti_busing_segregation_history
Jonathan Kozol: Joe Biden Didn’t Just Praise Segregationists. He Also Spent Years Fighting Busing
Former Vice President Joe Biden made headlines last week when he fondly reminisced about his “civil” relationship in the 1970s and 1980s with segregationist senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. While Biden’s recent comments made the news, far less attention has been paid to the former vice president’s actual record. In the 1970s, then-Senator Biden was a fierce critic of Delaware’s attempts to bus students in an effort to integrate its schools. We speak with National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol about Biden’s track record.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Democratic presidential candidates are preparing for the opening debates of the 2020 presidential race this week, with 20 candidates slated to face off in a two-night forum starting Wednesday. Former Vice President Joe Biden will participate in the second of the two nights, Thursday night debate, where he’ll likely face questions about his recent praise of segregationists. He’ll be debating, among others, Senator Sanders and Kamala Harris.
Last week, Biden made headlines when he fondly reminisced about his “civil” relationship in the '70s and ’80s with segregationist senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. Biden reportedly said, quote, “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. … He never called me ’boy'; he called me 'son.'”
Biden was widely criticized by his Democratic rivals, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who said, quote, “Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people, and for everyone. Frankly, I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans. He should,” Cory Booker said. Biden has refused to apologize for his remarks.
REPORTER: Are you going to apologize, like Cory Booker has called for?
JOE BIDEN: Apologize for what?
REPORTER: Cory Booker has called for it. He’s asking you to apologize.
JOE BIDEN: Cory should apologize. He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career, period, period, period.
AMY GOODMAN: He demanded that Cory Booker apologize to Joe Biden.
While Biden’s recent comments made the news, far less attention has been paid to the former vice president’s actual record. In the 1970s, then-Senator Biden was a fierce critic of Delaware’s attempts to bus students in an effort to integrate its schools. In a recently unearthed interview from 1975, Biden said, quote, “We’ve lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown v. School Board desegregation case. … To 'desegregate' is different than to 'integrate.'” He went on to say, quote, “The real problem with busing is that you take [white] people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school,” unquote. CNN recently revealed that in 1977 Biden wrote a letter to the segregationist Senator James Eastland thanking him for supporting his anti-busing legislation.
We’re joined now by the National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol, whose recent article for The Nation is headlined “When Joe Biden Collaborated with Segregationists.” Kozol wrote this weeks before the latest Biden controversy. Jonathan Kozol is the author of many books, including Death at an Early Age, Savage Inequalities, The Shame of the Nation and other books on race and education. He taught fifth grade for two years in Boston’s suburban interdistrict program, the longest-lasting voluntary integration effort in the nation.
Jonathan Kozol, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So, you write this piece about the now-presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden’s record with segregationists, and then this whole story blows up, with Vice President Biden speaking at a fundraiser in New York for his presidential campaign, where he praised Eastland and Talmadge, the segregationist senators, and talked about the civility of the old days and said that Eastland didn’t call him “boy,” he called him “son”—to the shock of many, especially African-American Senator Cory Booker, who talked about what it meant for African-American men to be called “boy.” Of course, Joe Biden, not an African American. Jonathan Kozol, your response to all of this and what you feel the media has missed with senator, vice president, now-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s extensive record over the decades?
JONATHAN KOZOL: Well, Amy, the most troubling point, from my point of view—and this is a point that most of the mainstream media has completely dodged or missed—is that, you know, Joe Biden didn’t simply reach out, in consensus, some kind of civility, to these Southern racist senators. It wasn’t hard for him to reach out, because he shared their views in the first place. He didn’t just support legislation introduced by James Eastland, Jesse Helms. He thanked them for supporting his legislation and his own anti-busing legislation. He called busing “asinine.” And worse than that, at one point he even came to the point of saying—I want to get his words exact—of saying, “I’ve gotten to the point where I think our only recourse to eliminate busing is a constitutional amendment.” Just stunning words.
Last week, he said he has no apologies. And the media has quoted him repeatedly saying, “I’ve been involved with civil rights my whole career.” But this is simply—I don’t know how to word this politely, but this is simply not the truth. To the extent that he’s been involved in civil rights, it hasn’t been as an advocate. It’s been as an opponent. And, you know, like other careful centrists, Biden threads the needle on the subject of diversity by saying that he favors it in principle; he simply opposes the only way in which to make it possible. In a nation in which residential segregation and redlining on the part of banks and mortgage lending institutions remain absolutely unabated, Biden knows absolutely well—he has to know—that by opposing the use of transportation, he’s making school integration virtually impossible.
And I just—you know, I’d go on, just briefly, for a moment, about his antipathy to the bus, because it’s remarkably selective antipathy. All over America, every single day, we see the good old yellow school bus stopping by the road to pick up kids in front of their homes and take them to school, and around 3 in the afternoon we see the bus again. Some of those buses—not enough, but some of them—are transporting inner-city children from virtual apartheid schooling systems into very well-funded, beautiful schools in affluent suburban communities.
Now, I’m very close to this issue because way back in the 1960s I first taught for a year in inner-city Boston, in a nightmarish school, a classic separate-and-unequal school. But a year or two after that, I was hired to teach in the first major interdistrict integration program in the country, which involves today about 30 suburbs close to Boston. And I had a very close friend in that struggle, one of the activists in Boston, an African-American woman named Julia Walker, who’s now 86 years old. And she sent her kids and her grandkids, and now she has a few great-grandkids, on the bus in that program to some really marvelous schools, where 95% of the black kids who ride the bus—this is an amazing statistic, where more than 95% of the black and Latino kids who ride the bus have a four-year high school graduation rate, as you can compare to the classic segregated urban school where it’s more like 60%. And the overwhelming majority of those kids go on to college, go on to four-year colleges. I know a number of the first students in that program who went on to become teachers, and they’re now the first black teachers in suburban public schools, so they can serve as role models for the next generation of kids.
When I hear Joe Biden stand up and say busing is a terrible mistake, it just breaks my heart. I mean, these aren’t perfect programs, but the program in Boston, for example, has long had a waiting list of 15,000 children. And, you know, the way I see it, as long as African-American and Latino parents, who still believe in the dream of Dr. King, are lining up to get their children into these programs, I don’t want to see a Democratic nominee who’s going to slam the gate in their face and lock them out. And he’s said nothing to indicate that he’s changed his views.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go back to some of the things he’s said, that you also have pointed out, to specifically address them.
JONATHAN KOZOL: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: In October 1975, U.S. News & World Report published a special feature on busing, featuring political leaders with opposing views on the issue. Ed Brooke argued in favor of busing, Joe Biden against. When asked whether busing caused more harm than good, Biden replied, quote, “Absolutely. … It implies that blacks have no reason to be proud of their inheritance and their own culture.” In a recently unearthed interview from '75, Biden said, quote, “We've lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown v. School Board desegregation case. … To 'desegregate' is different than to 'integrate.'” He went on to say, “The real problem with busing is that you take [white] people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school.” Again, those are the words of Joe Biden.
JONATHAN KOZOL: I don’t—
AMY GOODMAN: And it will be very interesting—go ahead.
JONATHAN KOZOL: I don’t—I mean, the notion that a school in which black and white children or children of multiple ethnicities sit together in class is doomed to be an inferior school is what I find most offensive, and ignorant. It’s simply not so. His concern for the stunting of white children is awfully selective. The stunting of black children in badly underfunded, often physically decrepit, disgusting, separate-nonequal schools doesn’t seem to elicit the same sense of alarm.
You know, I’m 82 years old. I’ve been at this since I was 28. And I just—I find it almost unbearable to see a Democratic candidate who has been willing through the years to trample on the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer; Thurgood Marshall; those three young men, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, who went down to Mississippi in 1964 to try to break the back of apartheid and gave their lives for their beliefs. When Biden—you know, he’s very good at waffling, depending on what audience he’s in front of. The talk he gave last week about developing an amicable relationship with these Southern racists, he gave that talk in front of a group of very wealthy donors at a fancy party, a fundraising party. I think it was at the hotel Carlyle in New York. I wonder if he dare to give that same speech in front of an audience of young black and Hispanic voters.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, interestingly, he gave that talk last Tuesday night. Wednesday was Juneteenth, the day African Americans, enslaved African Americans, in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation and were freed. That day, Juneteenth, there were two historic hearings on Capitol Hill. One was around poverty and extreme racism in this country, that was led by the Reverend Barber.
JONATHAN KOZOL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The other was a hearing, the first in 12 years, on reparations. The leadoff speaker was Ta-Nehisi Coates. And the next morning, we spoke to Ta-Nehisi, the critically acclaimed writer, about Joe Biden’s comments.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Joe Biden says that he’s been involved with civil rights his entire career. It’s worth remembering Joe Biden opposed busing and bragged about it, you know, in the 1970s. Joe Biden is on the record as being to the right of actually the New Democrats in the 1990s on the issue of mass incarceration, wanted more people sentenced to the death penalty, wanted more jails. And so, you know, I’m not surprised. I mean, this is who Joe Biden is. You know there’s that saying: When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. This is who Joe Biden is.
AMY GOODMAN: And Ta-Nehisi Coates went on to say Joe Biden shouldn’t be president. The New York Times says, “While segregation was once most severe in the former states of the Confederacy, in 2016 it was in four liberal states—New York, California, Maryland and Illinois—that black children were most likely to attend intensely segregated schools. Latinos were most likely to attend intensely segregated schools in California, New York, Texas and New Jersey.” New York, California, Maryland and Illinois, the most severe school segregation in 2016. Jonathan Kozol?
JONATHAN KOZOL: Yeah, well, there are three points about that. One is, Biden didn’t just agree with Southern segregationists. He, in a way, helped to let Northern senators, who might have been reasonable and enlightened on this issue—he helped to steer them away from integration. He helped to give them a convenient rationale for not supporting integration in their schools. And he did it by saying that in the North, de jure segregation—sorry, de facto segregation was not intentional, and therefore could not justify court-ordered integration. In other words, it was just demographic happenstance that people happen to live on the opposite sides of town.
And he also—on the subject of reparations, he was very clear. He said, “I do not buy the concept that we have suppressed the black man for 300 years.” No reference to black women. And he went on, “And that as a result”—that’s my paraphrase—”we have to give the black man a head start,” which he inferred—actually, stated—would hold the white man back. I mean, these are absolutely unspeakable positions. And, you know, if he had the courage to stand up today and not waffle about it, but say openly, “I was totally wrong. Forgive me,” that might—that might be reassuring, although, because he changes his tune so frequently, one cannot be sure. I just—
AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Kozol, we have to break, but I want to ask that you stay sitting there in the studio in Boston. We’d like to do Part 2 of our conversation after the show, and we will post it under web exclusives at democracynow.org.
Jonathan Kozol is the National Book Award-winning author of Death at an Early Age, also Savage Inequalities and The Shame of the Nation, among other books on race and education. We’ll link to your piece in The Nation, “When Joe Biden Collaborated with Segregationists.”
When we come back, we go to Oregon, where the state government is in a standoff after 11 Republican lawmakers, supported by right-wing militias, have fled the capital of Salem—Salem, Oregon—to avoid voting on landmark climate change legislation. Apparently, some have fled to Idaho. We’ll speak with a Democratic lawmaker in Portland. Stay with us.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/25/joe_biden_anti_busing_segregation_history
[ DemoScum Reeeally don't care about racism, unless the culprit is a Republican. ]
Senate Transcripts: Joe Biden Quoted N-Word 13 Times in 1985 Hearings
AP Photo/John DurickaMATTHEW BOYLE20 Jul 2020Washington, DC
The presumptive 2020 Democrat presidential nominee, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, used the N-word 13 times in a 1985 hearing series, U.S. Senate transcripts reveal.
Video of one such instance where Biden used the N-word twice when he was quoting someone else already surfaced late last month. The Senate hearing series during which Biden repeatedly used the offensive term was when he was questioning William Reynolds, then-President Ronald Reagan’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, when Reynolds was under consideration for a promotion to be associate attorney general. In particular, Biden was asking Reynolds about his role in providing clearance for a redistricting plan in Louisiana that courts later struck down.
A memo was submitted to Reynolds before he approved the redistricting plan that included a racist quote from someone described as a “key legislator” in defeating the alternative redistricting plan. According to this memo, that legislator, then-Republican Rep. Charles Emile Bruneau of New Orleans, allegedly said he opposed the left’s desired redistricting plan for Louisiana in starkly racial terms. We already have a n***** mayor (in New Orleans), and we don’t need another n***** bigshot,” Bruneau was quoted in that document as saying.
In his line of questioning Reynolds in these 1985 hearings—which stretched over multiple days—Biden repeatedly brought up this exact quote and kept using the N-word. In fact, U.S. Senate transcripts from the time demonstrate that Biden used it a grand total of 13 times.
The first instance occurred during the morning of June 4, 1985, when Biden first used the term twice. A later instance, from the next day, June 5, has already had widely circulating video of Biden reciting the derogatory term from the quote twice. While some people circulating the video left out the context that includes proof Biden was not using the N-word himself but quoting someone else saying it, the mere question as to if that is even acceptable has dogged politicians for some time.
Senate Transcripts: Joe Biden Quoted N-Word 13 Times in 1985 Hearings
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The presumptive 2020 Democrat presidential nominee, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, used the N-word 13 times in a 1985 hearing series, U.S. Senate transcripts reveal.
Video of one such instance where Biden used the N-word twice when he was quoting someone else already surfaced late last month. The Senate hearing series during which Biden repeatedly used the offensive term was when he was questioning William Reynolds, then-President Ronald Reagan’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, when Reynolds was under consideration for a promotion to be associate attorney general. In particular, Biden was asking Reynolds about his role in providing clearance for a redistricting plan in Louisiana that courts later struck down.
A memo was submitted to Reynolds before he approved the redistricting plan that included a racist quote from someone described as a “key legislator” in defeating the alternative redistricting plan. According to this memo, that legislator, then-Republican Rep. Charles Emile Bruneau of New Orleans, allegedly said he opposed the left’s desired redistricting plan for Louisiana in starkly racial terms. We already have a n***** mayor (in New Orleans), and we don’t need another n***** bigshot,” Bruneau was quoted in that document as saying.
In his line of questioning Reynolds in these 1985 hearings—which stretched over multiple days—Biden repeatedly brought up this exact quote and kept using the N-word. In fact, U.S. Senate transcripts from the time demonstrate that Biden used it a grand total of 13 times.
The first instance occurred during the morning of June 4, 1985, when Biden first used the term twice. A later instance, from the next day, June 5, has already had widely circulating video of Biden reciting the derogatory term from the quote twice. While some people circulating the video left out the context that includes proof Biden was not using the N-word himself but quoting someone else saying it, the mere question as to if that is even acceptable has dogged politicians for some time.
