Joe Biden and Champ
I wish Joe Biden would get over himself and stop musing about a Presidential run. He is not a contender. Biden’s intent? I’d guess it’s nothing more than a distraction from the strong showing by Bernie Sanders. Bernie is the nightmare of Democratic leadership, precisely because he’s the most compelling candidate for democratic voters (small “d”), people interested in preservation, revival, of our democracy.
Biden sure isn’t what I’d look for in a candidate. A recent post on Politico, How a Young Joe Biden Turned Liberals Against Integration, brings to light Biden’s efforts to preserve segregation. That should be enough to take him off anyone’s potential Presidential candidate list.
Alan Muller, Green Delaware, has had to deal with Biden for a long time now, and has a lot of insight into Biden’s character based on Biden’s record and actions. One story I’ve heard often is of a group opposing the Iraq war meeting with Biden in his office, and of Biden’s absolute and nasty dismissal of them and their concerns (expletives deleted for this PG-13 post).
Racial issues have been a struggle for Delaware, and Biden provides an example of white resistance to integration. Delaware was a slave state. Though it bills itself “The First State,” and though Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, it was also the first state outside the Confederacy to reject the 14th Amendment, in 1867, and Delaware was very slow to ratify the 14th Amendment — it held off until 1901, 33 years after it was approved by enough states to be added to the Constitution.
Here’s an example of Biden’s “leadership,” a reminder of Biden’s efforts as a U.S. Senator to maintain segregation:
From the article, the bottom line:
Then, as a court-ordered integration plan loomed over Wilmington, Delaware, in 1974, Biden’s constituents transformed their resistance to busing into an organized—and angry—opposition. So Biden transformed, too. That year, Joe Biden morphed into a leading anti-busing crusader—all the while continuing to insist that he supported the goal of school desegregation, he only opposed busing as the means to achieve that end.
This stance, which many of Biden’s liberal and moderate colleagues also held, was clever but disingenuous. It enabled Biden to choose votes over principles, while acting as if he was not doing so.
The article is off, though, in its statements of the mechanism of busing, claiming that it was white parents afraid of busing their white children into black schools. “
White parents trembled with rage as they envisioned scenarios in which their children would be bused into African-American neighborhoods.” Though white parents did indeed have this fear, the plans were not to bus white children, the plans were to “integrate” the white schools, and to desegregate the black schools, by moving black students to the white schools — that’s what they did not want to see happen. Busing was most often a burden on the black students, transported to white schools, as white parents, school board and local elected officials did a George Wallace and blocked the doors. This focus on “dilution” was evident in the court ordered Minneapolis arrangement, which was based on a bizarre definition of segregation, which in Minneapolis was that a school 35% black was “segregated,” but a school that was 100% white was not (note that in an failed effort to avoid a lawsuit, but in my experience a very educationally successful effort, Minneapolis formed the Central H.S. “Magnet School” to draw white students in from other schools to dilute the student population.)
How was Biden, and how were all the other Senators, able to couch their opposition to integration, their efforts to preserve segregation, as opposition to “busing.” Yes, it is disingenuous, but that’s too nice a word. Same goes for the term “neighborhood school” a thinly-veiled cry for continuation of segregation — after all, the neighborhoods are segregated. The framing goes directly back to George Wallace and his development of the language of racism and hate that continues today (I’ve just finished reading “
The Politics of Rage,” a must read to see the roots of today’s euphemisms — it’s nothing new.). I’m glad Politico brought this to light.
August 7th, 2015 at 11:02 am
There is no doubt in my mind–I was there–that school “deseg” was not well handled in Delaware. I wasn’t aware of Biden’s role, but can’t say I’m surprised.