Was Joe Biden Racist? Never

Most have now forgotten how federally mandated busing of thousands of poor blacks and whites shut down the Boston school system in 1974 and greatly intensified racism for years. A 1992 study* led by pro-busing Harvard University Professor Gary Orfield, found students lacked “even modest overall improvement” as a result of [federal] court-ordered busing.

In the June 27 debate, Kamala Harris says to Biden, “I do not believe you are a racist.” Why does she need to tell us that Obama didn’t choose a racist VP? Because she’s about to argue that he once was a racist, and then try to trap him, Perry-Mason style, into a surprise confession that he still is a racist.

In court, as Harris knows,  honesty is telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” But one of many parts of the truth she leaves out is that when Joe Biden became a Senator in 1973, only 5% of whites and 9% of blacks thought busing was the best way to desegregate schools. Would she say the other 91% of blacks were racist?

The #1 radical black lawyer: In fact, Harris also pretty much implies that Derrick Bell was a racist. Thurgood Marshall recruited him to join the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where he oversaw 300 school desegregation cases. He became the first African American to become a tenured professor at Harvard Law School. He is also known as the founder of Critical Race theory and one of the most radical black legal scholars past or present.

As I’ll show, Joe Biden’s views then and now are closer to Bell’s views back in 1980 than are Kamala Harris’s views today.  But first, let’s fact-check what Harris said.

Kamala Harris: “… you [Joe Biden] also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, 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. And that little girl was me. “

Fact check: Nope. Berkeley’s junior high schools were integrated four years earlier and its high school was always integrated. She was not “part of the second class …” She was just part of the second class of elementary school students.

Harris: “But, Vice President Biden, do you agree today — do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? Do you agree?”

Fact check: Nope. As Harris well knows, Biden did not oppose busing, just federally mandated busing — particularly long-distance busing of white students into black schools.

Harris: “Well, there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America. I was part of the second class [still wrong] to integrate Berkeley, California, public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.

Fact check: She leads off with “a failure of states to integrate … I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California…” Here she clearly wants us to think that Biden’s federal law would have prevented her from being bused. But she knows that’s not true.

Biden: Say that he was not opposed to Berkeley’s busing, “Because your city council made that decision. It was a local decision.”

Harris: “So that’s where the federal government must step in.”

Fact check:  This makes no sense. The fact that Berkeley solved its problem locally cannot possibly mean “the federal government must step in.”

Derrick Bell, published an article in the Harvard Law Review, [Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jan. 1980), pp. 518-533], which addresses school-integration busing. Here are some of his conclusions. (Bold and []s added)

Those who espouse alternative remedies [like Joe Biden] are deemed [by people like Kamala Harris] to act out of suspect motives. Brown is the law, and racial balance plans are the only means of complying with the decision. That position reflects courage, but it ignores the frequent and often complete failure of programs which concentrate solely on achieving a racial balance.

Some black educators, however, see major educational benefits in schools where black children, parents, and teachers can utilize the real cultural strengths of the black community to overcome the many barriers to educational achievement.

Conclusion: None of the Democratic candidates are racist, and it’s time to stop the personal insults.