Harris Exaggerated her "Little Girl" Claim
Jim Baker, a black city councilman who would go on to become mayor of Wilmington DE, said he urged Biden to actively fight the busing plan — even if he had to work with racists. —Washington Post, 7/12/2019
Harris demanded that Biden admit he had been wrong to oppose busing back in 1975. Her “proof” was: “This is personal … I was the little girl taking the bus,” so by implication Biden had been trying to hurt her.
She’s right that Biden opposed most federal support of busing, and that she was part of Berkeley’s busing program. Because both of them are omitting parts of the story, here are a few of the missing pieces.
Harris said she was “part of the second class to integrate Berkeley California, public schools.” Sort of. She actually joined the 10-year integration project after everything was in place and working, and she joined it in the middle of its sixth year of busing for integration.
What Really Happened In Berkeley
If you count only elementary schools and ignore the four years of busing prior to the final full-scale busing, then she was part of the second class, as she said. But that year she didn’t join her class in the fall of 1969 — the second year of full elementary school integration. According to her campaign, she waited until 1970. I assume they mean in January, but the New York Times had a different interpretation:
Ms. Harris attended a Montessori school for kindergarten and joined Ms. Porter at Thousand Oaks in first grade. A campaign spokeswoman confirmed that Ms. Harris joined the class in 1970, her first grade year, which was the third year of integration.
However, Chris Nichols, at PolitiFact assured me that Harris was part of the second class even though “the first class started in 1968, the second in 1969 — and Harris joined that second class as a first grader in 1970.” So Harris must have continued her Montessori education until something like January 1970. Here then, is a fairly complete timeline.
- In January 1958, the NAACP petitions the Berkeley school board for action.
- 1964: Berkeley starts busing 7th, 8th, and 9th graders for 100% integration of those grades (likely around 1,000 bused). Ms. Harris is born on October 20th.
- 1965: That busing continues.
- 1966: In addition, Berkeley starts busing 250 elementary school students.
- 1967: Both programs continue.
- 1968: Bused integration is extended to all elementary students. This successfully completes the 10-year push for complete integration. Harris attends Montessori kindergarten.
- 1969: The second class of fully integrated elementary education begins.
- 1970: Kamala starts busing and joins her class, probably in January.
Harris only joined in after the ten-year process was complete and working smoothly. She got the advantage without the risks. You can’t hold that against her; she was too young.
What Biden Downplays
Biden was pretty much the first strong liberal voice against busing. And he is now downplaying that role. But it’s not so obvious he was wrong. Public opinion on busing changed almost not at all between Gallup’s 1970 poll on busing and its 1999 poll. And in 1999, 48 percent of blacks thought it was better to “go to their neighborhood schools” than to “achieve racial balance through busing.” Only 44 percent thought the reverse, and the rest weren’t sure.
Harris offers no evidence that half the black population was wrong. And if they were not wrong, then how can she say Biden was? In fact, Biden had a lot of evidence that it was not accomplishing much and quite likely causing a lot of harm. Busing may have a lot to do with whites moving out of cities and putting their kids in private schools. This happened in Berkeley.
Biden did not oppose Berkeley-style busing
Busing in Berkeley was considered the best example of why the busing that Joe Biden opposed was a bad idea. In Berkeley, which at first resisted busing, the community was deeply involved in the process and that is why it succeeded. Also, it explicitly integrated children of different income levels.
Federally mandated busing, although theoretically justified, was imposed in a top-down manner that angered both blacks and whites. And unlike locally implemented busing it legally could not address defacto segregation or segregation by income. Had Biden’s law passed, it would have had no effect on Berkeley-style busing.
A final note: The media is reporting that Berkeley’s busing was only voluntary. That is completely misleading. For the city, the choice was voluntary. But for Berkeley’s residents, it was mandatory.
Ripped Apart
