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Why Opposing School Busing Mostly Is Racist
Since Kamala Harris pointed out that Joe Biden worked with segregationists in the Democrat Party to oppose school busing, all hell has broken loose. Biden surrogates are walking a tightrope explaining why Biden was right then, taking a “states rights” position also used to justify slavery, not needing to apologize now. Biden is getting support from unlikely sources on the right, bringing up everything wrong with busing and why it was the policy was bad, and it wasn’t racist at all. They say people just wanted their children to go to school close to home and didn’t mind integration the least little bit. They’re half right.
People, black and white, did want their children to go to schools close to home. Unfortunately, white people generally didn’t want black people in their neighborhoods. Redlining was in place in major cities long before the Supreme Court theoretically ended school segregation in Brown v Board of Education in 1954. Black people couldn’t buy homes in white neighborhoods and nearby schools equaled segregation. While the Court basically said segregation is bad, they didn’t make any recommendations until the following year, waiting to absorb the negative reaction from Southern states. Over a hundred members of Congress formally objected to the decision, issuing the “Southern Manifesto” promising to do everything they could to fight school desegregation.
