What Kamala Harris And Joe Biden Should Be Talking About Instead Of Busing

Joe Biden is getting flak for his stance on busing. But segregated schools aren’t the root cause of educational inequity, and integration alone isn’t enough to address it.

At the Democratic Presidential debate last week, Kamala Harris took on Joe Biden for his opposition to court-ordered busing. At the debate, Biden defended his position with what sounded like a reference to states’ rights, a phrase that has historically served as a cover for racism. In the past, though, he’s offered a different rationale—one that sounds strikingly similar to arguments advanced recently by some African-American commentators.

“The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school,” Biden told a Delaware weekly in 1975. “That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with. What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist! Who the hell do we think we are, that the only way a black man or woman can learn is if they rub shoulders with my white child?”