SCHOOL INTEGRATION AND JOE BIDEN, Was Joe right about busing?

 

The worst thing on TV is the news. Well, at least that was my view in 1977 when I was eight. I don’t remember a lot of news stories from back then, I was much more concerned with the ongoing adventures of the Scooby gang. But one issue I do remember is school busing. Specifically, busing to ensure the racial integration of the schools. The issue of forced busing to achieve school integration faded from current events a long time ago. Various court decisions and legislative action on both the federal and state level essentially killed this approach to integration. One of the things I’m doing with this blog is addressing issues in the current campaign that are rife with misinformation. This is one of those issues. During the primaries the left hit Biden with his opposition to busing in the 1970s. Now that Biden has secured the nomination it’s the Republicans who have seized on this issue. Lost in the rhetoric are the facts surrounding busing that caused it to become a touchstone issue of the era.

American school children have learned for decades that the Supreme Court desegregated schools in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. Schools in America had generally been segregated since the late 1800s and really well before that. The Supreme Court’s decision required schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” The vagary of that time frame allowed communities to find ways to delay the desegregation. That was especially true in the South where resistance was the greatest. A decade after the Brown decision schools were still functionally segregated in most areas and legally segregated in others. Housing patterns that were the result of decades of discrimination and school boundaries that were drawn to keep schools segregated prevented any noticeable change in the composition of the student body in most schools.

A series of court decisions between 1968 and 1973 however began to change that. The result of this was school districts across the country faced the prospect of being forced to bus African American children to schools in the white part of town and vice-versa. This proved to be tremendously controversial. The vast majority of white parents and about half of black parents opposed this forced busing. Looking back at it now it’s easy to assume the reason for the hostility was racism. That certainly was a factor, but there were also legitimate concerns. Many people bought their houses specifically because they wanted their children to go to a particular school. Busing sent their children across town requiring them to get up an hour or more earlier than before. That pattern repeated itself in the afternoon. It also complicated extracurricular activities that required students to remain at school after normal school hours. Busing also meant that their children wouldn’t go to the school with their other neighborhood friends. The distances involved often meant that parents were effectively locked out from being active in PTA and other school activities.

This is the political environment a young Joe Biden faced when first elected in 1972 at the age of 29. Biden was a voice for civil rights but was lukewarm concerning court order busing from the start. By 1974 local opposition in Delaware was exploding and in response Joe became one of the leading opponents of busing. Biden argued that school integration was an important goal to pursue. However, he reasoned that taking kids out of their neighborhood schools and dropping them in schools on the other side of town with students from completely different backgrounds was setting them up for failure. His plan was to fight housing discrimination and expand housing vouchers to integrate neighborhoods. Of course, it was also convenient for him that this was also the politically expedient position as well.

Joe Biden’s outspokenness on the issue helped give cover to other liberal politicians who were feeling the heat back home. For a long time there had been a divide in the Democratic party between New England liberals and Southern conservatives. Biden’s efforts helped unify the two wings of the party and brought them in line with the Republicans who also opposed busing.

Biden tried to thread the needle by opposing busing for desegregation that resulted from housing patterns, while being ok with busing resulting from legal Jim Crow laws. This position ignored the fact that the housing patterns that resulted in segregated schools were the result of racist government policies that forced minorities into certain parts of town. Biden also often had to overlook this distinction when allying with a number of prominent Southern segregationists in order to pass anti-busing legislation.

In addition to the previously mentioned issues with busing, Biden had a couple main themes he hit on. The first was white flight from the cities. Many middle-class white families bought houses near the schools they wanted their children to go to. The prospect of busing their children to a low performing school across town was strong motivation to move to the mostly white suburbs. That is exactly what has happened and is largely why schools have become less integrated over the last 30 years. How much of this is due to busing is uncertain. This trend started prior to mandated busing and continued after the busing issue largely went away. It seems likely court ordered busing for school integration contributed to the white flight, but was only one factor in it.

More controversial, at least in hindsight was his statement, “my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle.” Both far left-wing and right-wing opponents have posted this quote all over social media to paint Biden as a racist. On the surface it does seem pretty danged racist. These memes on social media are implying Biden believed black children would turn white schools into a jungle. However, these memes are taken out of context and result in a misunderstanding of what Biden was actually saying. Click HERE to read the entirety of the original Congressional testimony, but here are the relevant parts:

“I suspect, as to what is needed to insure that we do have orderly integration of society. I am not just talking about education but all of society.”

“Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.”

“I think it [busing] has repercussions that are extensive in terms of the ultimate objective of seeing that we get integrated neighborhoods, of seeing that we eventually eliminate job discrimination, of seeing that we change housing.”

“For example, Clarence Mitchell is right that every major city in America should be under a major busing order right now. Let me tell you something. . . you will have a constitutional amendment passed through this body quicker than you can say “Clarence Mitchell,” which would be very, very troublesome in my opinion.”

“If it could get up on a vote here tomorrow in the U.S. Senate, what do you think would happen? Right now, it would not pass. But if you have the major cities of America in all these States under a major court-ordered busing plan, you watch what happens. You watch what happens to all your effort for the past 10, 20, 30 years.”

This passage needs some explanation. This is from a 1977 budget hearing, Biden had proposed a ban on using Federal money for forced busing. This was at the height of the nationwide anti-busing movement. There was currently a proposed Constitutional Amendment that had support of about half of the House of Representatives that would ban forced school busing.

Biden is expressing support for the integration of society at large which would lead to integrated schools. But he believed the way to do that was through Federal housing programs that would integrate neighborhoods. He recognized that the Federal government had promoted segregated neighborhoods in the past. Biden wanted to reverse that and use the Federal policy to encourage integration. However, he also felt that taking suburban white kids and dropping them into urban African American schools and vice versa would increase racial tensions. This is the “racial jungle” he inelegantly referred to. Biden felt the natural way to integrate schools was to use federal policy to promote the integration of neighborhoods.

Biden is also explaining the political reality of the situation. At this point courts were ruling on a school district by school district basis concerning the need for a court mandated busing program. Biden was agreeing with a previous witness that if you look objectively at nearly every large school district in the country, they were all effectively segregated. However, if courts moved to mandate busing in every segregated school district it would likely result in the passage of the Constitutional Amendment banning the practice. Biden is arguing that would set the civil rights movement back, reversing much of the progress that had been made.

Was Biden right? It’s impossible to say. Between court decisions narrowing earlier integration decisions and legislative actions, force busing was largely dead by the mid-1980s. At the same time the Reagan Revolution gutted housing programs designed to encourage neighborhood integration. In fact, white flight has exasperated the “voluntary” housing segregation. The result is schools have become less integrated over the last 30 years.

As important as Biden was in the anti-busing movement, he was reacting to it more than driving it. Most decisions concerning busing were the result of court decisions and local governments. The idea that he was the cause of decline of busing for integration purposes isn’t accurate. Biden’s primary role was to limit the use of federal funding for busing. However, federal funding wasn’t a major source of public school funding.

What is interesting about the criticism of Biden’s position on busing is none of these critics are promoting a return to forced busing to better integrate the schools. That fact alone highlights the political nature of the attacks against him. To the best of my knowledge Donald Trump isn’t on the record at the time concerning his position on the subject. However, not even his supporters are trying to pretend that he was in favor of forced busing. In fact, this is the same time period that Trump was refusing to rent upscale apartments to African Americans.

Looking at Biden and Trump’s current plans to address the topic of integration is pretty revealing as well. Joe Biden has a detailed 8-point plan to address historical discrimination in housing. This plan includes acting against discriminatory lending practices and tax credits for expanded affordable housing construction. Biden is calling on increased funding for housing vouchers so low-income renters aren’t concentrated in one part of town. He also wants to focus small business loans in urban areas to increase the livability and reverse white flight. President Trump on the other hand literally has no plan. As president he eliminated President Obama’s program to fund grants to school districts to promote integration. He’s also made it harder to sue for discriminatory housing practices. This will lead to increased segregation in both neighborhoods and in schools.

Civil rights activists and social scientists are still divided on the effectiveness of busing to achieve integrated schools. Joe Biden’s role in the controversial subject is equally disputed. However, the evidence does not support that Joe had racist motivations. Joe Biden has always been a pragmatic politician who’s not going to get too far out in front of the people he represents. The political reality of the era in addition to the legitimate concerns about the effects of forced busing led Biden to favor a different approach. However, if he’s elected his proposals to integrate neighborhoods may finally begin to move school integration in the right direction.