Joe Biden's dicey past on racial issues could come back to bite him in the 2020 Democratic primaries
John Haltiwanger
Apr 25, 2019, 11:27 AM
In the mid-1970s, a young Democratic senator from Delaware and self-declared liberal who would one day serve as the vice president to the first black president in US history emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of a main force in the integration in America's schools.
Former Vice President
Joe Biden, 76, was once at the forefront of a movement against busing students in order to desegregate schools — even battling against Republican Sen. Ed Brooke, the only black senator at the time, over the issue — while he paid lip service to the desegregation movement.
Biden's record on racial justice has become a liability for the former vice president as he joins a crowded, diverse field of candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination. His controversial campaign against busing — the practice of bringing white and black students out of their neighborhoods in order to integrate schools — could haunt him along the campaign trail.
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As he ran for the Senate in 1972, Biden was vocally in favor of integrating America's schools and supported busing.
However, his position on the issue shifted drastically after he won the election when he "discovered just how bitterly his white constituents opposed the method," according to
a 2015 Politico article from Jason Sokol, an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire who covered the topic extensively in a book on the modern history of race and politics in the Northeast.
By 1973 and 1974, Biden attempted to tow a careful line by vocally supporting desegregation while voting in favor of anti-busing policies. As Sokol described it, Biden's political calculation was "clever but disingenuous."
"History has not been kind to the defenders of school busing. Indeed, busing was problematic — as it transported children long distances away from nearby schools," Sokol added. "But to say most whites objected to busing because it was inconvenient would be wrong. The truth is that many of them were not comfortable with the racial change that busing brought."
Busing was an inherently racially-charged issue, and Biden seemingly wanted to appear loyal to his liberal convictions while he simultaneously worked to appease his uproarious white constituents.
"Biden's opposition to busing was largely a response to the sentiments of his white constituents. You can certainly say that he capitulated to his anti-busing constituents," Sokol told INSIDER in February. "But it's up to you whether you want to characterize those as 'racist sentiments.'"
As opposition to busing became more extreme among his constituents, Biden "morphed into a leading anti-busing crusader — all the while continuing to insist that he supported the goal of school desegregation, he only opposed busing as the means to achieve that end," Sokol said. Biden played a vital role in pushing other liberals to oppose busing as well, according to Sokol.
In 1975 — the same year Biden sided with conservatives by sponsoring an anti-busing amendment — the future vice president attempted to defend his anti-busing stance in
an interview with NPR. At the time, Biden described busing as a "rejection of the whole movement of black pride."
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Joe Biden's dicey past on racial issues could come back to bite him in the 2020 Democratic primaries
