Jason Sokol- 'How a Young Joe Biden Turned Progressives Against Integration'

Source:POLITICO Magazine- U.S. Senator Joe Biden, D, Delaware: in 1974-75.

Source:The New Democrat

"Forty years ago, a contentious battle over racial justice gripped Capitol Hill, pitting the nation’s lone African American senator against the man who would one day become Barack Obama’s vice president. The issue was school busing, a plan to transport white and black students out of their neighborhoods to better integrate schools—and at the time the most explosive issue on the national agenda."

From POLITICO Magazine

"National History Day 2011 documentary about the forced busing in Boston in the 1970s."

From MGANS

Source:MGANS- Documentary on busing from the 1970s.

Just to give a little background on Joe Biden the current Vice President of the United States and a six term U.S. Senator from Delaware before that: he would be described today as a New Democrat, or what I like to call the real Liberals in the Democratic Party. And a moderate New Democrat at that. He grew up part of a generation that loved and admired John F. Kennedy and is a big fan of him. He’s to the right of myself and a lot of other Liberals in the areas of criminal justice and civil liberties, War on Drugs, to use as examples.

So this idea that he would be in favor of what really is forced busing, when you’re talking about taking middle class kids out of good schools and forcing them to go to inferior schools just to make those schools more racially balanced, would be hard to believe. Joe Biden, has always supported and believed in a strong public education and education system. His record in Congress and as Vice President indicate that. I mean first we had forced desegregation from the Far-Right, where Caucasian and African-Americans were separated because of race. To then forced integration from the Far-Left to try to equalize and make up for the forced desegregation.

When what we should’ve been doing all the time is allowing for parents to send their kids to the best public school that is for their kid. Instead of having to send their kids to school based on where they live. Which would’ve meant kids from low-income communities being able to go to good middle class schools and get themselves a good education. And then as adults no longer having to live in low-income communities with high crime rates and everything else that people rather not have to live with. And with kids leaving low-income low-performing schools, school districts would’ve been forced to better fund their low-performing schools and get better results out of them.

I’m not a mind-reader obviously, but if I had to guess the goal of Senator Joe Biden when it came to public education in the 1970s for all Americans regardless of race, was to have a system where everyone would be able to go to a good school. Where low-income kids wouldn’t be forced to go to low-income schools. Where middle class kids, wouldn’t be forced to go to bad schools. And if I had to guess and not play a cynic here that is why he was against forced busing in the mid-1970s. 1974 and 75 is where forced busing happened in the Northeast and other places in the country