Bernie Sanders Knocks Busing on This Week: 'Does Anybody Think it's a Good Idea'?

[DonViejo]

By Tommy Christopher June 30th, 2019, 1:30 pm

-snip-

Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said that busing to combat school segregation is not “optimal,” and asked “Does anybody think it’s a good idea to put a kid on a bus, travel an hour to another school, and to another neighborhood that he or she doesn’t know?”

On Sunday morning;s edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Sanders expressed qualified support for busing, but also criticized the policy that became a flashpoint at Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate.

Host George Stephanopoulos began by referencing the blockbuster exchange between California Senator Kamala Harris and former Vice President Joe Biden, and said “I want to bring the debate forward. You’ve mentioned — you’re concerned about the idea of resegregation of our schools. Does that mean that busing should be on the table today?”

Sanders initially dodged the busing question, telling Stephanopoulos that “resegregation is a very, very serious problem,” and adding that “the federal government has failed in fighting for fair housing legislation.”

“We need basically, in this country, well-funded public schools, we need to honor our teachers, respect teachers, make sure that they’re earning a living wage,” Sanders said. “We need to take care of those schools today, which have a lot of kids who are, in some cases, actually hungry, coming from troubled families. We need to build public education in this country. We need to make sure that kids go to community schools, which are integrated and that means we have to focus on fair housing legislation and enforcement.”

more + video
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bernie-sanders-knocks-busing-on-this-week-does-anybody-think-its-a-good-idea/

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

1. So Bernie is for segregation as well

Got it!

[droidamus2]

3. No that is not even close to what he said

Did you even watch the video. What Bernie said was that in some cases busing is an answer but it is not the best answer. He said that the best answer is to stop one of the root causes of segregated schools is and that is housing discrimination that results in white neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are populated by people of color. Sanders point was that if you quality schools in integrated neighborhoods you have no need for busing which is more 'optimal'. In absolutely no way did his answer indicate he supports segregation. If you want to argue against Bernie as a candidate fine but do not lower yourself to using the same propaganda methods as the real opponents and that is the Republicans.

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

5. Sooo...

...you've said all of that to agree with me that Bernie was against busing. He voted against the federal law.

Black mothers and fathers would have loved anti-discrimination bills across the board, but the one thing the needed was school busing for their kids. Telling them, "This is what you should do, instead..." is not the solution.

There were several other factors that could have led to the need for busing: Jim Crow laws, lynch laws, you name it. This answer is a convenient way of saying he was against one of the pinnacle laws of integration.

[highplainsdem]

8. I'd like you to look at a Politico op-ed from 2015, written by an assistant to

VP Humphrey during the Johnson adminstration. Ted Van Dyk also worked with Julian Bond and Charles Evers and many other Democrats:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/school-busing-civil-rights-121077

School Busing Didn’t Work. And to Say So Isn’t Racist.


Both the headline and content of Jason Sokol’s August 4th piece about Vice President Joe Biden and the 1970s busing debate do a disservice to Biden and distort what really was happening in the Democratic Party during the period. Sokol has selective facts right. But he has overall truth wrong.

Principal 1960s civil-rights leaders, including my boss at the time, first Senate Whip and later Vice President Hubert Humphrey, sponsor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, were dubious from the beginning about compulsory school busing as a tool to advance civil rights and improve education for minorities. The “neighborhood school,” contrary to Sokol’s depiction, was a cornerstone of American public education. It has provided the principal basis for community and neighborhood solidarity in towns, cities and rural areas since the advent of public education in the United States.

-snip-

Legislative initiatives and court rulings resulted in busing. In many places, like in Boston as Sokol describes, there was raw racism involved in protests against busing. In many other places, however, there was non-racist consternation based mainly on parents’ concern for the wellbeing of their children.

This was the case even in liberal Washington, D.C. My wife and I had two sons enrolled in a Northwest Washington elementary school when busing began in the city. School buses would deliver black kids from Southwest D.C. at the Janney School front door at the morning bell. The same buses picked up the same kids, immediately at the end of classes, and took them back to Southwest. They did not participate in any pre- or after-school activity. No black parents took a bus or drove from Southwest to attend evening PTA meetings or to otherwise participate in school-related activity. The quality of classroom instruction fell off markedly. Fourth- and fifth-grade neighborhood students, for instance, were repeating material learned in earlier grades because teachers found their bused classmates had not yet received it. Not surprisingly, parents from the neighborhood began looking for private schools for their kids or moved to Maryland or Virginia suburbs—not because of racism but because their neighborhood school no longer was working.

To varying degree, the same thing was happening in other places where busing had been instituted. Elected officials—even those strongly in favor of civil rights—began to conclude that busing was a well-meant mistake. Presidential candidate George McGovern, in 1971, proposed to his advisers, of which I was one, that he would straightforwardly take an anti-busing position. We prevailed on him not to do so because we believed that the issue then was so emotion-laden that busing proponents would misunderstand his opposition.

This was the environment in which then-Sen. Joe Biden and other Democrats began to say out loud what their colleagues were already saying privately: Busing was not working. The emphasis should be on improving neighborhood schools, wherever people lived, rather than forcing kids daily to take buses, often quite far from their neighborhoods, distant from their parents and neighbors.

During the period in question I served not only Humphrey and McGovern but represented in Washington, D.C. the Southern Elections Fund, then headed by Julian Bond, which raised money for local-level black candidates in Southern states. I traveled to Mississippi to assist Charles Evers in his gubernatorial campaign. I was in daily contact with Democratic national and congressional leaders and several times served as principal author of the Democratic national platform. From the mid-1970s onward, there was a growing consensus within the party that neither civil rights nor education were being served by busing. Joe Biden represented that consensus; he was not some reactionary outlier.

-snip-

[highplainsdem]

6. No, he isn't. Neither was Biden. Neither were the majority of black parents decades ago,

black parent who polls showed were opposed to busing.

They didn't consider busing a good solution to segregation.

[UniteFightBack]

15. Just stop it. He is right busing was not and is not the solution to the problems and inequalities

we face....FOR FUCKS SAKE.

[brush]

2. Are you effin' kidding me? Both of our oldest candidates are revisiting...

issues from forty years ago?

Help! Hurry! Smelling salts, please.

Swalwell may have been right. Time to pass the torch.

[highplainsdem]

4. You've got that backward. This started with Harris and her supporters and maybe supporters

of other candidates wanting to grill Biden on his views on busing 40 years ago.

They're the ones trying to revisit the past, since they're desperate to knock Biden out of his position as front-runner.

[brush]

9. Let's review: Biden for some inexplicable reason bought up...

his interactions from forty years ago with segregationists—totally unsolicited—an unforced error if I ever saw one. Now Sanders is chiming in on busing and keeping the forty-year-old issue going.

Can we please come back to 2019 and issues that voters under 50 care about?

And Bernie, no more piggybacking on this non-relevant issue.

And Joe, since you're the one who can kick trump's ass up and down the debate stage, no more unforced errors, pls.

[highplainsdem]

10. You've still got it wrong. Biden was talking about the need to be able to work even with people

you disagree with strongly to get anything done in politics. There's nothing new -- or old -- about that.

Those critical of him and/or envious of him decided to exploit the fact he'd used segregationists as examples.

Biden's critics are the ones harping on it.

And Sanders got drawn into it, trying to align himself with those attacking Biden on this without getting into it too much, and today he got questioned directly about it.

[brush]

12. Oh, I'm not getting it?

Who's not getting it is the one who brings up segregationists and the "boy" term, which offends AAs, a huge and important part of our party's base, when there are innumerable other ways to demonstrate how to work with those of other opinions.

Biden's staff pls come to his rescue and advise him to stay away from mine fields of his own making. And that would include the new one—saying that "five years ago mocking gay waiters was ok."

Not kool either. I'm not against Biden and would vote for him with no hesitation against trump but he's got to get there. These missteps this early in the campaign may stop him.

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

14. THIS!!!!

I hope Biden supporters don't feel like we are against him. Again, I would LOVE to break out my Obama/Biden shirt (to stick it to the right) after Biden wins in the General.

I've said it before, this is a great opportunity for Biden. A good PR team will explain this busing issue while touting Biden's sterling record on Civil Rights at the same time. This is his election to lose. Even after the disastrous debate, I still don't think Biden should waste his time trying to take Kamala down. Instead, I would love for his team to start grooming him for debates and polishing his method.

Biden has a smile, a record, and presence. Please, please, please let him come up with a solid response to this busing issue.

[Cha]

13. Yes, unfortunately he did. What a

hot mess. So many willing to pile on Biden.. facts do not matter!

Thank you for explaining so well what exactly has been transpiring.

[wyldwolf]

11. "what he REALLY meant was..." Sanders Supporters