Before a few months ago, I thought, maybe Joe Biden, then a 29-31 year old senator in the years of the mid- 1970s, had opposed busing because he was listening to the black nationalist-leftist critique of busing. The black nationalist-leftist critique of busing at that time was we, the larger white majority, were taking the best/brightest young African-Americans and removing them from their communities. The argument then said, Directly help the communities and, once the communities began to thrive, they would integrate because non-racist whites would move there, too. RFK's Bedford-Stuyvesant program, named after a particularly poor, African-American community in New York, was designed to help black people where they live with a set of New Deal type programs. It would not require African-American children be bused, but it would put the "I'm not a racist, but I oppose busing" position to a test: "So, whitey, are you gonna use taxpayer dollars to rebuild these areas that were destroyed, in large part, by racist culture which led to policies giving white people incentives to move to the suburbs on publicly subsidized roads and into publicly subsidized (FHA loan) homes?"
The answer is not known because RFK's Bed-Sty program was attempted after RFK's assassination, but without the leadership necessary to push this through, especially when Nixon and the Republicans were promoting the white backlash to the civil rights movement.
But reading this article from Politico.com in May 2019 and this latest article from NBC News about Biden and busing, one may find a hint of this RFK type of position from Biden, but it is feint and not really what Biden was doing and saying at the time. Worse, Biden's post-debate interview on MSNBC shocked me with anger, where Biden said he supported busing where the segregation was de jure, a Latin and legal phrase meaning, segregation based upon statutory and judicial made law, but he opposed busing for de facto reasons, which are essentially cultural and economic reasons, including realtors redlining against black home buyers and the type of cultural racism that rears its head in white people protesting against a black family moving in on the white folks' block. Sorry, Joe. That is the language of white racists who deny they are racists. In the 1960s, RFK had learned, particularly from his young attorney staff at the Justice Department, and later Peter Edelman and his wife Marian Wright Edelman, that de facto and de jure distinctions were false, and that one re-enforced the other, particularly with respect to housing patterns and educational opportunities. Richard Rothstein's recent book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of Our Government Segregated America, is well worth reading, especially if one is unfamiliar with this sordid history that affected northern and western regions of our nation more than the south, where de jure segregation was enforced precisely because poorer whites lived near poorer blacks. It definitely and conclusively shows de jure and de facto segregation categories are not distinct, but overlap and again re-enforce each other. Rothstein shows redlining worked because most civil rights laws did not apply to housing, and how the civil rights legal movement was continually stymied when it came to overcoming racist housing patterns.
One other historical note I wish to add is, when RFK was debating Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) in Orange County, CA, in the last two weeks or so before the CA presidential primary, the busing and housing topic came up, and Gene McCarthy gave the then standard liberal answer. Yes, to open housing into the then-highly white and right wing Orange County. RFK replied he was maybe not as interested in having the government just pay to move ten thousand black families into Orange County rather than helping people where they lived. Over the years after RFK's assassination, even the likes of his hagiographer, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said "Bobby" was "demagogic" with that Orange County white audience (page 910 of Schlesinger's book). However, Schlesinger immediately recognized the position was consistent with RFK's outlook over the years, though Schlesinger did not give context to what he meant, which was RFK having had continued confrontations with black nationalists in New York and elsewhere, and how the Bed-Sty program was meant to work with those African-Americans who were in spirit if not full intent with the black nationalists saying save and develop their own neighborhoods with the type of government help for white farmers and white urban people in the 1930s New Deal era. We ought to also note McCarthy won in conservative, white Orange County in the CA primary, I believe because the whites there, even some of anti-war liberals, who remained a distinct minority then, knew RFK was very pro-civil rights, very pro-African-American, and had been one among the few US Senators who took up Marian Wright (later Marian Wright Edelman, having married one of RFK's top aides)'s challenge to view "black poverty" in the lower mid-west and south just a year before (see here and here). And they were not going to have their taxes raised to help African-Americans in Compton or South Central Los Angeles.
Final personal promotion comment: In my novel about RFK surviving 1968, I deal with this divide in the African-American community over whether to move out African-Americans from communities or stay and redevelop them. It is in the context of robust support for the Bed-Sty program, which morphs into the journalistically clever phrase, "Bed-Stay," and how Roger Wilkins, the young, African-American Solicitor General, decides to heed black nationalist and leftist arguments to oppose busing in the US Supreme Court and promote a subset of the New Deal type of policies that directly help African-Americans.
Again, Joe Biden's stance on busing in the 1970s era strikes me as too coddling of white racism in his home state of Delaware and in the US Senate. It is of a piece with his continuing to talk about "civility" when talking about the likes of the openly vile and racist senators from the Southern region of the United States in that era. I am willing to hear more historical context and how much Biden had tried to do on a national basis what RFK was talking about. But I sense Biden was already doing the type of neo-liberal dance that was defensive about the best 1930s and 1960s liberal values. It is simply who he is, and, if Kamala Harris' dramatic rhetorical blows fatally hurt Joe's campaign, so be it. Too bad it will be far more difficult for voices to be heard in corporate media showing how Harris is of the same type as Biden, and how, for her own advancement, she left behind the African-American community, including siding with bad police practices, for example. Worse, once Biden departs from the race, we will see, hear, and read corporate media pundits demanding Bernie also step aside for being old, though Bernie's personal political history is consistently on the side of African-Americans, to take one example. The sad and frustrating truth remains: corporate media fears Bernie more than any other candidate running for president this cycle.
