Warren restates support for busing amid Biden-Harris duel

[DonViejo]

By ALEX THOMPSON 06/28/2019 11:26 PM EDT

CHICAGO — Sen. Elizabeth Warren reiterated her support for federal busing programs the night after Sen. Kamala Harris confronted former Vice President Joe Biden over his past opposition to federal intervention on the issue.

“I’m already on record on busing and using busing as a way to help communities that are diversifying,” the Democratic presidential candidate told reporters Friday following a raucous rally in Chicago with about 3,600 people, hundreds waving placards imprinted with “Warren has a plan for that!”

Warren was referencing the Strength in Diversity Act, of which she is a co-sponsor along with presidential rival Sen. Bernie Sanders. The bill would provide $120 million in grants to support local efforts aimed at increasing socioeconomic diversity in schools, including busing.

The renewed conversation about busing and integrating public schools came the day after Harris and Biden clashed at Thursday night’s presidential debate over his past stances on the issue. Harris used her personal story in criticizing Biden, saying “there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/28/warren-biden-harris-debate-1390408

[customerserviceguy]

1. Oh, great

we're going to fight over busing instead of climate change or anything that actually matters in today's world.

Trump managed to rent free space in Elizabeth Warren's head with the DNA disaster, now Kamala Harris is the squatter.

[crazytown]

2. Elizabeth was asked a question. As she said - she is already on the record.

There is no way to avoid that even if she wanted to. She has said the same when asked about the Bankruptcy Act, and then as on this occoasion , did not fashion her public position into a attack, personal or otherwise.

From TFA: Warren attempted to stay above the fray Friday night. “I’m not here to criticize, I’m here to talk about how we build a future,” she said when asked about Biden’s remark earlier in the day about “[t]hat kid wearing a hoodie might be the next poet laureate and not a gang banger."

[customerserviceguy]

3. She could have simply

mentioned the Strength in Diversity act, without using the "b" word. Busing caused a lot of what is still wrong with America to grow and flourish. It led directly to white flight, which ultimately caused a "rural and suburbia versus inner city" mentality in this country, which took us from being a place that predominately elected Democratic Presidents to one that more than half the time elected GOP ones.

Reopening the wound of busing will get us the results that we got when the subject was front and center the last time.

[jcgoldie]

4. bullshit

"Busing caused a lot of what is still wrong with America to grow and flourish."

Your argument is that white people became racists because they bused black kids into their schools? Or what exactly I'm following.

[customerserviceguy]

5. No, white people

were already racist at that time. I was there, I remember the 1968 election that Richard Nixon won, even with George Wallace on the ballot in all fifty states, bleeding off the worst of the racists, and actually getting the electoral votes of several states in the deep South.

Busing was viewed as a threat to a lot of white people, who didn't want their kids sent into the inner cities that had witnessed race riots in the 1965-68 time frame. The only way to avoid that was to move to a town outside the school district that was using busing, and then use the growing Interstate highway system to commute to their jobs in the city.

It furthered separation of America into black and white communities. My family moved from the Chicago area in 1969 to the Portland, Oregon area. I hear Portland and Seattle being slammed for having a lower proportion of their citizens being people of color, but the reality is, white flight never gripped those two cities the way it did in the rest of America. Race relations in the Pacific Northwest were relatively copacetic during the time I lived there, and when I moved to the NYC area in 2007, I got a number of sharp reminders that the Northeast was still pretty racist.

[jcgoldie]

6. I get it

But America was already separate black and white communities. It was before and it was after. And blaming busing for white attitudes about race is like blaming Barack Obama for Donald Trump getting elected. Did a black president play a role in bringing the fear and hate to the surface? I think so. But he sure as hell wasn't the source of the problem.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Agreed

to some extent. After WWII, just about all major American cities were majority white, with more recently immigrated European groups forming the minorities that were looked upon as "the other" by Americans of British Colonial descent.

My point is that busing did not bring the black people and white people closer together, it was like gasoline on a fire. You don't have to get along with people you no longer live with.

[marylandblue]

8. She could have, but she chose not to. I actually think that's smart

Involuntary bussing was the problem in the 70s. The Strength in Diversity program is a voluntary grant program that funds a variety of solutions, including bussing. She cosponsored it, so she's on record as "for bussing." It's better to simply say what you are upfront than try to hide or explain it away.