CNN Fact Check: Kamala Harris correct on school busing in Berkeley, district confirms

[pnwmom]

The Gateway Pundit and other rightwing sites have been falsely claiming that the Berkeley schools were integrated long before Kamala started school. This is not true.

Others, even here, have claimed that she must have been living in a privileged area (because Berkeley) so it didn't matter where she went to school. That's not true either.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/28/politics/fact-check-kamala-harris-busing-in-berkeley/index.html

The segregation in the city was indeed de facto segregation, not the officially mandated segregation imposed by law in the South, so there were some minority students at Harris' school long before she arrived. In 1963, according to data published by the school district, there were 15 "Negro" students at Thousand Oaks Elementary -- just 2.5 percent of the student body. By contrast, there were 561 "Caucasian" students, 95.1 percent.

Citing such data, the committee concluded that 14 of the 17 district elementary schools were effectively segregated. Seeking to rectify the situation, the school board voted unanimously in early 1968 in favor of a busing plan in which more than 3,000 students, both black and white, would be bused to different communities.

SNIP

"In Berkeley, we only have one comprehensive high school, so it was integrated by default (de facto). Our elementary schools, however, reflected the racial composition of our neighborhoods, which like many neighborhoods across America reflected the history of segregation stemming from policies which restricted the opportunities of non-white residents," Beery said.

Harris, born to a black father and a mother from India, lived at the time in an apartment on Bancroft Way in a part of town known as the flatlands, which had a large black population. Minority children in that area were bused to affluent white communities, such as the one where Thousand Oaks was located.