Racial views of Joe Biden

This article is part of a series about Joe Biden
Political positions Electoral history Early life Early career Family U.S. Senator from Delaware Tenure Vice President of the United States Transition Tenure Presidential campaigns 1988 primaries 2008 primaries 2020 primaries convention debates election Endorsements Primary U.S. Representatives State and territorial Representatives Organizations Vice Presidential selection Vice presidential campaigns 2008 selection convention election 2012 convention election Published works Promises to Keep Promise Me, Dad

This article is about Joe Biden's, the 47th Vice President of the United States, former member of the United States Senate from Delaware, and presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2020 United States presidential election, views on racial issues.

Opposition to busing

In the 1970s, Biden campaigned against busing as a way to desegregate schools. He also said, "I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago." He supported an amendment to an educational spending bill offered by Jesse Helms to bar the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from requiring schools provide statistics on student ethnicity. When that amendment failed, Biden offered his own amendment that allowed statistics to be to be kept, but still prohibited funds from being used to compel schools to bus students. In 1975 he said, "The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with."

In 1976, Biden unsuccessfully tried to pass legislation that would have barred the Justice pursuing desegregation cases that might result in a court order for busing. In 1977 during a hearing about busing school children, Biden remarked "Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this." Because of his strong opposition to busing, Biden was described as "the Democratic Party’s leading anti-busing crusader" by The New York Times.

1994 Crime Bill

Biden also has been criticized for his support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which led to mass incarceration of African-Americans.

2007 comment about Obama

In 2007, he described then-candidate for U.S. President Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" The remarks were widely commended by Republicans and Democrats alike. Biden later issued an apology after initially claiming the quote was taken out of context.

References

This article "Racial views of Joe Biden" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Racial views of Joe Biden. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

📰 Article(s) of the same category(ies)

• George Stinney
• Rudy Giuliani promotions of Bernard Kerik
• Early 21st-century civil rights movement
• List of controversial killings of African Americans in the 2010s
• Shooting of Sean Reed
• Clinton Foundation-State Department controversy
• 2019 Indigenous Peoples March Incident

---