What does bussing to school have to do with? Don't tons of kids from different ethnicities, backgrounds, and financial situations ride buses to school?
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No... Prior to congressional legislation and Supreme Court intervention, which tied federal funding to school desegregating, did kids from different backgrounds ride the same bus and go to the same school.
Prior to the late 1960s and early 1970s, schools still practiced segregation. Brown v Board of education, you’ve heard of that, right? It was a a Supreme Court decision back in 1954 which eliminated the “separate but equal” rationale for segregation. A girl from Kansas wanted to attend a White only school near her house. The school for blacks was on the other side of town. Her parents sued. Many other families from other states launched cases similar to Brown’s where their kids complained about having to attend poorly funded blacks only schools that were long distances away. So it was all combined into the Brown v Board of education case.
That court case made it illegal for schools to segregate. And tied federal funding to school’s to desegregate. Virginia actually shut down it’s public school system for one year as a form of protest rather than take federal dollars and desegregate. Blacks and poor whites suffered while rich white kids went to private (religious schools) for that year. But eventually, they caved and so if a black student wanted to attend a well funded white school nearby, they legally, could not be prevented from doing so.
But the issue still remained for decades on how to get black students to the schools they wanted/needed. Enter, school busing. This remained a “state’s right” issue. And I think it remains so today if I’m not mistaken
This is where Harris pummeled Biden and his record. He fought to keep this as a state’s right issue. This is what segregationists wanted as well. They knew that as long as their states could control school busing, they could maintain segregation without actually explicitly segregating their schools. How? Because they weren’t telling the black students that they couldn’t attend. They could just claim that they didn’t have the buses to provide black students with transportation. They essentially said, “awwwww shucks, we’d love to have you blacks come to our school but doggon, we don’t have the buses to do so.” So when Harris brought this up she was clearly speaking directly to blacks who have experienced this while implying that Biden was one of those “good ol boys” racists.
That’s why Harris said that by maintaining the status quo, she became “that girl.” A girl who was talented and eager to receive the high quality of a white school’s education but was prevented from getting it due to unfair and racist school busing practices.
Make sense?
Even today school busing and desegregation is a controversial issue.
Desegregation of public facilities (libraries, restaurants, bathrooms, schools) triggered white flight. Today, the country is segregated by both explicit and intentional segregation (discrimination in the workplace, drug crime laws, poorly funded schools for minorities, illegal real estate practices, etc) and de facto segregation (unintentional). An example of intentional segregation might be how city planners divided and planned their cities. They prohibited at times blacks from building and once that was cut down, intentionally discriminated against blacks from moving in.
An example of de facto segregation might be comparing sandy or draper to west valley city. Due to economics, tradition, etc You’re just not going to find many minorities on the east side of the SL Valley.
Anyway, that’s why this issue is such a sensitive one. Whites don’t like discussing these issues. A candidate like Biden needs to work through some of these issues while maintaining his support from whites in suburbia. I don’t necessarily blame him
for not doing much for blacks back in the 70s as long as he recognizes his mistakes. While a candidate like Harris feels like she can build a coalition behind fighting for minorities who have been trampled upon.
And then you have a candidate like Trump, who has no interest in resolving this issue. He doesn’t give a ****. Nor does he care to understand it.
