Decades of progress toward school desegregation are at risk as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to enter the White House in January.
Biden’s disconcerting obsession with race is a matter of public record. Samples:
— Barack Obama is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
— “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”
— “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
— “Unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.”
— “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”
An exhaustive list of Biden’s racist statements would fill pages. More troubling than his words are his past policies and associations. As a rabid opponent of busing programs to desegregate schools, Biden told the Senate judiciary committee in 1977 why he opposed assertive integration.
“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,” Biden said, as recorded in the congressional transcript.
Biden has recently boasted about his friendships with notorious segregationists, including former Sen. Robert Byrd — the man who started a major chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and served as the organization’s Grand Cyclops.
As president-elect, Biden has made characteristics of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation a central focus in naming nominees for key administrative roles.
Biden does not tell us how former small-town Mayor Pete Buttigieg is best qualified to serve as transportation secretary. Instead, he emphasizes that Buttigieg is openly gay. He talks about nominating the first woman to serve as secretary of the treasury, the first Black to serve as secretary of defense, the first Latino Secretary of Health and Humana Services, etc., etc., etc.
We hope Biden is choosing people for their skills, intelligence, qualifications, and high character. Maybe he is, but all we hear is a tribalistic view of humanity that identifies individuals first and foremost by immutable traits.
Biden’s obsession with race, combined with his long-held concerns about integration, raises enormous concerns about the future of public schools. His likely choice for education secretary only confirms those worries.
Leslie Fenwick, dean emeritus of the School of Education at the historically Black Howard University, tops Biden’s list of potential appointees to head the Department of Education. Fenwick is a leading opponent of charter schools and voucher/scholarship programs that give poor children access to schools historically available only to the children of wealthy parents.
“When you look at the history of these schemes — and I use the word ‘schemes’ purposefully — you find that they are rooted in resistance to the Brown legal decision,” Fenwick said in September.
It is hard to imagine a more bizarre and misleading statement. The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education liberated Black children from all-Black schools so they could choose better-funded traditionally all-white schools. The ruling forms the foundation for the school choice movement of vouchers, scholarships and charters — all of which erode the economic segregation not specifically addressed in Brown.
The “schemes” Fenwick disparages have integrated schools throughout the country and empowered poor parents to choose the schools they deem best for their children.
Data from the 2017-2018 school year tell us Colorado’s charter schools are more diverse than traditional attendance centers. Minorities make up 51% of charter school enrollment and only 45% of traditional enrollment.
Election results and numbers throughout the country tell us minority parents want school choice. Just like wealthy parents, they love their children and want what is best for them.
Forced busing programs failed to sustainably integrate schools. The voluntary use of vouchers, scholarships and charter “schemes” do what busing never could. They create the racially and ethnically diverse environments Biden used to call the “racial jungle.”
Hope and pray Biden’s administration does not reverse decades of progress toward sustainable and voluntary desegregation. Indeed, Mr. Biden, poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as rich kids. Let’s allow them to succeed.
The Gazette Editorial Board
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People like Uncle Joe, who scream racism, are the biggest racists.
These people profess to be passionate enemies of racism; they in fact perpetuate racism by injecting it where it does not otherwise exist.
This latest liberal Democrat crusade has little or nothing to do with protecting the sensitivities of Black Americans and everything to do with the Democrats setting themselves up as their saviors. Their practice of patronizing groups cannot yield to the facts. For their cause is not defending the oppressed or the offended but about making themselves look wonderful with their latest destructive political Con.
THE only thing the dems care about blacks for, ARE GETTING THEIR votes… Nothing more, nothing less.
Let’s not forget these either:
“The reason I was able to stay sequestered in my home was because some black woman was able to stock the grocery shelf.”—Joe Biden, 9/15/2020
“We’ve got to recognize that the kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gangbanger.” – Joe Biden, 6/28/2019
“He (Mitt Romney) said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street! They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.” – Joe Biden, 8/14/2012
Progressives see everything through the prism of race and other “immutable” characteristics. This isn’t about equality but it certainly does amount to racism. Racial obsessions and fetishes are racist. Besides, they are the ones who tell us that what our intentions are doesn’t count for anything. Right back at ya, progressives.
Democrats claim to be the great champions of Civil Rights. Are they really? From the time of Andrew Jackson (First Democrat President and a confirmed White Supremest) to the passing of the Civil Rights act, there is over 130 years of Democrat backed racism. Does anyone believe they changed their racist views overnight? What have they really done for the minorities in the 56 years since the passing of the Civil Rights Act? What have they done to encourage or help the minorities, still in poverty, to better their status and learn self reliance beside keeping the food stamps and welfare checks coming? It’s almost as if they want to keep most minorities ignorant and in poverty. A large amount of minorities are among those on welfare and dependent on the Government for their livelihood. The more people dependent on the government the more power the liberals have. I seriously doubt that the Democrats lost their racist views after the Civil Rights Act. It is my opinion that they just changed their strategy.
THEIR voters, would have to actually LEARN history, to know any of that.. WHICH IS WHY the commie ran dept of indoctrination, has been WATERING history down that they teach, for decades…