Forced Busing Was Not a Black and White Issue

Joe Biden’s bragging about his working with segregationist Democrats brought his opposition to forced busing in the 1970’s back into the news last week.  With all the time passed and with all the agendas surrounding its history, there is far more ignorance than knowledge about forced busing.  I cannot dispel all ignorance, but I will humbly try to do my small part.  (And, yes, I guess I will be indirectly defending Biden on this although I am NO fan of him.)

It is difficult to prove a negative, but I cannot recall any elected body that willingly instituted the busing of students to far off schools into order to achieve desegregation.  With few to no exceptions, forced busing, when instituted, was done under the direction of federal court rulings.  It was one of the more noxious late 20^th century episodes of federal judges acting as dictators in black robes.

And it was profoundly unpopular. Parents, many of whom chose their home to be close to a school, saw their children bused to a far off school across town.  At the same time, they saw that many of the liberals pushing forced busing sent their children to private schools.

Responses became even violent as in Jefferson County, Kentucky and South Boston.  But a more common response was upper middle class families, mostly White, fleeing to the suburbs (“White Flight’) where there was not forced busing regimes.  Others switched their kids to private schools.  Yes, some did so from racist motives, but virtually all did not want their children to be a part of this dictatorial social experiment. White Flight harmed urban school districts by weakening their tax base.  And, ironically, it usually made urban schools, as well as many cities, less multiethnic.  So much for desegregation. 

It was certainly hard to explain how putting children on long bus rides every day helped their education or why it helped the education of black children to seat them next to white children.  The latter question was asked by black opponents to busing. 

And that brings me to what is perhaps most forgotten.  Forced busing was not a white vs. black issue.  Opposition to it crossed racial lines.  I personally experienced this as a high school student myself in Dallas in the 70’s.

I lived far from my private school, and it became unfeasible for my parents to take me to school.  But the school bus did not come nearly as far south as where I lived.  So I had to get up early and take a city bus just to get to my school bus. Yes, I experienced a bit of busing myself.

Now on the city bus were mainly Black workers getting to their places of work early in the morning. I was an unusual passenger in more ways than one, but we got along very well.

One morning on the bus – I don’t remember how – the subject of forced busing came up.  I was surprised to see how much these Black workers opposed it.  They were quite vocal about it.  But their opposition made sense.  After all, some of them surely had kids bused across town, too.

But opposition to forced busing crossing ethnic lines is not something you hear much about.  Instead past opposition is assumed to be RACIST among the race baiting crowd.

It should make one wonder how much other fake history they are peddling. 

Charlottesville Revisited II: Dilbert Debunks a Hoax

This week, I did my humble part to debunk the hoax of Trump loving those fine Nazis just revived by Lying Joe Biden. But now Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has done better with a doggedly logical and detailed takedown of the Charlottesville Hoax.  At the same time he notes that hoaxes can be hard to kill due to the commitment of useful idiots (not his term – he is more polite than I) to believe them.

I doubt any further summary on my part can do his work justice, so get thee hence and read it for yourself.

Charlottesville Revisited

Joe Biden in beginning his campaign for President saw fit to smear President Donald Trump’s statement in the aftermath of Charlottesville. He is not the first to deceive about Charlottesville and Trump’s statement for political purposes, and he won’t be the last.  So it’s time to revisit Charlottesville.

First, Trump did not call white nationalists and the like “fine people.”  He did not, as Biden said, assign “a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.”  Here is what Trump said, in context:

You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. ... I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. ... So you know what, it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and White nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.

And Trump’s statement was and is accurate.  You had people who, like me frankly, are concerned about taking down history for current political motivations.  And on the other side you had peaceful people who, also like me, oppose extremist racist ideologies. (Please see my note below for more.)

At the same time, there were also violent extremists on both sides.  But all we hear about are the Neo-Nazis and the like and the man who ran down protesters and killed a woman. And we should be reminded of them.  But we rarely are reminded of the role violent Leftist groups, particularly Antifa, played that day.  But a great deal of violence came from Antifa and therefore some of the violence from the other side was in self-defense. (Obviously, the car attack was not and should be condemned without equivocation.)

Don’t take my word for it.  Here are testimonies of eyewitnesses from various sides of Charlottesville, such as this:

University of Virginia student Isabella Ciambotti: "I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. when a counter-protester ripped a newspaper stand off the sidewalk and threw it at alt-right protesters. I saw another man from the white supremacist crowd being chased and beaten. People were hitting him with their signs. A much older man, also with the alt-right group, got pushed to the ground in the commotion. Someone raised a stick over his head and beat the man with it, and that's when I screamed and ran over with several other strangers to help him to his feet."

Such is par for the course for Antifa, along with using excrement as a weapon.  But we don’t hear much about that (By the way, although I remember numerous reports of Antifa violence in Charlottesville, search engines are not much help digging up those reports.  Funny that . . . in an Orwellian way.) – a double standard which enables more hate and violence as noted shortly after Charlottesville.  Distorting history has consequences.

Yet distorting history, double standards and outright lies is how Biden and other Democrats roll.  I fear for the truth and for us if they succeed.

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NOTE: Now one may ask how the heck can “fine people” find themselves on the same side as Neo-Nazis (and Antifa for that matter).  I will tell you how from personal experience.

Back during my college days, I joined a rally against the Greensboro shooting verdict in 1980 (or 1981, my memory of the time is fuzzy.). I saw the not guilty verdict as unjust.  But during the rally, I saw that it was really more a platform to smear Reagan and shout loony Leftist ideas than to protest the verdict. Eventually I had enough and walked away.

Also in my college days, I participated in Marches for Life. I noticed some, well, interesting people there.  I was intrigued by the leaflets in the Ticked Mary genre I was handed. But the scattered odd balls were more amusing then obnoxious, so I marched on.

One can certainly question the judgement of those who were not White Nationalists or the like but were there in Charlottesville to protest taking down historic statues.  But sometimes when you get involved in honorable causes, you find yourself alongside dishonorable people.

Joe Biden Wants the Presumption of Innocence… For Himself Not College Men

Sorry, if I keep harping on the Joe Biden situation.  But I missed something in my last post that K. C. Johnson exposes well.  Joe Biden has long pushed for policies that weaken due process and the presumption of innocence for college men accused of sexual misconduct:

Perhaps no major American political figure has so consistently championed the erosion of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct. Even if Flores’s claims might be unprovable, distorted, or simply wrong, changing the culture about sexual misconduct and mistreatment of women requires that we accept her version of events. Biden will now learn firsthand how the mantra of “believe all survivors” has the effect of presuming the guilt of the accused.

Biden has certainly championed this approach for accused college students, as the Obama administration used Title IX to impose guilt-tilting procedures on the nation’s campuses. Until 2016, high-ranking administration officials consistently refused to provide much, if any, explanation on why they imposed a preponderance-of-evidence (a hair over 50 percent) standard; discouraged colleges from granting accused students the right to cross-examination; or demanded that schools let accusers appeal not-guilty findings.

Biden has been the most outspoken senior Obama administration figure to defend these policies. . . . Biden responded with fury to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s attempts to create fairer procedures for adjudicating campus sexual-assault claims. In a September 2017 conference call with victims’-rights activists, the former vice president derided DeVos’s supporters as “culturally Neanderthals.” 

Well, now Biden is on the receiving end of accusations.  Ironic is it not? It almost makes me believe in karma.

But just as I’ve expressed the desire that Biden be treated more fairly than he has treated Justice Clarence Thomas, I also desire that he is treated more justly than he and Obama treated college students accused of sexual misconduct.

About the Joe Biden Accusations

No, I am not going to rehash the sexual harassment accusations against Joe Biden.  I try to be value-added here.  So, instead, I will point out some angles on this matter that most are missing and from which we can all learn.

First, and this may surprise those who know my aversion for Democrats, I will not rush to judgement nor should others.  Yes, from all the photos and videos of “Gropin’ Joe” it is clear that his conduct has been at best unwise.  But we need to remember that he is, well, old and comes from a time when what was acceptable or just not a big deal then is no longer acceptable and is a big deal now.  Sometimes the older inadvertently violates the rules and boundaries of the younger.  It happens to just about any guy who lives a few years and likes people. 

By the way, when I was young in the 70’s and 80’s and we ran around wearing not much, it never occurred to me that the culture would become more puritanical.  But in a number of ways it has.  Some older men don’t adjust their boundary alarms to the times as well as others.  And, with Biden being a Senator since the 70’s and becoming more powerful since, how many would have the courage to warn him about boundaries?

Second, although I am not rushing to judgement, I have close to zero sympathy for Biden.  It may sound like I am contradicting myself after what I wrote above. But I remember that last week he smeared Clarence Thomas all over again.  I don’t think that prompted the current accusations.  But God is just.  What goes around comes around.  And now Biden is getting a taste of his own medicine. 

Nonetheless, Joe Biden should be treated more fairly than he treated Clarence Thomas.

Finally, I suspect this is yet another case of accusations as a weapon of the Left.  Some Democrats are gleeful when the target is an evil Republican like Kavanaugh or Trump.  But now the target is the frontrunner for the Democrat nomination.  Leftists want the nomination, and if an old and old school liberal like Biden is in the way…

Totalitarians do not stop with eliminating open opponents. They also proceed to eliminate one time allies of convenience when they are no longer useful. Biden was a good and loyal stooge to Obama. But now he is competition to the hard Left.  So he is to be eliminated. That’s what happens when “useful idiots” are no longer useful.

So this story is far more than an alleged harasser getting exposed if it is even that.  Us no longer young guys should take note.  Those who engage in smears should take note.  And those who find Leftists convenient allies should especially take note.

Joe Biden Smears Clarence Thomas

When I first heard of Joe Biden’s apology to Anita Hill, I immediately marveled that he decided to reopen old wounds like that.

When I heard his statement on the radio, I more than marveled; I went incandescent.  This is what triggered me, if you will:

“A brave lawyer, a really notable woman, Anita Hill, a professor, showed the courage of a lifetime talking about her experience [of] being harassed by Clarence Thomas…”

This assumes, in an important public statement, that Thomas harassed Anita Hill.  I watched those hearings and surrounding analysis closely back in 1991, and I thought and still think it far more likely that Hill was a weaponized liar. The evidence against Thomas was weak at best.  But, for political gain, Biden smeared Justice Thomas anyway. 

He could have just said Hill deserved a better hearing.  I disagree, but I would probably let it pass.  Instead, he smeared Justice Thomas as a sexual harasser all over again.  This is despicable.

Clarence Thomas’ statement back in 1991 speaks to this far better than I can.