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Joe BidenCongratulations to our presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden!
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Certainly the worst comment of the night (Original Post) Goodheart Jun 2019 OP
Meh Thekaspervote Jun 2019 #1
Agreed. It's the "I was for it until I was against it" moment Merlot Jun 2019 #2
So I could not watch. At a funeral. GulfCoast66 Jun 2019 #3
Debate starts at the 60 min mark - 1st hour is prelims LeftInTX Jun 2019 #4
That's a simplistic description of busing. StarfishSaver Jun 2019 #5
Several of your claims are just wrong. GulfCoast66 Jun 2019 #7
"Now, if you are southern and of my age I would be interested in your personal experience. . ." watrwefitinfor Jun 2019 #8
Wow! Thanks for taking the time to type that powerful narrative! GulfCoast66 Jun 2019 #9
I was bused too. cwydro Jun 2019 #12
Post removed Post removed Jun 2019 #10
Many of us are in awe. cwydro Jun 2019 #11
Wrong. cwydro Jun 2019 #13
Oh I thought the worst answer was Mayor Pete and the no diversity police force "just because"nt UniteFightBack Jun 2019 #6
That was a terrible answer tishaLA Jun 2019 #14
I appreciated his honesty and that he took responsibility and didn't try to blame other people StarfishSaver Jun 2019 #15
 

Merlot

(9,696 posts)
2. Agreed. It's the "I was for it until I was against it" moment
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 12:17 AM
Jun 2019

that will probably come back to haunt him.

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Undecided
 

GulfCoast66

(11,949 posts)
3. So I could not watch. At a funeral.
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 12:39 AM
Jun 2019

So I’m like a child who has no frame a reference, who wonders into a movie...

But did someone actually defend bussing? Because that is was a top down horrible solution to a problem. Well intentioned I’ll admit. But disastrous. I was bussed. It sucked. Everyone hated it. Blacks, whites, everyone.

I very recently explained it to a not much younger than me, way more progressive democrat and she was appalled. Pulling elementary aged kids out of their neighborhood schools and shipping them across our city. Losing their friends and social base.

Bussing did more in the South to destroy support for the Democratic Party than any other thing. Had federal courts just ordered all elementary schools be funded at the same level we would not have lost the south like we did.

Good god. If we are calling for bussing we deserve to lose. Please tell me I read the OP wrong.




If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

LeftInTX

(29,493 posts)
4. Debate starts at the 60 min mark - 1st hour is prelims
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 01:11 AM
Jun 2019
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Undecided
 

StarfishSaver

(18,486 posts)
5. That's a simplistic description of busing.
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 01:25 AM
Jun 2019

First of all, busing wasn't a matter of pulling kids out of neighborhood schools and shipping them across the city. I urge you to read more about what busing was actually about, since it wasn't as simple as you claim.

And you're completely wrong to claim that "Bussing did more in the South to destroy support for the Democratic Party than any other thing. Had federal courts just ordered all elementary schools be funded at the same level we would not have lost the south like we did.""

Busing didn't begin until the 1970s, long after Democrats had lost the South. And busing wasn't a "thing" unto itself. It was a tool used in a very limited form - along with many other things - to effectuate desegregation after school districts refused every other measure for integrating their schools.

Perhaps you're talking about desegregation, which did help to drive white Southerners away from the Democratic Party. But surely you don't believe that desegregation was a mistake.

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

GulfCoast66

(11,949 posts)
7. Several of your claims are just wrong.
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 09:12 AM
Jun 2019

I have more knowledge than most on bussing because I was bussed. I don’t have to read about it. I lived it. Twice in our 6 years of elementary school we showed up at our neighborhood school and 2 bus loads of us were shipped off across the city to the traditional black school. This happened at all while elementary schools in he city. Those same busses would the take the majority of the black kids out of their traditional school and ship them to all those white schools. For me it was 2nd and 5th grade. Everyone hated it.

Bussing was indeed about pulling young kids out of their local schools and shipping them across the city.

And the south did not go solid republican till Reagan in the 80s. Again, I was there. Bill Clinton was first elected in 1978 and then defeated for Governor in 80. By the first republican Governor in Arkansas since reconstruction.

Desegregation was not popular, and in many mainly rural areas was resisted in stupid ways. But in many places, especially cities in the South it was generally accepted. It was the method used to do it, mainly bussing that created the most resentment.

Keep in mind when telling DUers to study more about events in the 70s. Many of can do way better than read about the events. We can just dial up our memories. Now, if you are southern and of my age I would be interested in your personal experience with bussing.

Any Democratic candidate calling for a renewal of bussing is just too obtuse to ever be elected. And must be from a state that did not bus.



If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

watrwefitinfor

(1,403 posts)
8. "Now, if you are southern and of my age I would be interested in your personal experience. . ."
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 10:08 PM
Jun 2019

Here's a personal busing story from someone at least your age, and maybe much older.

My story goes back to 1954 (I was in 4th grade) when my dad came home angry as hell, told me and my brother that the Supreme Court had just passed a school integration law, and the first time a black child came into our classroom, we should just push our books off the desk, get up, and walk out of the room and don't look back. (Well, of course the schools didn't integrate till many years later, so I never had to choose my father or my education.)

A couple of years later he and my mother split up, and I went to live with relatives in a very rural section in South Carolina where I was born. I was bused. Yes, indeed, every morning I walked a quarter mile down to the next road where from my bus stop I could see the "colored school" just up the road.

My bus picked me up and drove me about a mile up the road to the modern brick elementary school I attended - right past the old unpainted wooden two room "colored school".

I can still remember my shock and disbelief, even at the age of 12, as my bus drove past numbers of black kids walking to school sometimes singly but often in small groups. Many of them walked long distances, right past the white brick school. And there were no buses for these young African-American students. And their school year didn't even begin until October or November, so they could continue to help get the crops in. And most of them were barefoot until dead of winter - walking all that distance through the hot sandy roads in the hot spring and fall. I can still see them trudging along as my bus sped past them. No, busing was certainly not part of their lives. And even as a 12 year old I remember how hard that hit me. And how my friends wouldn't even talk to me about it. And they laughed and called me a N***** Lover.

The old school building for the black kids didn't have running water or indoor toilets. I can still see the teacher out in the schoolyard pumping water from the old pump to carry into the classrooms. There was only wood heating in an old potbelly stove, one in each of the two classrooms (for all the elementary grades). There were no hot lunches, no music classes, none of the amenities. And there were only the old, beaten up, falling apart books that had been "handed down" to the colored school when the white schools were finished with them and we white kids got new books. (I became aware of most of this only years later, when I moved back to the area and met people who my bus had driven past in those years.)

I left the countryside in 1956 and lived in a large southern city for the rest of my school years. The matter of segregation and busing wasn't part of my personal life during those years. I married young and soon had children of my own. We were very poor, I had to work, and was much too busy and worn out, but not so much I didn't keep up with the world.

Then when my oldest daughter was in 2nd grade, in a less rural area near a large city in North Carolina, Integration finally became a reality. My daughter came home and told me she had a black teacher and black students in her class. That was it. No fuss. No bother. Most of the Carolinas integrated the same way, after long years of putting it off as long as they could.

Later that same year we moved to a large midwestern city, where all my children spent most of their school years. The schools were of course already integrated, and so far as I knew had always been. But that didn't matter much, for there were few black residents outside of the "inner city" so integration on paper meant little in reality. Most black kids went to school in the inner city schools because that's where they lived; white kids went to school in the outlying and suburban schools because that's where they lived. The only busing transpiring for anyone was if a kid finagled city bus fare from his parents and so didn't have to walk to school.

During this time period the schools in the rural community I grew up in were changing and being integrated, too. I later learned that integration and the busing of all the students had transpired here with no major incidents. The black schools were all shut down, and the black students were all enrolled in the heretofore white schools. No white students were sent to the rustic, waterless, toiletless, heatless black schools. Some of the black teachers were transferred to the (now) integrated schools. Most of the black teachers were simply "let go". Soon, private and religious schools began springing up for the white students, and white parents began transferring their children to those with a vengeance.

When my kids were young teens in the mid 1970s, we moved from the Midwest back to North Carolina to a medium sized city. They were in what was then called Middle Shool or Junior High School. And they were bused. This is the busing that Kamala and Joe seem to have been discussing. I got the kids enrolled into school, and two of them were going to be bused across the city to previously black schools, due to the new efforts to effect integration in the southern cities. I guess some of the northern ones, too. Boston comes to mind - I heard about Boston a lot.

My kids were unhappy because they had to spend so much time on the bus, and I must admit I was not happy about it either. But I soon learned that most of the other kids (and especially parents) were unhappy because their little white kids were being bused across town to attend a previously black school.

So I sat them down and we had long talks about it. I explained to them the ghastly wrong that had to be corrected. I described my childhood, riding in my bus past the black kids walking to their dilapidated school, and all those horrors. I explained the Civil Rights movement to them, Brown vs. Board of Education, and so much more. And when I finished there were tears in their eyes. And they never complained about being bused across town again. But I have to admit neither they nor I ever liked that damned commute they had to make.

By the 1980s when I moved back to my childhood home in South Carolina, integration was pretty much a thing of the past. The white kids who could afford it were enrolled in their private (often religious) schools, and the remainder of poor white kids and black kids were left in the (previously) integrated schools. Once again the character of busing had changed, this time black students were being bused to the new, integrated (though in reality now un-integrated) schools, and the white kids for the most part driven to their private schools in their parents' cars. And so it remains today. And some of those black kids who trudged all those miles to school and watched the white kids on their big yellow buses whiz past them on the dirt road, spewing up all the dust or mud - some of them became teachers at the same school they helped to integrate. And some others in our area from a similar background became Congressmen. And I have two friends with similar backgrounds who are Councilwomen in two small nearby towns.

Now, I don't know what any of this has to do with the little Kamala who was bused across her California city. Though it is not clear to me from what she said, I presume she was bused to facilitate integration, and I'm sure it was traumatic for her, just as it was traumatic for mine to be bused across Charlotte to facilitate integration (though not in the same way, of course). But that is not clear to me from what she said. And Joe's role in that is even less clear to me from what he said.

But I don't believe either of them would change places with those young black children I passed in my school bus every single day, hot, cold, wet, or dry. Determined to walk the miles they had to for that education they got from those raggedy schoolbooks. And I think those kids are the ones the fight was fought for. And the busing may have been misguided in some places, but for god's sake, people were attempting to right dreadful wrongs. And no doubt mistakes were made.

None of this is meant to take away anything from Kamala or from Joe. They are both fighters for the people and I am so very proud of both of them (and all our other candidates).

But, hey. That was then, and we were all different people than we became: the little Kamala on the bus; the young politician trying to figure out the best ways to help the kids and perhaps making errors; even the little white girl whose childhood pain and tears for kids walking down a dirt rode as she rode past were also real.

We have to be better than this to defeat Trump and the Republicans.

Eyes on the Prize. Please.

Wat







If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Undecided
 

GulfCoast66

(11,949 posts)
9. Wow! Thanks for taking the time to type that powerful narrative!
Sat Jun 29, 2019, 01:45 AM
Jun 2019

Those poor black kids walking to school was because the south, with segregated schools, put no resources into black schools. And in rural areas less than nothing to keep blacks working the farms.

But forced bussing solved nothing. At least where I was raised. I obviously can’t speak to other areas. We only had enough students in our district for 2 small high schools(my class was of 199). Had they just eliminated segregation, along with eliminating redlining which was already happening desegregation would have happened organically. There were enough schools that would have been desegregated de facto. The private school thing happened but most families could not afforded it and many actually favored desegregation, as my multigenerational southern family did.

But take a person who nominally favors desegregation and then ship their elementary aged child out of their school and they take a different view. Which turned my dad from a democratic voter to a republican. He never favored segregation, but seeing me shipped out of my school twice in my elementary school years really pissed him off.

I can’t believe we are even discussing bussing as a serious issue now.

Any candidate for that will lose all the southern states. Black voters and white. It was a disaster.










If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

cwydro

(51,308 posts)
12. I was bused too.
Sat Jun 29, 2019, 02:53 AM
Jun 2019

As in your experience, my liberal parents were outraged. Both from England, they were horrified.

I was in one of the two pilot projects in the 70s. One was in Boston, one in Charlotte. You never hear much about the one in Charlotte, because unlike the oh-so-accepting, no bigots north - our busing went fairly smoothly. Boston, ha, not so much. Hypocritical bigots.

But I endured, as did my black classmates, sitting through a lottery system (they literally drew names from a lottery hopper) at the end of summer wondering if we’d go to our neighborhood school or not. Many of my friends fled to private school.

Lucky me, they took me out of my junior high, twice. A wonderful age to be fucked with by judges whose kids went to private school. It was an awful, horrid experience.

Somehow, I was lucky enough to stay at my high school from beginning to graduation, but many of my friends were not. All of us, black and white, hated everything about it.

It was a fucking disaster. Charlotte schools are more segregated than ever. Now they’re trying to decide whether to start the whole thing over again. People are pissed off. My parents didn’t live to see this start again, thank god.

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden

Response to StarfishSaver (Reply #5)

 

cwydro

(51,308 posts)
11. Many of us are in awe.
Sat Jun 29, 2019, 02:38 AM
Jun 2019

Yes indeed.

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

cwydro

(51,308 posts)
13. Wrong.
Sat Jun 29, 2019, 02:58 AM
Jun 2019

I was bused too.

I lived it.

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

UniteFightBack

(8,231 posts)
6. Oh I thought the worst answer was Mayor Pete and the no diversity police force "just because"nt
Fri Jun 28, 2019, 01:28 AM
Jun 2019
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
 

tishaLA

(14,296 posts)
14. That was a terrible answer
Sat Jun 29, 2019, 03:07 AM
Jun 2019

I have no idea why the (almost exclusively white) pundits believe it deserves credit.

The calling card has been to run our federal government like our best-run cities and towns and,.....hello? Saying you didn't get the job done hardly counts.

If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Undecided
 

StarfishSaver

(18,486 posts)
15. I appreciated his honesty and that he took responsibility and didn't try to blame other people
Sat Jun 29, 2019, 08:04 AM
Jun 2019
If I were to vote in a presidential
primary today, I would vote for:
Joe Biden
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