Thread by @JewhadiTM

.@JoeBiden embraced segregation in 1975, claiming it was a matter of 'black pride' washex.am/2HItv8x

Joe Biden, weighing a 2020 White House bid, once advocated continued school segregation in the United States, arguing that it benefited minorities and that integration would prevent black people from embracing “their own identity.”

Biden was speaking in 1975, when he opposed the federally mandated busing policy designed to end segregation in schools.

In the past few decades, he has claimed he wanted desegregation but believed the policy of busing would not achieve it. Last year, he stated he had voted heroically to protect busing.

In 2008, after being chosen as Barack Obama's vice-presidential running mate he said: "The struggle for civil rights was the animating political element of my life."

He appears poised to make his civil rights record a centerpiece of any campaign, telling an audience in Fort Lauderdale this week that "I came out of the civil rights movement.

He added that he first became aware of what an "awful thing" segregation was as a third grader, when he asked his mother why a bus was taking black children to a school away from where they lived.

But 44 years ago, facing a backlash against busing from white voters, the future vice president voiced concerns not just about the policy of busing, which he had supported when first seeking election in 1972, but about the impact of desegregation on American society.

He argued that segregation was good for blacks and was what they wanted.

“I think the concept of busing … that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest, is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride,” said Biden.

Desegregation, he argued, was “a rejection of the entire black awareness concept, where black is beautiful, black culture should be studied; and the cultural awareness of the importance of their own identity, their own individuality.

Questioning whether he might be a racist, Biden said he had asked "the blacks on my staff" whether he harbored something "in me that’s deep-seated that I don’t know."

African-Americans comprised 14.3 percent of the population of Delaware in 1970, according to U.S. Census Bureau data — less than two-thirds what it is today. White voters in the state, on whom Biden's re-election in 1978 depended, overwhelmingly opposed busing.

Biden shifted his position to oppose busing while insisting he was in favor of desegregation.

"It enabled Biden to choose votes over principles, while acting as if he was not doing so," wrote University of New Hampshire professor Jacob Sokol.

This sleight of hand paid dividends for Biden. He was re-elected by a whopping 16 percent of the vote in 1978. That same year, Brooke, who had never bowed to the anti-busing clamor from white voters in Massachusetts, lost the seat he had held since 1967.

In September 1975, Biden supported an anti-busing amendment to a federal bill. It was proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a segregationist until at least the 1960s and regarded by most to be a racist.

Delighted by Biden's shift, Helms welcomed him "to the ranks of the enlightened."

That same month, Biden trumpeted his credentials with the African-American community in his state. “I still walk down the street in the black side of town,” he told the Washington Post.

“Mousey and Chops and all the boys at 13th, and — I can walk in those pool halls, and quite frankly don’t know another white man involved in Delaware politics who can do that kind of thing.”

Dunn, the urban studies professor, said: "I was really taken aback to find that he had actually introduced legislation with Jesse Helms... So he’s going to have to answer for his position on this matter on the campaign trail if he does in fact seek the presidency."

Biden also supported an anti-busing amendment by Sen. Robert Byrd, a senator from West Virginia and a Democrat who had renounced his racist past, which included being a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan and rising to the title of kleagle and exalted cyclops of his local chapter.

But Biden recently seems to have grasped the potential political problems of his busing position and gave a very different recollection of his role in the debate on the Pod Save America podcast last March.

“I have never, ever, ever voted for anything I thought was wrong,” said Biden, unprompted, to three former senior aides in the Obama White House.

“In the middle of the single most extensive busing order in all the United States history, in my state, I voted against an amendment, cast the deciding vote, to allow courts to keep busing as a remedy. Because there are some things that are worth losing over.”

By picking out a single pro-busing vote from an anti-busing record lasting years, Biden seemed to hope he would be viewed as an advocate for busing after all.

Larry Sabato, founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the busing comments could be a major problem for Joe (“they’ll put you all back in chains”) Biden in 2020. "He’s going to have to explain [his position on busing]...”