I got banned from a forum for quoting Joe Biden..

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Biden made the remark in 1977 during a hearing about busing school children in order to desegregate public schools. As The New York Times reported in a detailed delineation of Biden’s history with busing, Biden at the time had emerged as the Democratic party’s crusader against busing, taking the same side as segregationists. Biden “joined up with Jesse Helms, the segregationist senator from North Carolina, to offer his own anti-busing amendment to that year’s education spending bill.” Biden’s “advocacy made it safe for other Democrats to oppose busing,” The Times reported.

The Times further reported that Biden sided with Helms in 1975 when the latter proposed to strip the federal government’s power to withhold funding from school districts that refused to comply with racial-equality measures:

Under the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare had a powerful tool to fight school segregation: It could withhold funding from districts that refused to integrate — and integration effectively meant busing. Mr. Helms wanted to strip the agency of that power.

As Mr. Biden rose on the Senate floor in September 1975 to embrace that approach, Mr. Helms wryly welcomed him “to the ranks of the enlightened.” Mr. Biden objected to the education department mandating desegregation absent a court order, and warned of white flight to the suburbs and even racial unrest. … Mr. Helms’s amendment, which would have also barred the education department from collecting data about the race of students or teachers, failed.

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