Opinion

I Do Not Believe you are a Racists

Published

7 years ago

July 4, 2019

At the Miami Democratic Presidential Debate, Kamala Harris questioned Joe Biden about his opposition to integrating the schools through court-ordered busing. Biden responded: “I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education.” After the debate, Biden spoke at the Rainbow Push Convention in Chicago. He said, “I want to be absolutely clear about my record and position on racial justice, including busing. I never, never, ever opposed voluntary busing.”

As Harris noted in the debate, Biden is not a racist. He served the country well as a senator and as Barack Obama’s vice president. On this question, however, he has lined up with the opposing team.

In the struggle for civil rights, the stakes were clear. After the Civil War brought an end to slavery, the Reconstruction — the effort to integrate the slave states of the South — was resisted widely, and rapidly brought to an end. The former slave states claimed to have state’s rights over laws concerning labor, voting rights, education, health care and civil rights. Under the banner of states’ rights, they enforced legal segregation — apartheid, stripping black citizens of their rights. Blacks were banned from restaurants and hotels. Schools were segregated. Voting rights were suppressed. Blacks were forced to sit at the back of the bus.

In 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation — specifically segregation of schools — violated the Constitution. Separate but equal was inherently unequal. They ordered communities to integrate their schools. Once again resistance was immediate and widespread. African Americans were forced to go to court to enforce their rights. One result was court-ordered busing.

For Dr. King and the civil rights movement, the claim of states’ rights was always the segregationist dodge.

It took federal intervention to gain the right to public accommodations, to enforce the right to vote, to enforce desegregation of schools. To this day, federal intervention is vital, as Vice President Biden knows, to deal with the structural racism of police forces, voting rights, racially motivated hate crimes and more.

When Ronald Reagan opened his presidential campaign in Mississippi talking about states’ rights, everyone got the message. There were two sides of history and he was on the other side from those seeking equal justice for all.

As a senator, Biden initially supported busing. Then the white backlash grew. Racially separate communities in the North — often forged with red-lining and restrictive covenants that effectively segregated communities — started to get challenged in court.

The schools in Black communities were often more crowded, shabbier and less well-funded than those in the white suburbs. Communities resisted integration — and so courts began to order busing and redistricting to integrate schools.

Communities like Wilmington, Delaware faced the threat of court ordered integration, so the pressure on Biden grew to oppose busing. It was then that he called busing “asinine,” and voted with segregationists like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond on resolutions designed to prohibit the federal government — specifically the Department of Education -from enforcing court-ordered busing.

The problem wasn’t busing. Children are bused to school across America every day. The problem was where the bus was going.

As Matthew Delmont, author of “Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation,” concluded, “Describing opposition to busing as something other than resistance to school desegregation was a move that obscured the histories of racial discrimination and legal contexts for desegregation orders.”

In 1975, Biden offered his own amendment to the education bill, mandating that no funds could be used to “assign teachers or students to schools … for reasons of race.”

When the Biden amendment passed, Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke, the only African American in the Senate, called it the “greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964.” It was later stripped from the bill.

Court-ordered busing to integrate schools has remained unpopular, and courts have retreated from enforcing it. Schools, particularly in the North, remain deeply segregated by race.

And too often, schools populated by people of color are still unequal — with fewer resources, dilapidated facilities and less prepared teachers than those in the suburbs.

Like Harris, I don’t believe Biden is a racist. But I do know that he was on the wrong side of history.

Invoking states’ rights or community choice is not a defense. It is an admission.

(You can write to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in care of this newspaper or by email at jjackson@rainbowpush.org. Follow him on Twitter @RevJJackson.)

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 11 = 17, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 11 – 17, 2026

Published

2 days ago

February 16, 2026

Oakland Post

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Oakland Post

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#NNPA BlackPress

COMMENTARY: The National Protest Must Be Accompanied with Our Votes

Just as Trump is gathering election data like having the FBI take all the election data in Georgia from the 2020 election, so must we organize in preparation for the coming primary season to have the right people on ballots in each Republican district, so that we can regain control of the House of Representatives and by doing so, restore the separation of powers and balance that our democracy is being deprived of.

Published

1 week ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper. File photo..

By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper

As thousands of Americans march every week in cities across this great nation, it must be remembered that the protest without the vote is of no concern to Donald Trump and his administration.

In every city, there is a personal connection to the U.S. Congress. In too many cases, the member of Congress representing the people of that city and the congressional district in which it sits, is a Republican. It is the Republicans who are giving silent support to the destructive actions of those persons like the U.S. Attorney General, the Director of Homeland Security, and the National Intelligence Director, who are carrying out the revenge campaign of the President rather than upholding the oath of office each of them took “to Defend The Constitution of the United States.”

In California, the primary comes in June 2026. The congressional races must be a priority just as much as the local election of people has been so important in keeping ICE from acquiring facilities to build more prisons around the country.

“We the People” are winning this battle, even though it might not look like it. Each of us must get involved now, right where we are.

In this Black History month, it is important to remember that all we have accomplished in this nation has been “in spite of” and not “because of.” Frederick Douglas said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”

Today, the struggle is to maintain our very institutions and history. Our strength in this struggle rests in our “collectiveness.” Our newspapers and journalists are at the greatest risk. We must not personally add to the attack by ignoring those who have been our very foundation, our Black press.

Are you spending your dollars this Black History Month with those who salute and honor contributions by supporting those who tell our stories? Remember that silence is the same as consent and support for the opposition. Where do you stand and where will your dollars go?

Oakland Post

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Activism

Post Newspaper Invites NNPA to Join Nationwide Probate Reform Initiative

The Post’s Probate Reform Group meets the first Thursday of every month via Zoom and invites the public to attend. The Post is making the initiative national and will submit information from its monthly meeting to the NNPA to educate, advocate, and inform its readers.

Published

1 week ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Tanya Dennis

The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) represents the Black press with over 200 newspapers nationwide.

Last night the Post announced that it is actively recruiting the Black press to inform the public that there is a probate “five-alarm fire” occurring in Black communities and invited every Black newspaper starting from the Birmingham Times in Alabama to the Milwaukee Times Weekly in Wisconsin, to join the Post in our “Year of Action” for probate reform.

Reporter Tanya Dennis says, “The adage that ‘When America catches a cold, Black folks catch the flu” is too true in practice; that’s why we’re engaging the Black Press to not only warn, but educate the Black community regarding the criminal actions we see in probate court: Thousands are losing generational wealth to strangers. It’s a travesty that happens daily.”

Venus Gist, a co-host of the reform group, states, “ Unfortunately, people are their own worst enemy when it comes to speaking with loved ones regarding their demise. It’s an uncomfortable subject that most avoid, but they do so at their peril. The courts rely on dissention between family members, so I encourage not only a will and trust [be created] but also videotape the reading of your documents so you can show you’re of sound mind.”

In better times, drafting a will was enough; then a trust was an added requirement to ‘iron-clad’ documents and to assure easy transference of wealth.

No longer.

As the courts became underfunded in the last 20 years, predatory behavior emerged to the extent that criminality is now occurring at alarming rates with no oversight, with courts isolating the conserved, and, I’ve heard, many times killing conservatees for profit. Plundering the assets of estates until beneficiaries are penniless is also common.”

Post Newspaper Publisher Paul Cobb says, “The simple solution is to avoid probate at all costs. If beneficiaries can’t agree, hire a private mediator and attorney to work things out. The moment you walk into court, you are vulnerable to the whims of the court. Your will and trust mean nothing.”

Zakiya Jendayi, a co-host of the Probate Reform Group and a victim herself, says, “In my case, the will and trust were clear that I am the beneficiary of the estate, but the opposing attorney said I used undue influence to make myself beneficiary. He said that without proof, and the judge upheld the attorney’s baseless assertion. In court, the will and trust is easily discounted.”

The Black press reaches out to 47 million Black Americans with one voice. The power of the press has never been so important as it is now in this national movement to save Black generational wealth from predatory attorneys, guardians and judges.

The next probate reform meeting is on March 5, from 7 – 9 p.m. PST. Zoom Details:
Meeting ID: 825 0367 1750
Passcode: 475480

All are welcome.