The White Suburbs That Fought Busing Aren’t So White Anymore

One can see why Joe Biden wasn’t too worried about the busing issue. Sure, he had teamed up with segregationists in 1975 to cut the legs out from under federally mandated integration busing. Sure, he’d even called busing a “domestic Vietnam.” But for decades, that choice was shielded by a durable political consensus: Busing was and always would be a political disaster, beyond any hope of resurrection, and toxic to even talk about.

So when Kamala Harris used the first Democratic presidential debate to skewer the former vice president over his civil-rights record, Biden seemed floored. He found himself face-to-face with something politicos had thought extinct: a busing defender. More than that, a busing beneficiary. It was as if the arc of history, after decades of slowly bending toward justice, had opted to land directly on Joe Biden’s head.

Few could deny that the showdown made for exceptional political theater, but almost as soon as it was over, some pundits rushed to their keyboards to remind everyone that reviving historic debates about school desegregation was no way to win an election. Analysts wondered whether the issue would be a drag on Democrats in 2020. Conservatives crowed in disbelief. Liberals applauded Harris’s performance—and suggested she change the subject. Even Harris herself wavered, later saying that current circumstances may not require busing to be imposed by the federal government.

Nonetheless, in the weeks since, school desegregation has unexpectedly found itself in the public eye once again. Scholars have used the moment to chip away at resilient myths about busing, explaining how it was only. Others have pointed out that, as a method of producing school integration, court-ordered busing .