Kamala Harris – Caricature by DonkeyHotey, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original
If you’ve been following politics the past week, you’ve no doubt heard about the flare-up between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This happened at the first Democrat primary debate last Thursday night and it revolves around Biden’s opposition to a policy in the 1970s and 1980s called “forced busing.” Harris hit him hard, essentially insinuating racism on the part of Biden for being against the practice. This led to days of fawning media coverage.
The Cliff’s Notes version is that the federal government decided it was a good idea to force students to ride school buses for unreasonable amounts of time (sometimes an hour or more) under the guise of forced integration. A child living in a rural area, going to a rural school might end up riding into the inner city, only to end up back at his rural school by the end of the route. It was a nonsensical, widely opposed plan (by both white and black families at a majority rate) that punished students and only exacerbated the issues at play.
That means we need to re-litigate it in 2019 because, of course, we do.
But because the Democratic party never stops becoming more radical, we can’t stop at revising history with unfair attacks on the matter. No, Kamala Harris is now coming out in favor of forced busing, not in the 1970s, but for today’s students.
.@KamalaHarris: “I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in [school]…need to put every effort, including busing, into play to de-segregate the schools…fed govt has a role & a responsibility to step up." pic.twitter.com/a7ujueP0Bu
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) June 30, 2019
This is absolute insanity.
Our schools are not segregated today, at least not in any way that the federal government has a role to play. Yes, suburban schools are more likely to be dominated by white students, but it’s not because of racism. It’s because of the freedom of choice to move to those areas away from the cities due to crime, cost, and hassle.
What’s even dumber here is that Harris is opposed to school choice. So she wants to force students to ride buses for hours on end in the name of forced integration, but she won’t just let a black student choose to go to the better school out in the suburbs. If Harris were really concerned about the racial makeup of schools, school choice is the surest way to rectify that and it would actually help students, not just see them riding around on buses for long periods of time.
Like most ridiculous liberal policies, this one is also rife with unintended consequences. What happens when students start doing worse in school from being exhausted after riding the bus for hours? What about the lack of sleep because the bus now comes earlier to make the timing work? What happens when a kid from one area is assaulted in another area they would have never been in except for forced busing? How do school districts that are already cash strapped pay for 2-3x the fuel costs since they’d no longer be able to plan routes based on efficiency?
This is the modern Democratic party. They’ve completely lost their minds. Any idea, no matter how stupid and unworkable, is on the table if it panders to the right group. Now, if it were another candidate, perhaps they’d get push back in the media. Harris checks most of the inter-sectional boxes though, so she’s being treated with kid gloves.
This woman cannot be allowed anywhere near the White House. Everything she’s espousing would set the country back decades, from race to economics.
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