President Biden spoke with Black leaders on Friday, marking the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling desegregating schools, but was criticized online for his past actions fighting school desegregation.
Biden cited Brown v., which ruled that segregating schools based on race was unconstitutional, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. I spoke to the Board of Education.
“Building a democracy worthy of our dreams begins with opening the doors of opportunity to everyone, without exception,” he said.
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President Biden speaks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington on Friday. (AP)
Despite his comments and advocacy for affirmative action programs, Biden has come under fire for past comments that his critics say are racist.
“Remember when Joe Biden said racism would turn schools into racial jungles,” wrote one X user.
“Unfortunately, Joe Biden continued to fight for racism decades after this surprising decision,” another wrote.
Vice President Harris urged ‘pandering’ to black voters with a ‘special gentleman’ dinner.
“Biden has publicly said he supports racism,” another said.
The president was once a key figure in the fight against school desegregation. His 2020 Democratic presidential opponents, including Vice President Kamala Harris, used it to attack his stance on race.
“You even worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris told Biden during a 2019 debate. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class of integrated public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
Linda Brown with her parents Leola and Oliver and her sister Terry in front of her home. When the Browns prevented Linda from attending a segregated school, she sued the Kansas Board of Education. (Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
At a 1975 Senate hearing, Jack Greenberg, then director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, criticized Biden for supporting legislation limiting the power of courts to use busing to desegregate schools. He said the bill was “a brick in the window of school integration.”
That year, a Delaware newspaper quoted Biden as saying that he did not “accept the notion” that black people had been oppressed for hundreds of years.
“I don’t accept the notion that was popular in the ’60s that ‘we’ve oppressed black people for 300 years, and now white people are way ahead in the race to get everything our society has to offer,’” Biden said. Proverb. “To even the score, we now have to give the blacks a head start. Or even keep the whites out of the race. I don’t believe in that.”
Biden has been criticized in the past for comments about racists and KKK members. He includes the late West Virginia Democratic senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the KKK (who later regretted that affiliation and described it as a mistake), and former South Carolina senator Strom, a pro-racist “Dixiecrat” presidential candidate. He praised Strom Thurmond.
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Biden called Thurmond “a brave man who ultimately made his choice and stepped forward for the good.” In 2019, he also refused to apologize for his comments.
“What are you apologizing for?” Biden told reporters. “There is absolutely no racism in my body. I’ve been involved in the civil rights movement my whole life. Period. Period. Period.”
Fox News Digital’s Joe Schoffstall and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.
