Joe Biden biography by Jules Witcover: on Civil Rights

Joe Biden: 1976: Opposed school busing to combat segregation

While Biden agreed that busing was warranted to combat segregation by law as imposed in the Deep South, he was against busing to deal with de facto segregation based on residential patterns, as was the case in Delaware.

In 1975 he introduced and won Senate approval of two anti-busing amendments. Busing, he wrote, "was a liberal train wreck, and it was tearing people apart." Biden was categorical: "I oppose busing. It's an asinine concept, the utility of which has never been proven to me." He made the distinction between de jure integration, required by a court order to end segregation, to which he acquiesced, and de facto integration, motivated by a desire to alter the racial composition of a school absent a court order, which HEW espoused and Biden strenuously opposed.

Joe Biden: Inalienable rights cannot be denied by any majority

His concerns [about Bork] touched on "the relationship of people of different races in our land; whether it was wrong for state courts to enforce covenants that prohibited black couples from buying homes in white neighborhoods; whether the court was wrong in allowing literacy tests in voting; and whether in the future the Court will intervene to protect the rights of the races.." Biden listed other privacy rights: in marriage, in child-raising, in having private schools; above all in freedom of expression in politics and the arts.