President Biden met with Black leaders on Friday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools. His past actions drew criticism online.
Biden spoke at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington on Brown v. Board of Education, which held that racial school segregation was unconstitutional.
“The work to build a democracy worthy of our dreams begins with opening the doors of opportunity to all, without exception,” he said.
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President Biden will speak Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. (AP)
Despite Mr. Biden’s comments and support for affirmative action programs, critics have accused him of past statements as racist.
“Remember when Joe Biden said racism (sic) would turn schools into racial jungles,” one X user wrote.
“Unfortunately, Joe Biden continued to fight for racism decades after this great decision,” another wrote.
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“Biden has made statements in public that support racism,” said another.
The president was once a central figure in the fight against school desegregation. Opponents of the Democratic president in 2020, including Vice President Kamala Harris, used it to attack his positions on race.
“You worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris told Biden during a 2019 debate. “You know, there was a girl in California who was in the second batch of public school integration, and she was bused to school every day. And that girl was me.”
Linda Brown with her parents Leora and Oliver and sister Terry in front of the house. When Linda was not allowed to attend a nonsegregated school, the Browns sued the Kansas State Board of Education. (Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images)
In a 1975 Senate hearing, then-NAACP Legal Defense Fund Director Jack Greenberg criticized Biden for supporting a bill that would have limited the courts’ ability to use busing to desegregize schools. He said the bill “breaks through the window on school integration.”
That same year, a Delaware newspaper reported that Mr. Biden had said that “the concept” that black people have been oppressed for hundreds of years is “unacceptable.”
“I support the notion that was popular in the ’60s that we oppressed black people for 300 years, and now white people are far ahead in the race for everything our society has to offer,” Biden said. I won’t.” Say. “To even the score, you have to give the blacks a head start or hold off the whites to even the score. I don’t support that.”
Biden has been criticized in the past for comments about racists and KKK members. He previously spoke of the late West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, a former KKK member who later regretted the affiliation and said it was a mistake, and the former South Carolina Sen. and “Dixiecrat” president who supported racial segregation. He praised candidate Strom Thurmond.
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Biden called Thurmond “a brave man who ultimately made his choice and moved to the good side.” In 2019, he refused to apologize for his own comments.
“What are you apologizing for?” Biden told reporters. “There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in the civil rights movement throughout my career. Always, always, always.”
Fox News Digital’s Joe Schoffstall and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.
