For better and worse, Joe Biden's civil rights record is currently central to his presidential campaign.
For Biden to recover, he will almost certainly have to find a way to discuss his record on civil rights in a way that doesn't portray him — the way Harris did — as so concerned about compromise that he became compromised on a matter of conscience for some Democratic primary voters.
He came to the Senate as something of a political unicorn: a Democrat with a broadly pro-civil rights message elected in a border state at a time when even a handful of pro-civil rights votes could be career-killers for Democratic incumbents. At the time, critics assailed the Biden and Helms amendments as naked assaults on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which gives the federal government the power to withhold funding from institutions that discriminate based on race. Sen. Ed Brooke, R-Mass., the only black member of the Senate at the time, called the effort a"wolf in wolf's clothing."
The debate on the floor that day did not hint at any lack of preparation on the part of the senators, and Biden voted against tabling — or killing — the Helms amendment. James Baker, who was elected to the Wilmington City Council the same year Biden won his Senate seat the first time and later served as mayor, said black schools in the area were in good shape before busing and that made Biden's constituency different than some others.
And yet, it was the Gurney amendment that prompted the angry response to Biden at his town hall meeting in 1974 and led to the change in his fervor on busing.
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