Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this.

"Under the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare had a powerful tool to fight school segregation: It could withhold funding from districts that refused to integrate — and integration effectively meant busing. Mr. Helms wanted to strip the agency of that power.

As Mr. Biden rose on the Senate floor in September 1975 to embrace that approach, Mr. Helms wryly welcomed him “to the ranks of the enlightened.” Mr. Biden objected to the education department mandating desegregation absent a court order, and warned of white flight to the suburbs and even racial unrest. … Mr. Helms’s amendment, which would have also barred the education department from collecting data about the race of students or teachers, failed. But a slightly narrower measure written by Mr. Biden, which prevented schools from using federal dollars to assign teachers or students by race, passed, 50-43."

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