During the second Democratic presidential debate, Kamala Harris stated that Joe Biden was "wrong to oppose busing" and equated this to support for racial segregation. In reality, supporters of integration broadly opposed busing because of its downsides.

Dismal Public Opinion

After busing was implemented in the early 1970s, national polls found that 84 percent of whites and 92 percent of blacks thought that students of all races should attend school together, but only 15 percent of whites and 40 percent of blacks supported busing. This is because the policy involved:

quotas to achieve specific numbers of black, white, and Latino students in certain schools.

removing children from their neighborhood schools and busing them to other schools, often via long commutes that made it hard for them to participate in extracurricular activities.