Claim:
US President Joe Biden once said he did not want his children to grow up in a “racial jungle” when it came to desegregation.
Evaluation:
Claims have been circulating for years that US President Joe Biden expressed his fear in 1977 that the abolition of racial segregation – if not done in an “orderly” manner – could lead to his children growing up in “a racial jungle where tensions are so great that they will explode at some point”.
The quote is accurate as reported. In 2020, we reached out to Biden’s presidential campaign for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. We reached out to the White House again in 2024 to see if we could get a comment and will update this fact check if we receive a response.
We found posts about the alleged quote on social media platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit. We also received reader emails about it in 2020, when we first reported on the claim.
Biden made this remark in 1977 when he was a U.S. Senator from Delaware. He expressed his views on bus transportation during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue (bold for emphasis):
If we don’t do something about it, my children will grow up in a jungle, a jungle of races, where tensions have become so great that they will explode at some point. We have to do something about it.
You say I’m throwing bricks. I’m not as good at analogies and preaching as all of you, but I think promoting busing in a way that goes beyond what is constitutionally mandated is like throwing a bus through the civil rights window. I think it has profound implications for the ultimate goal, which is to create integrated neighborhoods, eliminate employment discrimination, change housing patterns, and change the tax system.
Later during the same hearing, Biden discussed the potential consequences of his actions:
In five years we will have to judge whether Joe Biden, as one of the other witnesses said, was a George Wallace or similar to George Wallace, or whether Joe Biden is a racist. I have to stand by that. I will be judged on that later.
As the New York Times reported In a detailed analysis of Biden’s past related to busing, it became clear that the future US president had become the Democratic Party’s fighter against the practice.
In 1975, Biden added an anti-busing clause to an education spending bill. His “advocacy for the cause made it safe for other Democrats to oppose busing,” the Times said.
The Times also reported that Biden this year sided with Jesse Helms, the segregationist senator from North Carolina, when he sought to prevent the federal government from denying funding to school districts that did not practice integration.
Daria, Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Boulder Roithmayr, who initially uncovered the quote in 2019, Snopes said in 2020 that busing was seen as an effective means of desegregating schools, along with affirmative action, “because they were linked to the possibility of ‘major structural change,’ change that did not require major upheavals such as desegregating cities and restructuring public school funding. I think expediency is one way to describe it, but effective and pragmatic might be another.”
Because Biden made the “racial jungle” remark, we rate this claim as “correct attribution.” We have fact-checked other claims about alleged remarks Biden made, including whether he met with French President Francois Mitterrand long after his death.
Sources:
“Busing of School Children: Hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 95th Congress, First Session, on S. 1651.” HathiTrusthttps://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112104078842?urlappend=%3Bseq=1. Retrieved February 8, 2024.
Herndon, Astead W. and Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “How Joe Biden Became the Democrats’ Anti-Busing Crusader.” The New York TimesJuly 15, 2019. NYTimes.comhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/us/politics/biden-busing.html.
Liles, Jordan. “Did Biden say he met the late French President Francois Mitterrand?” SniffFebruary 7, 2024, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-french-president/.
Palma, Bethania. “Did Joe Biden say he didn’t want his children to grow up in a ‘racial jungle’?” SniffMarch 10, 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-racial-jungle-quote/.
