Kamala Harris surges to second place in polls and just 5 percentage points behind Joe Biden after first Democratic debate, and Elizabeth Warren remains in third place as Bernie Sanders slips to fourth place for the Democratic nomination for president, a new CNN poll found..... The only Black woman in the race for president, Senator Harris challenged Biden on race during the debate, saying he fraternizes with segregationists and opposed busing.....Obama supported busing too, he said in a previous one-on-one interview with Cleveland journalist Kathy Wray Coleman...By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog

United States senator and presidential candidate
Kamala Harris

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief. Coleman is an experienced Black political reporter who covered the 2008 presidential election for the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio and the presidential elections in 2012 and 2016 at Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com. 

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, CLEVELAND, Ohio-U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has surged to second place and within five percentage points of front-runner Joe Biden following her spectacular performance Thursday night in Miami, Florida during the first Democratic debate, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS

According to such CNN poll,  22% of registered Democratic voters  want Biden for the party's presidential nomination, 17% Harris, 15%  Sen Elizabeth Warren, and 14% Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

The others, among some 23 Democratic candidates, including Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan and Sen. Cory Booker, the only Black in the race besides Harris, tested at 5% or below. 

The Democratic nominee, whomever it may be,  will take on President Donald Trump for the November 2020 election. 

A former California attorney general, Harris posted a nine point increase in comparison to the last CNN poll conducted in May, Warren an eight point increase, Biden a decline of 10 percentage points, and Sanders a decrease of three percentage points. 

Harris took on Biden during the debate on race,  saying he has fraternized with segregationists and that he  should not have opposed busing.

A former U.S. senator from 1973-2009 who served two terms as the vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, Biden said in response that he opposed busing only as ordered by the Department of Education, an intriguing and likely calculated response, pundits said. 

"Do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America?" asked Harris during Thursday night's debate before a televised audience.

Biden shot back.

"I did not oppose busing in America," said Biden, a former U.S. senator who served with Obama for two consecutive four-year terms as his vice president, from 2009-2016. "What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education."

Busing is the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools so as to redress prior racial segregation of schools and was implemented in the 1970s and 1980s under federal court supervision in many school districts in major cities across America. It is a by-product of the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial discrimination in public education. 

Former United States president Barack Obama

We interviewed Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for his first successful bid for president, a Call and Post cover story by investigative and political journalist Kathy Wray Coleman,  a former 14-year Cleveland schools biology teacher whose questions to the nation's first Black president, then a U.S. junior senator representing Illinois, include issues as to the now defunct Cleveland schools desegregation case. As to the Obama interview  CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Reed v. Rhodes is  a racial discrimination lawsuit filed in 1973 by the NAACP on behalf of Black children and their families, and against the state of Ohio and the school district where the federal court  ultimately found that the state of Ohio and school district were running  a dual school system to the detriment off Black children and their families, and in blatant violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In turn, the federal court, in 1976,  issued a  finding of racial discrimination, and ordered the desegregation of Cleveland schools in 1979, and remedial orders, 12 of them in fact,  including increased parental involvement, desegregation of school level administrative staff such as principals and assistant principals, and  crosstown busing in a city were Blacks and Whites are traditionally separated by race via the Cuyahoga River with Blacks traditionally residing on the city's east side, and Whites on the west side. 

That deseg-case and its affiliated remedial orders, one of the remedial orders busing, was dissolved in 1998, the federal judge on the case at the time, Judge George White, granting release of the state and the school district from the long standing deseg-case.

A largely Black major American city, Cleveland is the second most segregated city in the nation behind Boston.

Judge White said in his controversial decision granting release from the deseg- order or case, which came during a time when desegregation court orders were becoming persona non grata across the country, that the state of Ohio and the largely Black Cleveland School District had met the burden of establishing that the vestiges of racial discrimination had been remedied to the extent practicable.  

Hence, ruled White, who was Black and succeeded federal judge Frank J. Battisti in the case, the educational disparities between Black Cleveland schools students , which are still in existence today, and their White counterparts were the result of socioeconomic factors and that no further court monitoring was necessary, monitoring that was expensive and costly in the millions.

Cleveland Attorney James Hardiman

Cleveland NAACP Attorney James Hardiman argued at trial in 1998 before Judge White on whether the deseg-case should continue that neither the state nor the school district had met its burden of remedying past discrimination, and that Black children remained at risk.

Hardiman said at trial that the vestiges of racial discrimination had not been remedied to the extent practicable as mandated  by the court and that any release from the deseg- order would be erroneous and unfair to Black children.

Lawyers for the state and the school district argued  otherwise.

Judge White obviously agreed with them, and after 
releasing the state and the school district from the desegregation court order in 1998, he then handed control over the school district to then Cleveland mayor Michael R. White, who is Black, action taken in conjunction with a state law that eliminated an elected board of education and gave the city mayor, now Frank Jackson, the authority to appoint Cleveland school board members.

Coleman asked Obama in that one-on-one interview undertaken as to his first bid for president in 2008 what mechanism was in place to access educational disparities between Black students and their White counterparts since desegregation court orders that required such were no longer in existence.

Obama said that the Republican-Centered No Child Left Behind has a mechanism for assessing  educational disparities between Black and White public school students.

"The No Child Left Behind Act actually has provisions for monitoring the achievement gap between Black and White children," said Obama in that interview. "Whether they are doing it on the local level, I don't know."

Obama  said also in that interview that if elected president he would address the No Child Left Behind Act as it relates to Black children, and he did, partly, later securing relief from standard testing as an assessment tool from the act.

Data are explicit in showing that such test are bias to Black children.

And the president said during Coleman's interview that while he is against educational vouchers in public education, that desegregation via school choice within a public school district is lawful.

Coleman posed the question to Obama on the desegregation issue during that interview 2008 as follows:

"Last year a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision that struck down public school intra-district choice plans in Seattle, WA and in Louisville, Ky., saying they relied on an unconstitutional use of racial criteria. Some believe that this ruling is contrary to the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that outlawed racial segregation in public education. Do you agree and what is your position on this issue, given that you are a former Civil Rights attorney?"

Obama responded as follows:

"I do believe that the decision is contrary to Brown vs. Board of Education. I think the Supreme Court ruling was wrong. Voluntary efforts to desegregate public schools are supported by the Constitution."

As to the Obama interview  CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.