Joe Biden and Racism: Why Aren’t More People Talking about This?

Joe Biden-2
Photo Courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons License

Why is the mainstream media ignoring the fact that Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden  has a 40-plus year history of plainly-evident racism?

The talking heads on television and online like to point their fingers and wag their tongues at everything President Donald Trump says, and are quick to nitpick and ascribe racist motives where there are none.

When he — correctly — says that some of the illegal aliens coming across the border from Mexico are dangerous criminals, BAM! He’s insulting all Latin Americans.

When he — accurately — refers to COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus”, POW!, he’s advocating violence against people of Asian descent.

But as ridiculous as all of these allegations against the President are, and as far as the MSM seems willing to reach to make them, the pundits seem to suffer from a debilitating blind spot concerning statements from Joe Biden.

Is it blindness…or is it an appalling and biased double standard?

Make no mistake, Biden’s current medley of brain-freezes and public gaffes aside, these aren’t one-off mistakes that can be glossed over, and they aren’t snippets taken wildly out of context. No, Joe Biden has clearly demonstrated a long history of objectionable attitudes towards minorities.

Let’s take a look at some of his high-…er…lowlights.

The 1970s

Like a lot of promises-instead-of-progress Democrats, Joe Biden originally said the right things about busing as a means to desegregate schools. He supposedly supported busing in 1972, when he was first seeking election.

But by 1975, after feeling pressure from some of his white voters, he changed his tone considerably. Segregation was good for African-Americans, according to 1975 Joe Biden.

He said, I think the concept of busing … that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest, is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride. (Desegregation is) a rejection of the entire black awareness concept, where black is beautiful, black culture should be studied; and the cultural awareness of the importance of their own identity, their own individuality.”

In other words, Blacks are just fine where they are.

But as patronizing and ignorant as those statements sound, what he said in 1977 was much worse.

In a congressional hearing addressing anti-busing legislation, Biden said, “Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle…

Let that statement and all the racist connotations that can be derived from associating the word “jungle” when improving African-Americans’ equal access to quality education sink in while you read on.

The 1990s

If  the Left wants to criticize President Trump for his statement about illegal aliens, then they should positively condemn Joe Biden for statements he made in 1993, when he was talking about the crime bill he helped author.

It’s been well-documented that his crime bill disproportionately targeted African-Americans and Latinos, resulting in the mass incarceration of people of color. But when you take into account the racial undertones of that legislation, and use them to add context to his speech, the implication of what he is saying is chilling.

“We have predators on our streets that society has in fact, in part because of its neglect, created…they are beyond the pale many of those people, beyond the pale. And it’s a sad commentary on society. We have no choice but to take them out of society….a cadre of young people, tens of thousands of them, born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing because they literally … because they literally have not been socialized, they literally have not had an opportunity…

Because of the “predator” label, there is absolutely no doubt who he is referring to. Bill Clinton was the President who signed the crime bill into law, and Hillary Clinton would later use the term “super-predators” to describe young African-American males. 

This is almost a textbook example of stereotyping an entire group of people, demonizing them, and making them less than human. This was the same sort of propaganda used in Nazi Germany, when Jews were portrayed as sub-human vermin who were a plague on society.

Biden uses that characterization to justify his next statements, where he admits, “…it doesn’t matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth. It doesn’t matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to become socialized into the fabric of society. It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society.”

The 2000s

And then there’s Biden’s “casual” racism that highlights how deeply ingrained his attitudes towards minorities really are. In 2008, he said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

The worst part? At the time, Biden was supposedly trying to compliment Indian-American voters. In reply, Dr. Vijay, the founder of the Indian-American Republican Council, said, “We’re not asking Sen. Biden to apologize for his embarrassing, stereotypical comments. However, we do appreciate knowing what he really thinks of his Indian-American constituents in Delaware.”

Biden’s racism even extended to the man under whom he would eventually serve as Vice-President, then-Senator Barack Obama.

In 2007, while they were both campaigning against each other to be the Democratic Presidential nominee, Biden had this to say, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

What sounds like a compliment on the surface actually gives us insight into Biden’s preconceptions about people of color. In his mind, Obama was an anomaly, because he was “articulate and bright and clean”.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson tried to be conciliatory when he weighed in, saying, “…I’m sure he didn’t mean it as off-color, but it is certainly highly suggestive.”

“Highly suggestive”, indeed.

The 2010s

In 2019, while speaking to the Asian and Latino Coalition in Des Moines about education, Biden said, “Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids.

That same year, Biden told a group of African-American leaders that one of the biggest problems faced by their communities is that “parents can’t read or write themselves”. His statement, understandably, was met with shock and frustration.

What’s the Takeaway?

If these were just a couple of isolated incidents, it would be easy to think that Biden simply misspoke, or that he simply phrased his statement poorly. But five decades’ worth of evidence can’t be ignored.

Professor Ronnie Dunn, who teaches Urban Studies at Cleveland State University, had this to say about some of Joe Biden’s racist attitudes and statements, “People have to be held accountable. We all evolve in our thinking and grow, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to have to answer for our positions we held.”

 

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