Joe Biden's Endless Search for the Middle on Race

[melman]

From the beginning of his career in public life, Joe Biden’s instinct has been to recoil from those he considers the hard-charging activists in his party, and to find ways to understand those he knows his own allies would detest.

Biden thinks that’s his special insight into politics, that he’s a bridge builder—but it’s meant building bridges to people others think don’t deserve any kind of bridge. He seems to think that approach is especially useful over issues of race. There are archives full of comments, in newspaper accounts and videos, of Biden trying to explain his thinking on the matter. But given how much the conversation over race has changed in the past 50 years, that’s left him with a lot of remarks and relationships that can look out of sync in 2019, even as the 76-year-old former vice president says he’s still the same guy he always was. The comments reinforce a vulnerability—one his opponents have already jumped on.

The thread is there in his first big interview before his inaugural Senate run: “I have some friends on the far left, and they can justify to me the murder of a white deaf mute for a nickel by five colored guys. They say the black men had been oppressed and so on. But they can’t justify some Alabama farmers tar and feathering an old colored woman,” Biden said in November 1970, just as he was coming onto the political scene. He had just won his first election to the New Castle County Council, and he was featured in a major profile in the Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal with a splashy headline: “Joe Biden: Hope for Democratic Party in ’72?”


“I suspect the ACLU would leap to defend the five black guys,” Biden continued in the interview. “But no one would go down to help the ‘rednecks.’ They are both products of an environment. The truth is somewhere between the two poles. And rednecks are usually people with very real concerns, people who lack the education and skills to express themselves quietly and articulately.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/06/bidens-anachronistic-comments-race-and-civil-rights/592252/

[MineralMan]

1. 1970s? Really?

This is getting old.

[Autumn]

4. Stuff often get posted from the 70s. Mostly from 1972 though.

It got old a long time ago but it happens.

[marylandblue]

10. This is the problem with having a long record, there is a lot to look back on.

And a lot of things that look different as times change.

That's why most of the winners since Carter have been relatively young and/or had little or no Washington experience.

If you go back earlier, you still find many examples of short Washington records.

[emmaverybo]

12. Anything to bring down his favorable polling with AA voters. I would think Obama's team

knew every Biden vote and quote about race when they vetted him for VP.
This post is entirely worthy of the best Trump’s re-election campaign could produce.

[Demit]

13. So when does the Joe Biden you want to think of as the real Joe Biden begin?

When does what he said and what he did become obsolete, so we should drop it off his CV?

[melman]

17. That's a great question

What fascinates me is how his experience is supposedly his big selling point, but his history is irrelevant.

[Turin_C3PO]

2. People change.

That was 50 years ago for Christ’s sake. Geeze.

[tishaLA]

3. This is almost comic

If it weren't so tragic. "Colorrd guys"?

[George II]

6. I grew up in a white neighborhood, then moved to another mostly Jewish neighborhood....

....in New York.

I remember riding on the subway into Manhattan with my mother at about 10 years old, and across from us was a man. I asked her "is that a black man?", and she immediately shushed me and whispered, "that's an insult, he's a colored man". That was the word that African Americans wanted to be called in the late 60s, early 70s. Even MLK used that expressed, and not in derision.

Of course people today rightfully shudder when they hear that term, but this is 2019, not the early 1970s.

[tishaLA]

9. I don't know how to be more clear

I don't believe VP Biden is a racist ( although I do believe he participated in racism like the busing bill) but God. Damn. Could people please learn how to talk about race in less grotesque ways? Like maybe make black folks agents in this, even if it's their own oppression? Maybe include them in the narratives of their liberation?

This isn't asking a lot....and it's not on the heads of anyone other than the reporters covering the fight for liberation, either

[George II]

14. A good start would be people not going back almost 50 years in a futile attempt to "prove".....

....that he was a racist, to the degree of pointing out that he used arcane words that everyone of all races used back then.

Did you see Biden's one-on-one with Al Sharpton a little while ago. I thought it was great, and Al Sharpton acknowledged that Biden isn't, and never was a racist. And guess what, Biden put his hand on Sharpton's knee and pointed at him. How long before THAT gets blown up into a major scandal?

As far as the busing bill, yes, he was against it but not because he didn't want to desegregate schools, but because he felt it was the wrong way to do it. It would surprise many people that even BS in 1974 came out against school busing, for a similar reason.

We can all go back decades and dwell on the past (this isn't directed toward you, by the way), but this is 2019 and we've got some very serious problems that need addressing. I wish everyone would spend their time working on them instead of trying to find flaws in people's background 40+ years ago (which aren't even flaws, but different perspectives based on the times) as "gotchas".

[tishaLA]

20. You'll have to find someone else who's

Claimed that he's a racist; if he wanted to say it I'd be clear and concise nor do I care about the way the junior senator from VT might have regarded busing based on his history of race and misogyny.

I'm sure, though, that I can find a number of Democrats who've lead since then who didn't bear the weight of supporting segregation and have never called a black man boy or colored and want to make a difference in 2020.

[OilemFirchen]

11. In the late sixties, and likely into the early seventies...

newspaper classifieds were rife with employment and rental ads that stated "No Coloreds". After all, even the full force of the EEOC didn't commence until 1971.

The author of the piece was born in 1981. Perhaps he should ask his parents.

[George II]

5. Biden isn't searching for anything on race, but those who would put him down are searching....

....for some flaw in his racial policies. And in that desperate search they're going back almost 50 years. Unbelievable.

[Autumn]

7. Unbelievable? Nah, not at all. People go back to the 70s often to post about Bernie Sanders. nt

[sheshe2]

18. Well, he does so himself. Often.

Actually he goes back to 1963.

Black Voters Get That Bernie Marched With MLK. They Want To Know What He’ll Do For Them Now.


It’s been several years that this critique has been raised, and it feels dismissive of our experiences when it doesn’t matter what specific question is being asked — when the go-to answer has become, ‘I marched with King.’”


Sen. Bernie Sanders has a story for black audiences. They’ve just heard it already.

“I was actually at the March on Washington with Dr. King back in 1963,” Sanders likes to remind audiences. “As somebody who actively supported Jesse Jackson’s campaign — as one of the few white elected officials to do so in ’88 — I have dedicated my life to the fight against racism and sexism and discrimination of all forms.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryancbrooks/black-voters-bernie-sanders-mlk-2020

[Autumn]

25. He's not the only one who goes back in time to discuss the Civil Rights movement.

I don't mind at all when someone says "I marched with King". Just goes to show they did the right thing. YMMV. Have a nice day.

[sheshe2]

33. Trust me.

I know exactly what you meant by the 70's referral.

[melman]

8. Hey remember when you posted that thing about a quote from 1974?

Seems like that was just yesterday

[George II]

15. I see you neglected the context in which I posted that, but I'm not surprised.

Have a great evening, mel.

[melman]

16. So it's okay except when it's not

Kind of like vetting.

[George II]

21. Read the thread to which you linked. I think that'll answer your question.

[BannonsLiver]

19. Context? What a silly idea.

We should pluck things people said 40 years ago and then juxtapose that against current cultural norms and then get really woke and judgy mjudgerson over it all if they don’t line up.

That’s what the OP and others do. It might be effective eventually, but it’s of course not really fair to do that. It’s also intellectually lazy and disingenuous. It’s also kind of moronic.

[George II]

22. And even more woke and judgy mjudgerson if it lines up with that one's preferred candidate.

[lapucelle]

23. Sometimes you don't have to go back to the 70's.

Also by Edward-Isaac Dovere in the Atlantic, regarding the recent hire by a different primary candidate.

From a Bogus Website to Bernie Sanders's Inner Circle
David Sirota got fired from a Philly campaign 20 years ago for a racially charged “dirty trick” before he first went to work for the progressive from Vermont.

Bernie Sanders first hired his new speechwriter, David Sirota, 20 years ago, shortly after Sirota was fired from a mayoral campaign for his connection to a bogus website that promoted a racially charged quotation, taken out of context, of a black opponent.

In 1999, in Philadelphia, there was a crowded Democratic primary for mayor. Three of the candidates were African American: John White, Dwight Evans, and John Street, all of them friends going back years. But the race got intense early, and David Sirota, then working as the deputy campaign manager for Evans, was part of an effort to cut down White’s support: creating a bogus website, purporting to be the official home page of the White campaign, and using it to promote a racially charged quotation, deliberately taken out of context.

The ruse was soon discovered. Evans, who is now a Democratic member of Congress, fired Sirota. He called Sirota “overzealous” at the time. “I do not want this race to be about race,” Evans said in 1999, calling the site in question an example of “dirty tricks.” The website took a comment that White had made in a broader interview with a Spanish-language weekly, Al Día, and presented the line as if it were an anti-white slogan: “The black and the brown, if we unite, we’re going to control this city.” Local reporters in Philadelphia received emails directing them to the site as though it were part of John White’s campaign.

snip=====================================

On Friday morning, in response to inquiries from The Atlantic about his 1999 firing, Sirota acknowledged his role in helping create the bogus site. “I deeply regret being involved in this whole incident. I am absolutely ashamed that it happened, and I have felt genuinely terrible about this for 20 years. Even though I was a junior political staffer, I should have known better, and I certainly do today,” Sirota responded by email.

Sirota did not acknowledge his role at the time of his firing. Neither Sanders nor his campaign responded when asked for comment.

Sirota did not respond to questions of whether he had told Sanders’s House office in 1999 about the full circumstances that led to his firing, or whether he believes his behavior then fits with the values that Sanders is speaking about in his current presidential campaign.

snip========================================================

There’s an irony in the fact that the speeches Sirota has been writing for Sanders deal with race, given the long-standing criticism of Sanders’s record on race and Sirota’s own behavior in Philadelphia in 1999. In the recent Sanders speech in Chicago that Sirota helped write, Sanders talked about his work fighting for racial justice as a young man—younger than Sirota was when he got into trouble in Philadelphia—and cited being on the Mall for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, as well as being arrested for protesting school segregation, as showing a through line between what he did in his early adulthood and what he stands for now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/bernie-sanderss-new-speechwriter-has-controversial-past/585547/

[George II]

24. And yet BS hired him anyway. Go figure.

[LibFarmer]

30. Also, Senator BS's newly found racial sensitivity

will last only until the SC primary. It is demagoguery at its finest.

Senator BS was the only one left of the center who wanted President Obama primaried in 2012.

[stonecutter357]

26. you change my mind about Biden ......

JK

[NYMinute]

27. .. and scraping at the bottom of the barrel continues ...

None of the "finds" are relevant or material to today's discussion.

Even though the communiqué from Vermont, disseminated to the faithful, is being obediently posted everywhere, it will not help Senator BS.

[Vegas Roller]

28. I don't see where Joe put down African Americans in that piece

He simply said "rednecks" (poor Whites) are also disadvantaged.

Biden was thoughtfully analyzing people's lives and how they all can be helped when Senator BS was writing "essays."

[LibFarmer]

29. Ohhhh poor David Sirota

all that reading from 1970s is not producing a single effective dirty trick.

What will he do next? Create a fake website like he did before?

[oasis]

31. Joe's Rival's Endless Search for a Gotcha on Race.

[loyalsister]

32. 50 years?

Joe was caught up in the 2000s The conversation on race changed most significantly in the last 10 years. And he has not caught up.
He doesn't even seem to understand how it has changed. Those of us who saw the shift (or grew up with it) have been comfortable with the polite, tempered racism of the 70s - early 2000s. When Mitch McConnell was known to have marched for Civil Rights. And white people agreed to not be so mean, pass some legislation and return to conditions of civility. And white people would make no more demands for steps towards dismantling institutional racism.
Then came 2009 and we discovered that the polite agreement was masking the hate that had been there all along. Congress let their inner bigots loose and millions of white people followed suit. As they accumulated, we also began to have a closer view of police killing unarmed people of color.
Things never really changed the way we thought. I have to wonder if James O Eastland would be pleased to know know that.
Biden is among many who have a lot of catching up to do. The harsh reality is that he was a player in the agreement to look away and be quiet and allow hate to hide.
He is the first to admit it and it is not an attack or a smear to see a problem with going back to the polite agreement.