On the topic of immigration, she added, “During her lifetime, my aunt Coretta Scott King spoke about immigration coming in, and it would displace ‘negroes,’ or blacks, as we were called back then. And she even wrote about that. My uncle, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about immigration as well.
Unidos US, for those who are not familiar, is the current incarnation of the "National Council of La Raza", which bills itself as "the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization". Hardly a MAGA front group.
HIGHLY GRAPHIC IMAGES OF AMERICA UNDER LA RAZA MEX OCCUPATION
This is what America will look like with continued open borders with Narcomex. That is the agenda of the Globalist Democrat party for endless hordes of ‘cheap’ labor.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/10/america-la-raza-mexicos-wide-open.html
JAMES WALSH
THE OBAMA-BIDEN-HOLDER HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA… first ease millions of illegals over our borders and into our voting booths!
How the Democrat party surrendered America to Mexico:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/07/james-walsh-hispanicazation-of-america.html
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
The “zero tolerance” program was dismantled by Attorney General Erc Holder once it had successfully cut the transit of migrants by roughly 95 percent. Initially, officials made 140,000 arrests per year in the mid-2000s, but the northward flow dropped so much that officials only had to make 6,000 arrests in 2013, according to a 2014 letter by two pro-migration Senators, Sen. Jeff Flake and John McCain.
“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”
Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)
Article Link:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=240045
WIKILEAKS EXPOSES THE OBAMA CONSPIRACY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
Obama Funds the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA “The Race”… now calling itself UNIDOSus.
OBAMA HANDS TAX DOLLARS TO MEXICAN SUPREMACIST:
*
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/jun/nclr-funding-skyrockets-after-obama-hires-its-vp
"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
Previous generations of immigrants did not believe they were
racially superior to Americans. That is the view of La Raza Cosmica, by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s former education minister and a presidential candidate. According to this book, republished in 1979 by the Department of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA, students of Scandinavian, Dutch and English background are dullards, blacks are ugly and inferior, and those “Mongols” with the slanted eyes lack enterprise. The superior new “cosmic” race of Spaniards and Indians is replacing them, and all Yankee “Anglos.”
LLOYD BILLINGSLEY/ FRONTPAGE mag
10 Examples of Joe Biden’s History of Racially Charged Conduct and Comments
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/10/21/10-examples-of-joe-bidens-history-of-racially-charged-conduct-and-comments/
On the topic of immigration, she added, “During her lifetime, my aunt Coretta Scott King spoke about immigration coming in, and it would displace ‘negroes,’ or blacks, as we were called back then. And she even wrote about that. My uncle, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about immigration as well.
THE POLITICS OF A LYING LAWYER: THE CASE AGAINST BRIBS SUCKER JOE BIDEN
In reality, Biden had never marched during the civil rights movement, according to Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times.
“More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement,” wrote Flegenheimer. “And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.”
BLOG EDITOR
THE LAWYER CLASS: IS IT THE GREATEST THREAT AMERICA FACES?
Our definition of a lawyer is one who is institutionally trained in law school to LIE, CHEAT, COMMIT PERJURY, ORCHESTRATE PERJURY and ultimately GAME THE LEGAL SYSTEM. While they perpetrate these actions the lawyer will be sucking the blood out of their clients or the Nation itself. We only have to look at the political lives of lawyer Joe Biden, his lawyer son, Hunter Biden, and his lawyer brother, James Biden as well as bribes sucking sociopath lawyer Kamala Harris and her parasite lawyer husband, Douglas Emhoff.
We are all familiar with the staggering lawless regime of Barack Obama, describes as a sociopath by Ben Carson, M.D., and then there is the crime dual of Bill Clinton (impeached and disbarred), and his partner in crime Hillary Clinton described by Julian Assange as a “sadistic sociopath”.
This blog has dedicated a substantial amount of time to exposing the crimes of these gamer lawyers and the institutions that enable, protect and abet their criminality.
Lawyers are substantially nothing but parasites feeding on America and, as a class, constitute this Nation’s greatest threat to democracy and the American middle class.
The LAWYER CLASS is comprised of the entire Judicial, from servants of Wall Street on the Supreme Court, the bribes sucking lawyer-politicians who exist to serve primarily banksters, and billionaires and all the way down to the lowest sociopath lawyer-judges who exist to protect the special interests, primarily the business interests and to game the laws, which for lawyer do not really exist, for that judge’s particular special interests. That said, there is no special interest more important to the LAWYER CLASS than lawyers themselves.
President Biden said of desegregating schools in 1977 that it would cause his children to “grow up in a racial jungle.” In May 2020, Biden, appearing on a radio show made the now infamous statement that if they were unsure of whether to vote for him or Trump, then, “you ain’t black!” The Democrats have manipulated race so long that they take the black vote for granted.
'We've got to strengthen our own borders': MLK niece supports Trump's temporary immigration ban
by Emma Colton
Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece said she supports President Trump’s forthcoming temporary suspension of immigration to the United States.
Trump announced he would be signing an executive order this week that is expected to put a 60-day ban on immigrants seeking permanent status in the U.S. Alveda King, the director of Civil Rights for the Unborn at Priests for Life, said she agrees with the order, arguing that it will help the U.S. become healthier and stronger amid the coronavirus.
“I agree with President Trump,” King told Just the News on Tuesday. “Now, this is a temporary measure. This is not a forever measure."
"So, the president, when he says 'America first' — he never says 'America only,' just 'America first,'" she said. "Immigration slows for a time. Then we become healthier. Then we can reach out to others. That is the strategy. So, people need to understand that. We've got to strengthen our own borders, our own lives, our own families, our own communities. Once we do that, then we can help others."
Just the News reported that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission under the Obama administration showed illegal immigration negatively affects blacks and asked King if the U.S. should consider immigration control a civil right.
“Civil rights, I would not say — I think more it helps human rights. It helps Americans to get better," King said. "Civil rights, of course, come after human rights, and human rights are endowed by our creator. So, there are some rights, human rights, that we all have. And I believe we all have rights all over the planet to safety, security, provision, and all of that. When that is missing, it is wise for leaders of any nation to stop, take toll, repent, pray, return to God, and get things straightened out."
On the topic of immigration, she added, “During her lifetime, my aunt Coretta Scott King spoke about immigration coming in, and it would displace ‘negroes,’ or blacks, as we were called back then. And she even wrote about that. My uncle, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about immigration as well.
"My father, the Rev. A.D. King, with all of us having the understanding this nation was founded by immigrants, as it is today," she continued. "We had the Native Americans here before we were here, of course. So, we are all immigrants. ... Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Well, we may have come out on different boats, but we are all in the same boat now.'"
Biden and the Media Frantically Lying About Handing Out Free Crack Pipes
Thu Feb 10, 2022
Every year it seems like the media hits a new low.
Fact-checking has become even more shameless about describing lies as truth and truth as lies.
The crack pipes story was there in black and white.
The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts. Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for "smoking kits/supplies." A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and "any illicit substance."
The sum of the argument is whether crack pipes are specifically included. Patrick Hauf, the Free Beacon reporter who broke the story, argues that the "safe" drug kids can and have included crack pipes in the past. The official HHS statement denies that they will fund crack pipes.
“HHS and ONDCP are focused on using our resources smartly to reduce harm and save lives. Accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits."
Glenn Kessler, the only halfway credible media fact-checker, tweeted that, "Note how carefully worded this statement is. Unlike WH comment, there is no suggestion that the original reporting on crack pipes was wrong. The use of the word "Accordingly" suggests a change in policy without directly saying so."
But the official Washington Post fact check is 99% pulpit pounding about horrible Republicans and 1% addressing the issue.
The only attempt in the 4-page editorial headlined, "No, the federal government isn’t spending $30 million on ‘crack pipes’", to address the core issue is this paragraph,
"Also on the list: “safe smoking kits.” Typically, such kits include a rubber mouthpiece to prevent cuts and burns, brass screens to filter contaminants and disinfectant wipes, according to Harm Reduction International.
Favaro, whose program does not distribute the “safe smoking kits” approved by HHS, said groups that provide kits typically don’t include a glass pipe as it is expensive relative to providing the rubber mouthpiece. Clean glass pipes are intended to curb sharing pipes and spreading oral infections or injecting with needles, a riskier method of doing drugs."
"Typically".
Are free crack pipes being handed out? After the furor, the Biden administration is insisting that they won't be. Without the FB story, would crack pipes have been handed out? Quite possibly. And I wouldn't be surprised if crack pipes end up being included locally in the kits anyway.
President Biden said of desegregating schools in 1977 that it would cause his children to “grow up in a racial jungle.” In May 2020, Biden, appearing on a radio show made the now infamous statement that if they were unsure of whether to vote for him or Trump, then, “you ain’t black!” The Democrats have manipulated race so long that they take the black vote for granted.
Black History and the Democrats
Black History Month was first an idea in the mind of Carter Woodson, the child of freed slaves. It was officially recognized by President Gerald Ford, a Republican, in 1976, some one hundred fourteen years after another Republican, Abraham Lincoln, issued the emancipation proclamation.
The Democrat Party has a long history of dividing the country along racial lines. In the recent past, Democrats made election-year promises to improve the African American’s life but soon forgot the promises after they received their votes. Today, African Americans and other people of color are recognizing that the Democrat’s mouths and hearts are often traveling in different directions.
In the leadup to our most recent presidential election, Democrats seized the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa demonstrations and riots as a crisis that they could use to smear the sitting president who had elevated the status of people of color.
Yvette Simpson, of the progressive political action committee, Democracy for America, in an article in June of 2020 said, “We only take action when something has happened and that action is generally temporary and changes when political wind changes and when political leadership changes.” She further stated that many of the protests are taking place in Democratic-run cities. Perhaps without knowing it, she revealed a long-hidden truth: the Democrat practice of; promise, get elected, and forget the promise.
During the riots, Democrats adopted an anti-police mantra to secure the African American vote. Following BLM’s leadership, they lined up in lockstep to defund the police and remove qualified immunity. But it was minority communities who sought more, not less police service. The impact was devastating. Officers retired or resigned in droves, recruiting was stymied, ambushes of officers reached a fever pitch, and violent crime, especially in Democrat-run cities, has broken records.
Today, as in the past, with the election behind them, Democrats are backpedaling their “defund or abolish the police” support. In other words, they are following their predictable historic pattern.
Democrats manipulating race for political gain is black history.
In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, a Democrat, called out the National Guard to prevent black students from attending a previously all-white high school in Little Rock. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops to ensure the safety of the nine students. In a Faubus profile, it is noted that journalist Harry Ashmore, known for his articles on the subject, said that “Faubus used the Guard to keep blacks out of Central High School because he was frustrated by the success his political opponents were having in using segregationist rhetoric to arouse white voters.” Is this not using race for political gain?
In 1964 Joseph T. Silverman, a Democrat segregationist, was elected Mayor of Selma, Alabama, and served until he resigned in 1979, ran again, and was returned to office in 1980, holding the seat until he was defeated by Selma’s first black mayor in 2000. Six months after Silverman was first elected, marchers seeking equal voting rights were beaten on a Selma bridge as they marched to the capitol in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Major Cloud of the Alabama State Police announced that Governor George Wallace had forbidden the march, gave the marchers two minutes to turn back, then ordered the troopers to move in. Wallace was known for standing in the schoolhouse door in 1963 as a political demonstration that he would not back down to federal authorities in integrating the University of Alabama.
The images of Selma are forever embedded in our minds and in our history. Selma fueled the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Who remembers Silverman in relation to the violence? Nobody! The visual imagery of the clash of African Americans and police is what is remembered. Doing as ordered, the police, also used, became the visual representation of bigotry that was ordered by Democrat politicians.
As mayor, Silverman was accused of misusing absentee ballots in 1992, when numerous people swore in affidavits that the mayor’s office either forged their signatures or bribed them for votes. Could it be that history is repeating itself in the mail-in ballots today? Silverman was defeated when the city had approximately sixty-five percent black voters. His successor ran with a campaign slogan of “Joe Gotta Go” to unseat him.
Democrats today are still using race to foment hatred, and when it is convenient, they attack the police, the protectors of those living in the most dangerous cities. The party’s history is marked with racism. They were the party of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan, yet they claim the Republican party to be racist. Politics is the reason for their racist actions then and now. They change with the political winds, apologizing for their previous views to get votes. Democrats are quick to protect and praise one another, even if they despised those they are publicly praising. In 2010, the Senate’s president pro tempore, former Ku Klux Klan Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd (D., W.V.), was memorialized by Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton.
Project 1619, the fictional history by journalist (not historian) Nicole Hannah-Jones, is now being used to regain the black vote. As recently as 2016, President Obama said in a speech regarding Black History Month that it “shouldn’t be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history.” I agree -- true Black history is American history, warts, scars, and all.
Brown vs. Board of Education and the aftermath is actual history. The Southern Manifesto document identified those who opposed the Supreme Court’s decision in this case and their commitment to segregation. The manifesto was presented by ninety-nine members of both houses of Congress, only two were Republicans, ninety-seven Democrats.
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964 vote, only sixty-one percent of House Democrats supported it, while eighty percent of Republicans supported it. In the Senate, eighty-two percent of Republicans supported it. Democrat, Al Gore Sr. was among those senators opposing the passage. Another Democrat, Senator J. William Fulbright, who served from 1943 to 1974 in both the U.S. House of Representatives and as senator for Arkansas, was among those who filibustered the act for eighty-three days. Now, because it is politically expedient, Democrats want to change the rules of the filibuster. In 1993, President Clinton awarded Fulbright the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
President Biden said of desegregating schools in 1977 that it would cause his children to “grow up in a racial jungle.” In May 2020, Biden, appearing on a radio show made the now infamous statement that if they were unsure of whether to vote for him or Trump, then, “you ain’t black!” The Democrats have manipulated race so long that they take the black vote for granted.
We are a diverse nation, we each have our own uniqueness and culture, that when added together are much better than our individual selves. Black history -- American history -- should be studied, and the failures reviewed so they are not repeated, we must learn the lesson of American, E Pluribus Unum: out of many, one.
Richard Arrington is an author and freelance writer on political matters who resides in Virginia.
Kamala Harris cackles and squirms about her past attack against Biden
One of the most striking things about the now-joint candidacy of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is the way they’re being shielded from the press. We’ve long known that Biden, who is suffering a severe cognitive decline, can’t be allowed to roam free. However, most people assumed that Kamala would become his mouthpiece to the media. That assumption, so far, has been wrong, and Kamala’s dismal performance when faced with a single tough question from an obsequious Stephen Colbert probably explains why.
To set the stage for Kamala’s embarrassing Colbert moment, you have to remember how brutally she attacked Joe Biden back in June 2019. Without using the word “racist,” she nevertheless made it clear to everyone watching that Biden, because he opposed busing and palled around with segregationists, was, in fact, a racist who virtually destroyed the little girl that was Kamala:
The media adored Kamala’s attack (which she’d obviously prepared well in advance) and wasn’t bothered that her shtick about “that little girl was me” was inaccurate, if not downright dishonest.
Kamala was right, of course, that Biden is racist. From the start -- and this is something he has in common with all Democrats – he’s been obsessed with race. From his first day in the Senate, Biden hung out with racists, and his anecdotes show he remembers that time fondly. Biden can’t stop talking about Indian accents; he called integrated schools jungles; he said it was a “storybook” that Obama was clean and articulate; he thinks all blacks think alike, and he insisted that people are black only if they vote for him.
Nevertheless, the nakedly-ambitious Kamala readily agreed when Biden (whom she also said probably digitally raped a Senate employee in the 1990s) asked her to join him on the presidential ticket. This is a problem for Democrats, who have to address this inconsistency because her “I was that little girl” speech was her breakout moment in the primaries.
It fell to Stephen Colbert, as part of a fawning interview with Kamala, to ask her the question:
Because in those debates, you landed haymakers on Joe Biden. I mean, his teeth were like Chiclets all over the stage. And now, I believe you that you’re fully supportive of him. How does that transition happen? How do you go from being such a passionate opponent, on such bedrock principles for you, and now you guys seem to be pals?
Colbert framed the question to elicit a substantive answer. He assumed that Kamala, as well as the whole Democrat team running Biden’s campaign, knew the question was coming and had prepared a good response. For example, Kamala might have said that, during her meetings with Biden, she’s learned how he’s grown over the decades. He can sometimes say awkward, or even hurtful things, but his record shows that he’s an ally, and yadda, yadda, yadda.
That’s what Kamala could have done. But that’s not what Kamala did. Instead, in between manic cackles (clearly stolen from Hillary), Kamala just repeated over and over, “It was a debate. It was a debate.”
Kamala Harris basically accused Joe Biden of being a racist during the debates and her only defense is “it was a debate”.
So did you never think he was racist and knowingly falsely accused him of being one or are you now just ok with being on a ticket with a racist? pic.twitter.com/0axLvxtf9Z
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) August 15, 2020
That’s not even a good non-answer. It’s a mindless and moronic mental reflex. It’s like a dead frog’s leg kicking if an electric charge runs through its body.
Kamala also gave the game away about the Democrat primary debates. These were not real battles so that the voters could get the true measure of the candidates. Instead, they were staged spectacles, closer to the WWE than to an actual airing of political differences and mental acumen. The goal, always, was to get voters to choose the hardest left candidate who did not actually look hard left, and who stood a chance of winning (so, not Amy Klobuchar).
It continues to be shocking that Biden and Harris are the best that the Democrats can offer America. Neither can function without a handler at his or her side. Biden, never bright, is now getting senile, and Harris, equally never bright, is the person that we all know (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) is the actual presidential candidate.
Paris Dennard: All Joe Biden Has Done for Blacks Is ‘Lock Us Up’
Former Vice President Joe Biden has done nothing as a politician to help the black community, said Paris Dennard, senior communications advisor for black media affairs with the Republican Party, offering his remarks on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Biden’s declared on Friday that if a black American is unsure of supporting him over President Donald Trump in the 2020 election “then you ain’t black.”
.@JoeBiden: "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black." @cthagod: "It don't have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact — I want something for my community." @breakfastclubam pic.twitter.com/endvWnOIV2
— America Rising (@AmericaRising) May 22, 2020
Dennard warned against characterizing Biden’s statement as a “gaffe.” Biden’s comment, he maintained, reflected the politician’s condescension towards blacks. “It’s paternalistic, and it’s bigoted,” he said.
“We’ve got to stop calling these gaffes,” urged Dennard. “We need to stop calling these ‘insensitive statements.’ No, They’re bigoted. They’re racist, and it’s exposing Joe Biden’s long history. Stop giving him cover for being a bigot.
Dennard noted the refusal of numerous Democrats to condemn Biden’s framing of black identity as contingent on partisan political support for the Democrat Party.
“I have been waiting to hear Amb. Susan Rice, Sen. Kamala Harris, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, [and] Stacey Abrams stand up and say something about this, but they’re not because it’s not about the people [or] the black community,” Dennard stated. “It’s about the black vote. That’s all they’re concerned about. It’s all politics.”
LISTEN:
“The RNC and the Trump campaign are going to be very aggressively going after Joe Biden. The impact of his statement not only was offensive to black Republicans or conservatives — or just free-thinking black Americans like myself who are supporting President Trump — but it’s also offensive to any black person who decides to just be a free thinker. … He’s essentially saying, ‘If you are not on my team — Joe Biden’s team — you’re not black,'” said Dennard.
“You have Joe Biden trying to put people in a box and think, ‘You’ve got to think the way I want you to think. If you don’t think that way. I’m going to pull away your identity. I’m going to pull away your cultural connection. I’m going to say that you are not a part of the community.’ That is an offensive thing to say, because this is exactly what they did during slavery, they wanted slaves to not be able to read and to write and to remain dumb and illiterate so that we wouldn’t be able to be educated and learned and advance and grow and prosper,” Dennard added.
“It is a way to suppress the vote,” Dennard stated. “It is a way to discourage people from daring to be able to do like Kanye West did and do like Vernon Jones did down in Georgia. … When you talk about voter suppression, this is a tactic from the left that we’re seeing play out by their nominee.”
Dennard assessed Biden’s political record.
“Let’s start with the Clinton crime bill, which [Joe Biden] wrote,” Dennard recalled. “You want to have a conversation about anybody’s statements to or for the black community? Let’s talk about how he talked about Barack Obama. Let’s talk about how he talked about Indian-Americans. Let’s talk about how he talked about black kids rubbing their their hands on [his] leg because they had never seen curly hair, and ‘Corn Pop,’ and little roaches, and people getting locked up for crossing the street.”
“You’ve been a vice president, but you haven’t done anything to directly impact the black community in a positive way besides lock us up,” concluded Dennard.
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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Joe Biden questions my blackness one moment, defends racist 1994 crime bill the next
Paris Dennard, Opinion contributor
,
USA TODAY Opinion•May 25, 2020
834 Comments
Much attention has been rightfully devoted to bigoted comments former Vice President Joe Biden made during his Friday interview with “The Breakfast Club” when he had the audacity to say "Well I tell you what, If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."
As a black man who voted for Donald J. Trump for president in 2016, and plans to do so in 2020, no 77-year-old white man from Delaware has the right, authority or rationale to question my blackness or the blackness of millions of Americans exercising our God-given right to be free and exercise our constitutionally granted power to vote for whomever we want, even if they are Republican.
If you only watch the sound bites of the interview, you miss his full-throated support and defense of the 1994 crime bill. Biden literally tried to convince black America that our communities weren't destroyed, black families weren't ripped apart, and black wealth was not stifled for generations because of a bill he designed.
So this happened... “If you got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump then you ain’t Black.”
-@JoeBiden to @cthagod pic.twitter.com/IdnyxSAY5k
— Maliek Blade (@MaliekBlade) May 22, 2020
Even the host from “The Breakfast Club” agrees. After the interview, host Charlamagne tha God said, “He really was one of the people on the front lines when it came to the war on drugs, and mass incarceration. If he wants to be president, he needs to fix that."
Joe Biden's record is a shame
The black community is well aware of the real impact of his signature legislation. The Center for American Progress sums it up: “The crime bill also expanded the school-to-prison pipeline and increased racial disparities in juvenile justice involvement by creating draconian penalties for so-called super predators — low-income children of color, especially black children, who are convicted of multiple crimes.”
Thanks to President Trump’s courageous leadership pushing for historic criminal justice reform and signing the First Step Act into law, he helped reverse the pain and suffering many black men and women experienced because of Biden’s bill.
He put the vulnerable at risk: Why oh why is NY Governor Andrew Cuomo being praised for his coronavirus response?
If Biden felt any remorse over what he helped do to the black community, he could have spent his next decades of service to Delaware to undo the damage, but he didn’t. If Biden was so connected, concerned, and passionate about helping and uplifting the black community he would have publicly pushed President Barack Obama to get criminal justice reform over the finish line, but he was silent.
Biden and the Democratic National Committee seem to look at black Americans just as votes and not as actual people, with brains, feelings and families. Liberal policies have not made it easier for black business owners to navigate fewer regulations, pay less in taxes, and be lifted out of poverty. Liberal policies were not responsible for historic low black unemployment, and the creation of opportunity zones. But the Trump administration did. So, Biden should not be asking black America to compare his record to that of Trump's.
Democrats try to scare black voters
What this entire episode shows us is Biden and his team are running scared of the continued black engagement efforts of the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign’s Black Voices for Trump Coalition, which are doing the work to build the relationships and amplify the record of achievement of this current administration. Biden is threatened. So, his latest voter intimidation tactic is to scare black voters into submission by attempting to take away our cultural identity if we do not vote for him.
Curiously, we have not heard from former President Obama, or from several of the black women who are rumored to be on Biden’s shortlist for vice president. So far, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, Florida Rep. Val Demings, and former Ambassador Susan Rice are keeping mum or giving him a pass. Why let bigoted comments get in the way of their own political interests?
Former Vice President Joe Biden interviewed by radio host Charlamagne tha God in May 2020.
Thankfully, Black Entertainment Television (BET) co-founder Bob Johnson called him out saying in part “This proves unequivocally that the Democratic nominee believes that black people owe him their vote without question; even though we as black people know it is exactly the opposite. He should spend the rest of his campaign apologizing to every black person he meets.”
Yes, Biden issued an apology, not for being a bigot, or offensive, rude or arrogant, but he only said, “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy. I shouldn’t have been so cavalier.” A lackluster response to match his lackluster record of fighting for the black community.
Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Andy Biggs: Anthony Fauci wants America closed until there's nothing to reopen
Add it to the list of racist things he has said as an elected official, like saying of his political opponents "They're gonna put y'all back in chains;" and talking about Obama as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy;" and "In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."
This is Joe Biden. These are not gaffes. His horrible record matches his horrible rhetoric. The contrast between him and President Trump on the issues of jobs, justice, the economy, historically black colleges and universities, and even pandemic management is one that Biden is not prepared to have, especially as he insults black Americans in the process.
Paris Dennard is a senior communications adviser for black media affairs at the Republican National Committee and the former White House director of black outreach for George W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter: @PARISDENNARD
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Biden’s 'you ain't black' comment is voter intimidation
Biden And Blacks: No Gaffe Can Threaten This Venal Relationship
Joe Biden’s recent gaffe about blacks isn’t going to cost him black support. It may even strengthen him because, far from being offended, black political consultants, activists, and journalists just see more dollar signs. Whereas First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner reportedly wants to cut out the word "freedom" out of the GOP platform because “polling showed it doesn't appeal to African Americans” [Scoop: Inside the secret talks to overhaul the GOP platform, by Jonathan Swan, Axios, May 24, 2020], the Biden-black relationship is solidly based not on illusory symbols but on venal material interests. The GOP can’t compete, nor should it.
Biden won the Democrat Presidential nomination because he was endorsed by South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn and bought off black politicos like Symone Sanders, right, the former Bernie Sanders supporter. Black Democrats support Biden because they knew he would provide specific benefits for their “community,” in contrast to the more class-based, universal policies offered by Leftists such as Bernie Sanders or Andrew Yang. Like Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, Biden’s silly persona lets him be the hapless white frontman for racial socialist redistribution programs. And now, like Northam after the blackface brouhaha, Biden will have to offer blacks even more concrete benefits to ensure their turnout.
The celebrated gaffe: In an interview with radio host Lenard McKelvey, aka “Charlamagne tha God,” Biden said if blacks have a problem figuring out whether to support him or President Trump, “you ain’t black” [Joe Biden: ‘You Ain’t Black’ If You Don’t Back Me Over Trump, by Joshua Caplan, Breitbart, May 22, 2020]. Adding to the fun: Biden’s bizarre comment that “everyone in jail… can’t read,” amusing since the “tha God” spent time in jail after various crimes when he was a teenager [Five Things You Didn’t Know About Charlamagne tha God, by Aiden Mason, TVOM, 2018].
The Kushner campaign has pounced on Biden with the usual DR3 (Dems R the Real Racists) tactic, and is now selling extremely cringe T-shirts, below.
Official Trump Campaign T-Shirt
But of course this overlooks the fact that McKelvey wasn’t offended on behalf of black Republicans. “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact—I want something for my community,” he responded to Biden.
In other words, there’s no chance most blacks will consider voting for Trump. But they do want more handouts for their group.
McKelvey, excuse me, “tha God,” pressed Biden on “what have you done for me [blacks] lately” and condemned him for the 1994 crime bill [Charlamagne tha God slams Joe Biden’s record with African Americans after the Democrat’s ‘ain’t black’ gaffe and says his 1994 crime bill was a ‘very intricate’ part of ‘systemic racism,’ by Matthew Wright and Nikki Schwab, Daily Mail, May 23, 2020]. Joe Biden has promptly groveled, vowing that “I’ve never, ever taken the African American community for granted” [Joe Biden Regrets ‘You Ain’t Black Comment: ‘I Shouldn’t Have Been Such A Wise Guy, by Joshua Caplan, Breitbart, May 22, 2020].
But he has and he can. Thus Symone Sanders, running interference for the former VP, tweeted that his comments were “in jest” and that he could put “his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day,” steamrolled Chuck Todd’s attempt to question her about it on Meet The Press [Symone Sanders vs. Chuck Todd on Biden’s “You Ain’t Black” Comment; “I’m Not Going To Do This, by Ian Schwartz, RealClearPolitics, May 23, 2020].
Former president Barack Obama is preparing to campaign for Biden to drive up black turnout [Barack Obama poised to add his star appeal to Joe Biden campaign, by Daniel Strauss, The Guardian, May 23, 2020]. And fears that blacks might stay home if they feel Biden hasn’t done enough for them lately can be countered if necessary by choosing a black woman female VP candidate, like Florida Congresswoman Val Demings [Val Demings rips Trump for having the "gall" to use Biden remarks in campaign, Axios, May 24, 2020] or Georgia’s Stacey Abrams.
Biden’s weakness is his strength. Like Virginia’s Northam, he can’t rule his party without monolithic black support [Joe Biden, the National Northam, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, March 6, 2020]. But that means black Democrats like Clyburn will support him because Biden must deliver. Blacks vote as a bloc and win concessions as a bloc.
Consider what Biden has already done before this. He began his campaign running on the Charlottesville hoax that alleges far-right protesters attacked the city and President Trump praised them. Biden has said abandoning Anglo-American legal culture and its presumption of innocence has “got to go” because it’s a “white man’s culture.” He’s more recently said Ahmaud Arbery was “killed in cold blood.”
Biden is going to give blacks everything he thinks they want as long as he gets to be president. President Trump was absolutely right when he defined Biden as an empty shell, a “non-factor,” and said that his real opponent was the radical Left and its Main Stream Media allies [Trump dismisses Biden: ‘Not even a factor,’ by Tal Axelrod, The Hill, May 16, 2020].
Still, why don’t the Democrats have a black person at the top of the Democratic ticket? Because Joe Biden provides a way to soothe the moral panic that older liberal whites are undergoing. It’s not surprising he leads in critical suburban communities [Where Biden, Trump stand in key swing states, by Jonathan Easley, The Hill, May 23, 2020]. Biden’s own personal failings, including plagiarism, allegations of corruption, and, most recently, sexual assault, don’t matter without the MSM covering them aggressively. Thus The Nation’s Katha Pollitt openly states she’d vote for Biden even if “he boiled babies and ate them” or if Tara Reade’s account of sexual harassment was true [We Should Take Women’s Accusations Seriously. But Tara Reade’s Fall Short. May 20, 2020]. Feminists had no problem voting for Bill Clinton or his enabler Hillary; why would they object to Biden?
If anything, Biden’s creeping senility, bumbling, and overall buffoonery are endearing to white liberal voters who want to go back to the “normality” of the Obama years when the president was just another celebrity. I suspect Biden was picked by Obama because he’s an oaf, the dumb white sitcom dad we’ve seen on television a million times. He’s got a certain charm, but no one respects or fears him.
There is no white “community” in American politics conscious of itself as a group possessing collective interests and identity. The pollster Zach Goldberg has found that white liberals actually possess an “out-group bias”—meaning that they dislike their own ethnic group more than any other. In academia, journalism and increasingly, “white” is an all-purpose insult. The only qualification: many of these white liberals don’t identify with whites anyway, either because they are part of an ethnic group that considers itself distinct from whites (like many Jews); an oppressed group (like some sexual minorities); or are genuinely post-national (and think they’re citizens/consumers of the world).
Notwithstanding the constant denunciations of President Trump as a white nationalist, the fact is he never speaks explicitly in defense of his white supporters. He’ll occasionally send out what appears to be a dog whistle, as when he cryptically referenced the savage beating of a helpless elderly white man by a younger black man in a nursing home in Michigan. But his supporters are learning that there will be no political consequences from this dog whistle. There’s no push to eliminate Affirmative Action or establish Official English. Even Trump’s recent boast that he was going to remedy the “illegal” bias and deplatforming of patriots on social media is apparently just means a “commission”—which is still being “considered” [Trump Considers Forming Panel to Review Complaints of Online Bias, by John McKinnon and Alex Leary, The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2020].
Arguably, the GOP could move to the left and propose a civic nationalist program that might well win a few more black votes than the GOP is getting now: a universal basic income, an immigration moratorium, Official English and replacing Affirmative Action with a system that gives advantages to those from a lower economic class
In other words, challenge the Democrats for black voters by offering them something real.
But we know the GOP won’t do that—not least because Conservatism Inc. ideologues would fight it every step of the way. Better to lose and have some other black conservative we’ve never heard of lecture us on “Republican outreach” again next CPAC.
In contrast, Democrats provide blacks with concrete advantages like set-asides, special programs, ethnic narcissism, and cultural victories. Why would blacks give that up? Once in a while, they might throw a minor tantrum to win more subsidies, but it’s not like a party that wants “limited government” can offer anything to people that rely on government being big.
Let the Kushner campaign sell its shirt. It won’t make a difference. Blacks will vote for Biden this fall by the usual margins, if not greater ones than last time.
Joe Biden has already shown he’s willing to degrade himself as much as he has to in order to be president. Kissing up to “Charlamagne da God” is just business as usual.
James Kirkpatrick [Email him |Tweet him @VDAREJamesK] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. His latest book is Conservatism Inc.: The Battle for the American Right. Read VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow's Preface here.
Who ‘Ain’t Black’?
THIS IS FOR REAL!
Biden reminds African-Americans where they stand in the Democratic Party.
May 25, 2020
Lloyd Billingsley
“I tell you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
Thus spake Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden last Friday in an interview with host Charlamagne tha God. Accomplished black people were surprised to hear they were not black.
“I thought to myself, I have been black for 54 years,” said Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina Republican. “1.3 million black Americans already voted for Trump in 2016,” and “this morning, Joe Biden told every single one of us we ‘ain’t black.’” For Scott it was “sadly par for the course for Democrats to take the black community for granted and brow beat those that don’t agree.” Black Entertainment Television (BET) co-founder Robert Johnson expressed similar sentiments.
“Vice President Biden’s statement today represents the arrogant and out-of-touch attitude of a paternalistic white candidate who has the audacity to tell black people, the descendants of slaves, that they are not black unless they vote for him,” Johnson told Fox News. “This proves unequivocally that the Democratic nominee believes that black people owe him their vote without question, even though we as black people know it is exactly the opposite.”
For former NFL player Jack Brewer, “the mask is off” and “America can see the real Joe Biden, hopefully all of my African-American brothers and sisters.” As Brewer told Fox News on Sunday, “He was the VP of Barack Obama so he hides in the closet at lot,” covering up “oppressive policies that he’s pushed since he’s been in the Senate,” the 1994 crime bill among them.
What Biden had revealed, wrote Deroy Murdock of National Review, was the view, “widely popular among Democrats,” that black Americans who fail to support the Democrat agenda are not just wrong but, much worse, “they’re not even black.” Murdoch found this “insulting, degrading and dehumanizing,” and there was more to it.
“Note Biden’s pandering use of ‘ain’t’ and ‘y’all’ when addressing blacks, including a southern accent in the latter instance.” In similar style, Hillary Clinton “exhibits the same annoying, patronizing behavior.” Larry Elder tweeted a cartoon of Hillary Clinton in blackface saying “I ain’t no ways tired of pandering to African Americans.” This was allegedly racist, but Joe Biden telling blacks that GOP is ‘going to put y’all back in chains’ – not a problem.” On the other hand, some blacks had no problem with the Biden statement.
“The issue wasn’t what Joe Biden said, because it was accurate,” tweeted Jamele Hill of The Atlantic, formerly of ESPN. It was “clearly a joke that didn’t land,” but if you support what Hill calls anti-black policies, “you’re still technically black but you ain’t with us.” Others were eager to clarify.
“There is a difference between being politically black and being racially black,” wrote New York Times correspondent Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her contribution to the 1619 Project. “Being born black does not necessitate being politically black,” wrote Hannah-Jones in a tweet she has since deleted.
Biden said he “shouldn’t have been so cavalier” and “no one should have to vote for any party, based on their race or religion or background,” but that failed to land with Kanye West, also a supporter of President Trump. “I will not be told who I’m gonna vote on because of my color,” West proclaimed.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made a comment by way of the new documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words. “One of the things you do in hearings is you have to sit there and look attentively at people you know have no idea what they are talking about,” Thomas said. In his 1991 confirmation hearing, one of them was Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden, and as Thomas recalled, “We know exactly what’s going on here. This is the wrong black guy. He has to be destroyed.”
For someone often unsure of his location, the day of the week, and what office he is seeking, Joe Biden does not hesitate to tell others what he thinks they are, with absolute certainty. For example, according to the former vice president, the millions of people illegally present in the United States are “already American citizens.” That would surprise countless legal immigrants and legitimate citizens of all skin shades.
Last year, Biden could have told Democrat rival Elizabeth Warren “you ain’t no Cherokee,” which would have been true. Instead, the serial plagiarist tells African Americans they “ain’t black,” which is not an original racist smear.
Back in the 1990s, Clinton assistant attorney general nominee Lani Guinier questioned the blackness of Thomas Sowell, the great scholar, economist and author of books such as Intellectuals and Race. Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jamele Hill might check out Sowell’s response to Lani Guinier: “I don’t need some half-white woman from Martha’s Vineyard telling me about being black.” By their own admission, African Americans don’t need an addled white Democrat telling them “you ain’t black,” if they fail to support him.
“Wow,” tweeted former NFL great Herschel Walker. “Does he not understand that black and brown skinned people can think for themselves? You don’t determine who we vote for.”
“Thank you Herschel!” tweeted President Trump, who has established www.youaintblack.com with the logo “Black Voices for Trump 2020.” As the president says, we’ll see what happens.
Video: Biden Says Black and Hispanic People Are Dumb
Welcome to a Democrat president's racism - that the media ignores and enables.
[To get the whole story on the roots of the Left’s malice and what lies behind its war of destruction on free societies, read Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror: CLICK HERE.]
Subscribe to the Glazov Gang‘s YouTube Channel and follow us on Instagram: @JamieGlazov, Parler: @Jamieglazov11 and Twitter: @JamieGlazov.
This new Glazov Gang episode features Will Johnson, the Founder of UniteAmericaFirst.com.
Will focuses on Biden Says Black and Hispanic People Are Dumb, examining The Democrat president's racism that the media ignores - and enables.
Don’t miss it!
And make sure to watch Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield discuss Remembering Rush, where he analyzes His greatness - and why the Left hated him so much.
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10 Examples of Joe Biden’s History of Racially Charged Conduct and Comments
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/10/21/10-examples-of-joe-bidens-history-of-racially-charged-conduct-and-comments/
AP Photo/Henry Griffin, John Duricka, Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty
21 Oct 2020197
21:42
Democratic nominee Joe Biden took great pains during his debate with President Donald Trump to paint his Republican opponent as racially insensitive and politically divisive.
The former vice president argued that the recent wave of protests and riots roiling America’s cities since the death of George Floyd in police custody has exposed Trump’s weakness as a leader. Biden, in particular, claimed that the president has done nothing in the last four years to address racial injustice or heal political divides.
“This is a president who uses everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division,” Biden said, adding that “this man has done virtually nothing for black Americans.”
Biden’s critiques struck some as odd given the former vice president’s long tenure in public office and his own problematic record on racial issues and his past racially insensitive comments. The following is an extensive, but not exhaustive, look into the Democratic nominee’s past stances and comments.
1. As recently as June of 2019, Biden praised the “civility” of the segregationist senators he worked with in Congress to pass anti-busing legislation.
In June of 2019, the former vice president engendered criticism after seeming to praise the “civility” of two arch segregationists during a high-dollar fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. During the event, Biden told the audience assembled it was vital the next president “be able to reach consensus under our system.” To explain why he was the best candidate in that regard, the former vice president fondly cited his history of working with two of the Senate’s arch segregationists, the late-Sens. James Eastland (D-MS) and Herman Talmadge (D-GA).
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said with an attempted Southern drawl. “He never called me boy, he always called me son.”
“Well guess what?” the former vice president continued. “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
The comments provoked outrage because of the reputations that Eastland and Talmadge forged during their decades in public office.
Eastland, in particular, was known as the “voice of the white South” for his stringent opposition to civil rights and integration. The New York Times wrote in Eastland’s obituary that “he often appeared in Mississippi courthouse squares, promising the crowds that if elected he would stop blacks and whites from eating together in Washington. He often spoke of blacks as ‘an inferior race.’”
Talmadge was also a fierce opponent of integration. Before being elected to the Senate in 1957, he served as the governor of Georgia, where his tenure overlapped with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. At the time of the ruling, Talmadge promised to do everything in his power to protect the “separation of the races.”
At his NYC fundraiser tonight, Joe Biden said that Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge was "one of the meanest guys I ever knew." But, he added, "At least there was some civility. We got things done."
This was Herman Talmadge, then governor of Georgia, in the mid-1950s. pic.twitter.com/524aMeS8DV
— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) June 19, 2019
Biden, who joined the Senate in 1972, missed most of the early battles on school integration. He did, however, arrive just as busing to achieve school desegregation was coming to the forefront. Despite opposition from more liberal elements in the Democratic Party, especially the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Biden ended up leading the charge on the issue. Eastland, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was a prominent ally in the fight against busing, according to the Delaware News Journal.
Letters exchanged between Biden and Eastland during those early years indicate the former vice president courted the pro-segregationist judiciary chairman to help pass his anti-busing measures.
“I want you to know that I very much appreciate your help during this week’s Committee meeting in attempting to bring my antibusing legislation to a vote,” Biden wrote in one letter dated from June 1977.
The former vice president’s praise last year of his two late segregationist Senate colleagues proved controversial, even among Democrats, with Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) claiming that the former vice president had proved himself “woefully ignorant” of the “black American experience.”
Although such criticism forced Biden to apologize for giving the “impression” of praising segregationists, the former vice president has continued invoking senatorial colleagues who opposed civil rights. In February of this year, during the tenth Democratic presidential primary debate in South Carolina, Biden fondly recalled his friendship with the late Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC).
“Look, a guy who was a friend of mine down here, Fritz Hollings, used to say, ‘Don’t listen to what a man or woman say they’ll do, look at what they’ve done,’” the former vice president said, while criticizing his primary rivals.
As Breitbart News has previously reported, Hollings, who passed away last year, was a longtime fixture in South Carolina politics, serving first as the state’s governor and later as a United States senator. For much of his early career, Hollings was an opponent of integration, even running for the governorship on a platform of opposing school desegregation in 1959. Hollings kept that stance for the early portion of his term, but eventually changed course and supported integration.
In the Senate, Hollings cut a moderate-to-liberal profile by championing a national hunger policy and working to rein in the deficit. During his congressional tenure, Hollings’ views on race evolved, as exhibited by his endorsement of Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential race. The topic, however, continued to haunt the reformer segregationist as was evidenced in 1993 when Hollings stirred controversy by claiming that African diplomats only attended international conferences so they could get a “good square meal” rather than “eating each other.”
2. Biden praised the notorious segregationist politician George Wallace, boasted about how Wallace once honored him with an award in 1973, and told a Southern audience in 1987 that “we [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War.”
Senatorial colleagues were not the only segregationists that Biden has praised throughout his years in public office. One individual, in particular, that Biden praised repeatedly throughout his early congressional career was the late Alabama governor George Wallace.
“I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace — someone who’s not afraid to stand up and offend people, someone who wouldn’t pander but would say what the American people know in their gut is right,” Biden told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1975 when discussing why liberals should not “apologize for locking up criminals.”
At the time, Biden was a young-first term senator from Delaware who was developing a reputation for bucking his party, most notedly on the contentious issue of busing to desegregate public schools. Notwithstanding the antiquated racial attitudes of that time, Biden’s comments about Wallace were viewed as controversial even by the standards of the 1970s.
Wallace, who was governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s and then again throughout most of the 1970s, stood out in the national psyche for his stringent opposition to integration, even going as far to declare “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in his 1963 inaugural address. The image was reinforced only months later when Wallace faced down federal law enforcement officers at the University of Alabama while attempting to block integration efforts by then-President John F. Kennedy.
By the time Biden invoked him to the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1975, Wallace was trying to rehabilitate his image by making inroads with Alabama’s black community. Even though he succeeded in that effort by some measure, Wallace remained a vehement proponent of states’ rights, especially when it came to busing and crime—two issues that defined Biden’s early political career.
The political and ideological similarities between the two men have even been acknowledged by Biden on occasion.
In 1975, during an interview with National Public Radio about his support for a constitutional amendment to stop busing, Biden suggested liberals only favored the practice because it was opposed by “racists” like Wallace.
“I think that part of the reason why much of this has not developed, much of the change has not developed, is because it has been an issue that has been in the hands of the racist,” Biden told NPR. “We liberals have out-of-hand rejected it because, if George Wallace is for it, it must be bad.”
“And so we haven’t really looked at it,” he continued. “Now there’s a confluence of streams. There is academic ferment against it — not majority, but academic ferment against it. There are young blacks and young white leaders against it.”
News clipping from an article titled “Presidential hopeful Biden faces an image problem” in The Philadelphia Inquirer on September 20, 1987, page 79
The former vice president similarly invoked Wallace during a 1981 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to explain why he and countless others supported tough-on-crime initiatives like the death penalty.
“Sometimes even George Wallace is right about some things,” Biden told the committee before claiming Americans supported the death penalty because the government did “not have the slightest idea how to rehabilitate” criminals.
Such instances in which Biden mentioned Wallace only grew through the 1980s, becoming more commonplace in the lead-up to his first presidential run in 1988. Back then, the South was still nominally Democratic but had voted overwhelmingly for President Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Biden appeared to believe his youth, moderate record, and stance on busing presented the best opportunity to bring Southern whites back into the Democratic camp.
As he traveled the South in 1986 and 1987 to build support for his first White House bid, Biden not only downplayed his support for civil rights, but also made frequent references to Wallace. In April 1987, Biden even reportedly tried to court an Alabama audience by boasting about how Wallace had honored him with an award.
“Biden talked of his sympathy for the South; bragged of an award he had received from George Wallace in 1973 and said “we [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War,” as reported by the Inquirer on September 20, 1987. (Although Delaware was a slave-holding border state during the Civil War, it fought on the Union side.)
Apart from openly touting “his sympathy for the South” and the accolade bestowed by Wallace, Biden also bragged that the Alabama governor heaped praise on his capabilities as a politician.
“Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware … tells Southerners that the lower half of his state is culturally part of Dixie,” the Detroit Free Press reported in May 1987. “He reminds them that former Alabama Gov. George Wallace praised him as one of the outstanding young politicians of America.”
3. Biden opposed busing in the 1970s and expressed fears that it would lead to a “racial jungle.”
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Biden was seen as one of the Senate’s leading opponents of busing to desegregate public schools. The issue was particularly volatile for his constituents in Delaware, especially in the state’s largest city, Wilmington.
As a first-term senator in 1977, Biden raised concerns during a Senate committee hearing on busing that the practice would lead to a “racial jungle” with tensions pushed to their breaking point. At the time, Biden was facing tough reelection prospects.
“Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point,” Biden said shortly after making a plea for “orderly integration.”
It is unclear exactly which legislation Biden’s remarks were meant to address, as there were many busing proposals floating around in 1977. Despite the background remaining murky, Biden’s remarks at the hearing are similar to those he expressed during an interview with a local Delaware newspaper in 1975 while discussing the issue of busing.
“The real problem with busing,” Biden told the paper, after lambasting busing as an “asinine concept,” was that “you take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school … and you’re going to fill them with hatred.”
“The unsavory part about this is when I come out against busing, as I have all along, I don’t want to be mixed up with a George Wallace,” he added.
4. Biden voted to protect the tax-exempt status of private segregated schools.
After being re-elected to his second term in 1978, Biden voted the following year against revoking a legislative provision that prevented the Internal Revenue Service from rescinding the tax-exempt status of private segregated academies. Such schools were founded in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to prevent the integration of educational institutions.
At the time, Biden’s vote put him at odds with then-President Jimmy Carter and such vaulted liberal institutions as the American Civil Liberties Union.
5. Biden told black radio host Charlamagne tha God, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
In May, while appearing on the Breakfast Club, a popular New York City-based radio show, Biden asserted that any voter unsure whether to back him or President Donald Trump this November “ain’t black.”
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” the former vice president told one of the show’s black hosts, Charlamagne tha God.
The comments elicited immediate rebuke, including from Charlamagne. In response, Biden’s campaign attempted to playoff the awkward moment, with the vice president, himself, claiming he was being a “wise guy.”
6. Biden told the Asian and Latino Coalition of Des Moines that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
During a town hall in August 2019 with the Asian and Latino Coalition of Des Moines, Iowa, Biden elicited controversy by claiming that “poor kids are just as bright and … talented as white kids.” The former vice president, in particular, made the comments while discussing his support for expanding educational opportunities and school funding.
“We should challenge students [with] advanced placement programs in these schools,” Biden said at the time. “We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor you cannot do it, poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
Joe Biden: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” pic.twitter.com/YhDSMnoRce
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) August 9, 2019
The former vice president quickly attempted to clarify his remarks by adding “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids” to the end of his previous sentence.
The comments raised eyebrows forcing Biden’s campaign to issue a statement saying that the former vice president “misspoke.”
7. While delivering remarks before a black audience in Delaware, Biden launched into a meandering story about a gang leader named Corn Pop and claimed that he “learned about roaches” while working at a community pool in a black neighborhood.
In 2017, shortly after leaving the White House Biden delivered a bizarre speech before an audience in Wilmington, Delaware, at the renaming of a community pool in his honor. The event, though, quickly took a strange turn when Biden, flanked by black children from the local community, decided to recount a nearly violent altercation he had with a local gang leader named Corn Pop while working as the only white lifeguard at this pool during his teenage years.
“Corn Pop was a bad dude, and he ran a bunch of bad boys. Back in those days, to show how things have changed … if you used pomade in your hair, you had to wear a bathing cap,” Biden said. “He was up on the board and wouldn’t listen to me, so I said, ‘Hey, Esther, you, off the board or I’ll come up and drag you off.’”
Corn Pop, according to the former vice president, did not take kindly to being called “Esther” — an “emasculating” reference to the 1950s swimmer Esther Williams, as the Washington Post noted — and promised to “meet” him outside. Biden told the audience he realized that he had to take the threat seriously when he purportedly saw the gang leader waiting around for him with three other guys carrying straight razors.
According to the former vice president’s recollection, he walked outside with a “six-foot chain” and threatened to “wrap [the] chain around” Corn Pop’s head, before apologizing.
“I looked at him, but I was smart then,” Biden said, adding that he told Corn Pop, “’First of all, when I tell you to get off the board, you get off the board, and I’ll kick you out again, but I shouldn’t have called you Esther Williams.’ I apologize for that. … I apologize for what I said.”
Biden’s anecdote about Corn Pop was not the only part of the speech that drew attention. In an earlier portion of his remarks, the former vice president raised eyebrows when he described what he learned that summer while working as the only white lifeguard at a community pool in a black neighborhood.
“By the way, you know, I sit on the stand, and it get[s] hot,” Biden said. “I got a lot, I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun, and the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight and then watch the hair come back up again. They’d look at it.”
“So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap,” the former vice president added. “And I loved kids jumping on my lap.”
Biden’s inexplicable reference to “roaches,” alongside the broader story about Corn Pop, confounded many. Without proper explanation, more than a few were left to speculate the use of the term was an allusion to the racial and economic makeup of the community frequenting the pool. Some, like the prominent conservative activist and commentator Larry Elder, went further suggesting that Biden was calling the children “jumping on my lap” roaches.
8. In 2008, Biden referred to then presidential candidate Barack Obama as “the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.”
Before Biden was tapped by President Barack Obama for the number two slot on the 2008 Democratic ticket, the two men’s relationship nearly went off the rails over a racial gaffe. In February 2007 as Biden was preparing to launch his own White House bid, the then-senator from Delaware caused a flare-up while discussing his potential rivals for the Democratic nomination. Although, Biden spent a great deal of time evaluating his chances against the likes of then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), his remarks about the freshman senator from Illinois drew the most scrutiny.
“I mean, you’ve got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a story-book, man,” Biden said when discussing Obama.
9. In 2006, Biden told C-SPAN, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
In 2006, when first considering a second run for the presidency, Biden appeared on C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” to discuss his deliberations. Biden told the program that one of his strengths as a candidate would be the broad base of support he’s received from immigrants in his home state of Delaware, especially Indian-Americans.
“I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,” Biden said. “I’m not joking.”
At the time, the comments were widely lambasted by members of the Indian-American community. In response, Biden’s then-Senate office tried to explain the gaffe, claiming he was only commenting about how positive it was that Indian-American “middle-class families are moving into Delaware and purchasing family-run small businesses.” That effort, however, was undercut by a subsequent appearance the senator made on CNN in which he defended his comments by suggesting that he would have said the same thing “40-years ago about walking into a delicatessen and saying an ‘Italian accent.'”
10. Biden falsely claimed to have “marched” in the civil rights movement.
During his run for the 1988 Democratic nomination, Biden inflated his record of activism in the civil rights movement. Biden, in particular, repeatedly claimed to have “marched” in the civil rights movement when presenting himself to audiences as a candidate for generational change.
“When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Biden told a group of supporters in 1987. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes, and we changed attitudes.”
In reality, Biden had never marched during the civil rights movement, according to Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times.
“More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement,” wrote Flegenheimer. “And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.”
The exaggeration, along with Biden’s propensity for plagiarism, would eventually force him to abandon his 1988 presidential bid before a single vote was cast.
10 Examples of Joe Biden’s History of Racially Charged Conduct and Comments
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/10/21/10-examples-of-joe-bidens-history-of-racially-charged-conduct-and-comments/
AP Photo/Henry Griffin, John Duricka, Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty
21 Oct 2020197
21:42
Democratic nominee Joe Biden took great pains during his debate with President Donald Trump to paint his Republican opponent as racially insensitive and politically divisive.
The former vice president argued that the recent wave of protests and riots roiling America’s cities since the death of George Floyd in police custody has exposed Trump’s weakness as a leader. Biden, in particular, claimed that the president has done nothing in the last four years to address racial injustice or heal political divides.
“This is a president who uses everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division,” Biden said, adding that “this man has done virtually nothing for black Americans.”
Biden’s critiques struck some as odd given the former vice president’s long tenure in public office and his own problematic record on racial issues and his past racially insensitive comments. The following is an extensive, but not exhaustive, look into the Democratic nominee’s past stances and comments.
1. As recently as June of 2019, Biden praised the “civility” of the segregationist senators he worked with in Congress to pass anti-busing legislation.
In June of 2019, the former vice president engendered criticism after seeming to praise the “civility” of two arch segregationists during a high-dollar fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. During the event, Biden told the audience assembled it was vital the next president “be able to reach consensus under our system.” To explain why he was the best candidate in that regard, the former vice president fondly cited his history of working with two of the Senate’s arch segregationists, the late-Sens. James Eastland (D-MS) and Herman Talmadge (D-GA).
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said with an attempted Southern drawl. “He never called me boy, he always called me son.”
“Well guess what?” the former vice president continued. “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
The comments provoked outrage because of the reputations that Eastland and Talmadge forged during their decades in public office.
Eastland, in particular, was known as the “voice of the white South” for his stringent opposition to civil rights and integration. The New York Times wrote in Eastland’s obituary that “he often appeared in Mississippi courthouse squares, promising the crowds that if elected he would stop blacks and whites from eating together in Washington. He often spoke of blacks as ‘an inferior race.’”
Talmadge was also a fierce opponent of integration. Before being elected to the Senate in 1957, he served as the governor of Georgia, where his tenure overlapped with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. At the time of the ruling, Talmadge promised to do everything in his power to protect the “separation of the races.”
At his NYC fundraiser tonight, Joe Biden said that Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge was "one of the meanest guys I ever knew." But, he added, "At least there was some civility. We got things done."
This was Herman Talmadge, then governor of Georgia, in the mid-1950s. pic.twitter.com/524aMeS8DV
— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) June 19, 2019
Biden, who joined the Senate in 1972, missed most of the early battles on school integration. He did, however, arrive just as busing to achieve school desegregation was coming to the forefront. Despite opposition from more liberal elements in the Democratic Party, especially the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Biden ended up leading the charge on the issue. Eastland, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was a prominent ally in the fight against busing, according to the Delaware News Journal.
Letters exchanged between Biden and Eastland during those early years indicate the former vice president courted the pro-segregationist judiciary chairman to help pass his anti-busing measures.
“I want you to know that I very much appreciate your help during this week’s Committee meeting in attempting to bring my antibusing legislation to a vote,” Biden wrote in one letter dated from June 1977.
The former vice president’s praise last year of his two late segregationist Senate colleagues proved controversial, even among Democrats, with Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) claiming that the former vice president had proved himself “woefully ignorant” of the “black American experience.”
Although such criticism forced Biden to apologize for giving the “impression” of praising segregationists, the former vice president has continued invoking senatorial colleagues who opposed civil rights. In February of this year, during the tenth Democratic presidential primary debate in South Carolina, Biden fondly recalled his friendship with the late Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC).
“Look, a guy who was a friend of mine down here, Fritz Hollings, used to say, ‘Don’t listen to what a man or woman say they’ll do, look at what they’ve done,’” the former vice president said, while criticizing his primary rivals.
As Breitbart News has previously reported, Hollings, who passed away last year, was a longtime fixture in South Carolina politics, serving first as the state’s governor and later as a United States senator. For much of his early career, Hollings was an opponent of integration, even running for the governorship on a platform of opposing school desegregation in 1959. Hollings kept that stance for the early portion of his term, but eventually changed course and supported integration.
In the Senate, Hollings cut a moderate-to-liberal profile by championing a national hunger policy and working to rein in the deficit. During his congressional tenure, Hollings’ views on race evolved, as exhibited by his endorsement of Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential race. The topic, however, continued to haunt the reformer segregationist as was evidenced in 1993 when Hollings stirred controversy by claiming that African diplomats only attended international conferences so they could get a “good square meal” rather than “eating each other.”
2. Biden praised the notorious segregationist politician George Wallace, boasted about how Wallace once honored him with an award in 1973, and told a Southern audience in 1987 that “we [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War.”
Senatorial colleagues were not the only segregationists that Biden has praised throughout his years in public office. One individual, in particular, that Biden praised repeatedly throughout his early congressional career was the late Alabama governor George Wallace.
“I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace — someone who’s not afraid to stand up and offend people, someone who wouldn’t pander but would say what the American people know in their gut is right,” Biden told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1975 when discussing why liberals should not “apologize for locking up criminals.”
At the time, Biden was a young-first term senator from Delaware who was developing a reputation for bucking his party, most notedly on the contentious issue of busing to desegregate public schools. Notwithstanding the antiquated racial attitudes of that time, Biden’s comments about Wallace were viewed as controversial even by the standards of the 1970s.
Wallace, who was governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s and then again throughout most of the 1970s, stood out in the national psyche for his stringent opposition to integration, even going as far to declare “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in his 1963 inaugural address. The image was reinforced only months later when Wallace faced down federal law enforcement officers at the University of Alabama while attempting to block integration efforts by then-President John F. Kennedy.
By the time Biden invoked him to the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1975, Wallace was trying to rehabilitate his image by making inroads with Alabama’s black community. Even though he succeeded in that effort by some measure, Wallace remained a vehement proponent of states’ rights, especially when it came to busing and crime—two issues that defined Biden’s early political career.
The political and ideological similarities between the two men have even been acknowledged by Biden on occasion.
In 1975, during an interview with National Public Radio about his support for a constitutional amendment to stop busing, Biden suggested liberals only favored the practice because it was opposed by “racists” like Wallace.
“I think that part of the reason why much of this has not developed, much of the change has not developed, is because it has been an issue that has been in the hands of the racist,” Biden told NPR. “We liberals have out-of-hand rejected it because, if George Wallace is for it, it must be bad.”
“And so we haven’t really looked at it,” he continued. “Now there’s a confluence of streams. There is academic ferment against it — not majority, but academic ferment against it. There are young blacks and young white leaders against it.”
News clipping from an article titled “Presidential hopeful Biden faces an image problem” in The Philadelphia Inquirer on September 20, 1987, page 79
The former vice president similarly invoked Wallace during a 1981 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to explain why he and countless others supported tough-on-crime initiatives like the death penalty.
“Sometimes even George Wallace is right about some things,” Biden told the committee before claiming Americans supported the death penalty because the government did “not have the slightest idea how to rehabilitate” criminals.
Such instances in which Biden mentioned Wallace only grew through the 1980s, becoming more commonplace in the lead-up to his first presidential run in 1988. Back then, the South was still nominally Democratic but had voted overwhelmingly for President Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Biden appeared to believe his youth, moderate record, and stance on busing presented the best opportunity to bring Southern whites back into the Democratic camp.
As he traveled the South in 1986 and 1987 to build support for his first White House bid, Biden not only downplayed his support for civil rights, but also made frequent references to Wallace. In April 1987, Biden even reportedly tried to court an Alabama audience by boasting about how Wallace had honored him with an award.
“Biden talked of his sympathy for the South; bragged of an award he had received from George Wallace in 1973 and said “we [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War,” as reported by the Inquirer on September 20, 1987. (Although Delaware was a slave-holding border state during the Civil War, it fought on the Union side.)
Apart from openly touting “his sympathy for the South” and the accolade bestowed by Wallace, Biden also bragged that the Alabama governor heaped praise on his capabilities as a politician.
“Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware … tells Southerners that the lower half of his state is culturally part of Dixie,” the Detroit Free Press reported in May 1987. “He reminds them that former Alabama Gov. George Wallace praised him as one of the outstanding young politicians of America.”
3. Biden opposed busing in the 1970s and expressed fears that it would lead to a “racial jungle.”
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Biden was seen as one of the Senate’s leading opponents of busing to desegregate public schools. The issue was particularly volatile for his constituents in Delaware, especially in the state’s largest city, Wilmington.
As a first-term senator in 1977, Biden raised concerns during a Senate committee hearing on busing that the practice would lead to a “racial jungle” with tensions pushed to their breaking point. At the time, Biden was facing tough reelection prospects.
“Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point,” Biden said shortly after making a plea for “orderly integration.”
It is unclear exactly which legislation Biden’s remarks were meant to address, as there were many busing proposals floating around in 1977. Despite the background remaining murky, Biden’s remarks at the hearing are similar to those he expressed during an interview with a local Delaware newspaper in 1975 while discussing the issue of busing.
“The real problem with busing,” Biden told the paper, after lambasting busing as an “asinine concept,” was that “you take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school … and you’re going to fill them with hatred.”
“The unsavory part about this is when I come out against busing, as I have all along, I don’t want to be mixed up with a George Wallace,” he added.
4. Biden voted to protect the tax-exempt status of private segregated schools.
After being re-elected to his second term in 1978, Biden voted the following year against revoking a legislative provision that prevented the Internal Revenue Service from rescinding the tax-exempt status of private segregated academies. Such schools were founded in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to prevent the integration of educational institutions.
At the time, Biden’s vote put him at odds with then-President Jimmy Carter and such vaulted liberal institutions as the American Civil Liberties Union.
5. Biden told black radio host Charlamagne tha God, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
In May, while appearing on the Breakfast Club, a popular New York City-based radio show, Biden asserted that any voter unsure whether to back him or President Donald Trump this November “ain’t black.”
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” the former vice president told one of the show’s black hosts, Charlamagne tha God.
The comments elicited immediate rebuke, including from Charlamagne. In response, Biden’s campaign attempted to playoff the awkward moment, with the vice president, himself, claiming he was being a “wise guy.”
6. Biden told the Asian and Latino Coalition of Des Moines that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
During a town hall in August 2019 with the Asian and Latino Coalition of Des Moines, Iowa, Biden elicited controversy by claiming that “poor kids are just as bright and … talented as white kids.” The former vice president, in particular, made the comments while discussing his support for expanding educational opportunities and school funding.
“We should challenge students [with] advanced placement programs in these schools,” Biden said at the time. “We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor you cannot do it, poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
Joe Biden: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” pic.twitter.com/YhDSMnoRce
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) August 9, 2019
The former vice president quickly attempted to clarify his remarks by adding “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids” to the end of his previous sentence.
The comments raised eyebrows forcing Biden’s campaign to issue a statement saying that the former vice president “misspoke.”
7. While delivering remarks before a black audience in Delaware, Biden launched into a meandering story about a gang leader named Corn Pop and claimed that he “learned about roaches” while working at a community pool in a black neighborhood.
In 2017, shortly after leaving the White House Biden delivered a bizarre speech before an audience in Wilmington, Delaware, at the renaming of a community pool in his honor. The event, though, quickly took a strange turn when Biden, flanked by black children from the local community, decided to recount a nearly violent altercation he had with a local gang leader named Corn Pop while working as the only white lifeguard at this pool during his teenage years.
“Corn Pop was a bad dude, and he ran a bunch of bad boys. Back in those days, to show how things have changed … if you used pomade in your hair, you had to wear a bathing cap,” Biden said. “He was up on the board and wouldn’t listen to me, so I said, ‘Hey, Esther, you, off the board or I’ll come up and drag you off.’”
Corn Pop, according to the former vice president, did not take kindly to being called “Esther” — an “emasculating” reference to the 1950s swimmer Esther Williams, as the Washington Post noted — and promised to “meet” him outside. Biden told the audience he realized that he had to take the threat seriously when he purportedly saw the gang leader waiting around for him with three other guys carrying straight razors.
According to the former vice president’s recollection, he walked outside with a “six-foot chain” and threatened to “wrap [the] chain around” Corn Pop’s head, before apologizing.
“I looked at him, but I was smart then,” Biden said, adding that he told Corn Pop, “’First of all, when I tell you to get off the board, you get off the board, and I’ll kick you out again, but I shouldn’t have called you Esther Williams.’ I apologize for that. … I apologize for what I said.”
Biden’s anecdote about Corn Pop was not the only part of the speech that drew attention. In an earlier portion of his remarks, the former vice president raised eyebrows when he described what he learned that summer while working as the only white lifeguard at a community pool in a black neighborhood.
“By the way, you know, I sit on the stand, and it get[s] hot,” Biden said. “I got a lot, I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun, and the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight and then watch the hair come back up again. They’d look at it.”
“So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap,” the former vice president added. “And I loved kids jumping on my lap.”
Biden’s inexplicable reference to “roaches,” alongside the broader story about Corn Pop, confounded many. Without proper explanation, more than a few were left to speculate the use of the term was an allusion to the racial and economic makeup of the community frequenting the pool. Some, like the prominent conservative activist and commentator Larry Elder, went further suggesting that Biden was calling the children “jumping on my lap” roaches.
8. In 2008, Biden referred to then presidential candidate Barack Obama as “the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.”
Before Biden was tapped by President Barack Obama for the number two slot on the 2008 Democratic ticket, the two men’s relationship nearly went off the rails over a racial gaffe. In February 2007 as Biden was preparing to launch his own White House bid, the then-senator from Delaware caused a flare-up while discussing his potential rivals for the Democratic nomination. Although, Biden spent a great deal of time evaluating his chances against the likes of then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), his remarks about the freshman senator from Illinois drew the most scrutiny.
“I mean, you’ve got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a story-book, man,” Biden said when discussing Obama.
9. In 2006, Biden told C-SPAN, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
In 2006, when first considering a second run for the presidency, Biden appeared on C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” to discuss his deliberations. Biden told the program that one of his strengths as a candidate would be the broad base of support he’s received from immigrants in his home state of Delaware, especially Indian-Americans.
“I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,” Biden said. “I’m not joking.”
At the time, the comments were widely lambasted by members of the Indian-American community. In response, Biden’s then-Senate office tried to explain the gaffe, claiming he was only commenting about how positive it was that Indian-American “middle-class families are moving into Delaware and purchasing family-run small businesses.” That effort, however, was undercut by a subsequent appearance the senator made on CNN in which he defended his comments by suggesting that he would have said the same thing “40-years ago about walking into a delicatessen and saying an ‘Italian accent.'”
10. Biden falsely claimed to have “marched” in the civil rights movement.
During his run for the 1988 Democratic nomination, Biden inflated his record of activism in the civil rights movement. Biden, in particular, repeatedly claimed to have “marched” in the civil rights movement when presenting himself to audiences as a candidate for generational change.
“When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Biden told a group of supporters in 1987. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes, and we changed attitudes.”
In reality, Biden had never marched during the civil rights movement, according to Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times.
“More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement,” wrote Flegenheimer. “And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.”
The exaggeration, along with Biden’s propensity for plagiarism, would eventually force him to abandon his 1988 presiden
