Biden, Trump, and Race
(CONTENT WARNING: This will contain difficult and potentially triggering racial language. This is a reminder of the context in which a current candidate’s claims have been made.)
As America’s new(est) secret police begin to move uninvited into our cities, and our President shares verifiably false claims about the most disruptive plague the country has seen in a century, one man bravely comes forward to remind us that Donald Trump is not the only fact-challenged candidate on the ballot this November:
“No Republican president has done this...no Democratic president. We’ve had racists...they’ve existed, and they’ve tried to get elected president. But [Trump]’s the first one who has.”
Doubtless there will soon be many liberal columnists crowding the internet with puff-pieces about how gaffe-prone Biden is; it will likely be argued that his words were taken out of context. Claims like this will conveniently ignore that Biden is the one who contextualized his claim before making it. In an effort to be extremely charitable to Biden, considering him in his own context, let’s disregard the racists from Truman backward...and only examine men who were Biden’s direct political contemporaries.
For two reasons, I will not censor the remarks made by these men. First, they do not deserve to be shielded from the reality of their words and policies. Second, I do not believe in sanitizing our history; we should be willing to simultaneously consider what good these men did with what harm they caused. In the United States, 2 of the 10 most popular presidents in history were slaveowners, and 4 others in the top 10 are notorious for either violent relationships with indigenous/minority communities or virulently racist claims. Biden perfectly demonstrates the kind of fact-free nostalgia created when we shy away from discussing the pock-marks on the legacies of great men...or at least, of men who held a great office. Let’s start with the ambiguous and work our way to the damnable.
The 2008 Democratic primary concluded with Barack Obama’s naming of Joe Biden as his running mate. During the contest, Bill Clinton courted Ted Kennedy’s support for Hillary Clinton, saying of Obama: “a few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.” The timing of that revelation could not have been more fitting, as America’s Black community grew increasingly critical of Clinton’s impact on communities of color.
In 1971, one year before Joe Biden was elected to the United States Senate, the U.N. voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, receiving significant support from African delegates. A distraught Ronald Reagan - then the governor of California - called President Nixon and vented, “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries - damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Reagan is largely considered a good-faith actor even by his critics, and these extreme and anecdotal remarks predate his presidency by a decade. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that Reagan’s presidency saw the explosion of America’s epidemic of mass (Black) incarceration, and he was clearly not immune to racist thought.
Speaking of which, Reagan got significant pressure to increase the size of the American police state from a certain familiar-looking senator.
When Nixon’s Secretary of State William Rogers received fawning press coverage over his visit to Africa, Nixon consoled a jealous Henry Kissinger with the affirmation: “Henry, let’s leave the niggers to Bill and we’ll take care of the rest of the world.” Nixon’s supporters remind us that he oversaw the greatest expansion of school integration in history. Nixon’s critics remind us that he bent over backwards to avoid alienating segregationist state governments.
Incidentally, Nixon’s administration got help in opposing desegregated “forced” busing from a prominent Democrat.
Finally...In 1967, two years before Biden would launch his first campaign for a city council seat, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King gave the scorching speech against the war in Vietnam that permanently sundered his relationship with the POTUS. LBJ fumed: "What is that goddamn nigger preacher doing to me? We gave him the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we gave him the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we gave him the War on Poverty. What more does he want?" The Civil Rights measures of the 1960s were the means by which our nation worked to make good on the promises of our Founding Documents. Johnson treated them as concessions to a political movement. His perspective offers us a sobering look into how cynical political liberalism usurps the struggle for civil rights and repurposes it as an electoral tool.
This is not a categorical criticism of any of these men, nor is it an attempt to excuse their words and actions. There are no gods or demons in government, only men. Biden’s framing of Donald Trump as uniquely racist does not stand even a casual perusal of our history...a history that is inextricably interwoven with Biden’s own highly questionable career moves. Biden would paint us a picture of an idyllic America that existed before the Trump era, and one that can be recreated by simply removing Trump from office.
An American prophet suggested that the responsibility is on all of us to know better.
