Biden’s Age-Old Racism Resurfaces, and the Media Snoozes

During former President Donald Trump’s time in office, liberals argued relentlessly that Trump was a racist.

The allegation revealed the longstanding hollowness of their arguments, as now every policy, idea, or politician they don’t like is “racist,” or in the new, ratcheted-up lingo “white supremacist.”

They labeled Trump this even as he had numerous black defenders in the nation’s celebrity and political classes, who were often attacked for that by the same liberals who professed their own tolerance ad nauseam, and orchestrated policies in criminal justice reform and economic development that clearly benefited, and won praise from, black Americans.

So, now that Trump is gone, can we talk about President Joe Biden’s actual racism?

It was on display last week, and there’s a good chance many people missed it because much of the liberal mainstream media glossed over it.

Biden was discussing his administration’s plan to attack COVID-19, including efforts to improve vaccination rates in minority communities, at a town hall meeting in Milwaukee hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

According to the White House’s own official transcript of the broadcast, Biden said of the online appointment system to get a vaccine, “The other part — portion is, a lot of people don’t know how to register. Not everybody in the community — in the Hispanic and the African American community, particularly in rural areas that are distant and/or inner-city districts — know how to use — know-how to get online to determine how to get in line for that COVID vaccination at the Walgreens or at the particular store.”

He added, “So we’re also — I’ve committed to spending a billion dollars on public education to help people figure out how they can get in there. That’s why we’re also trying to set up mass vaccination centers, like places in stadiums and the like.”

In other words, according to Biden, black and Hispanic Americans are too dumb to figure out how to use the computer – but maybe they can figure out how to find a stadium, one of the largest buildings in any city.

Think that’s stretching Biden’s comment? Just imagine the reaction if those words came out of Trump’s mouth.

Or listen to Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, who is black.

In an interview with Fox News, Donalds said, “It’s clear that again the president just sees that black people or brown people don’t have the same abilities.”

“It’s the president putting his foot in his mouth – again – when it comes to people of color.”

Donalds added that Biden suggesting blacks or Hispanics have “less of an ability than somebody who is white is just ridiculous, it’s disgusting.”

Yet Donalds also noted Biden will continue to get “passes” for such remarks, despite the fact they illustrate his own history of racist thinking.

That history is worth reviewing because it proves Donalds’ point: that the mainstream media basically excused Biden with grace that would never be extended to a Republican.

For example, outside of Fox News and The Washington Times reporting on the comments, and Newsweek reprinting his entire townhall transcript in full, the media largely ignored Biden’s demeaning remarks.

But that history is there to be seen.

Biden’s own vice president once suggested he was a racist for opposing busing to end segregation in schools. She also accused him of overfriendliness with Southern senators who were actual segregationists. She wasn’t wrong.

Biden in 1975 pushed for a ban on federal funds to school districts assigned teachers or schools “for reasons of race.” In an interview that year, he said, “I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race,’” He talked about wanting to keep his own children, as he said in 1977, out of the “racial jungle” created by integrating public schools.

He didn’t evolve with time.

Biden in 2006 pointed out the influx of Asian-Americans by saying, “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.”

Before Biden ran with him, he ran against Barack Obama, whom in 2007 he had referred to as the first mainstream black presidential candidate who is “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

But some of this isn’t ancient history. Kamala Harris offered her observation of Biden’s position on desegregation in 2019.

In a presidential debate that same year, he committed what The New York Times generously called “a stumble over race.”

During the event, Biden was asked about segregation and in replying about its effects on black families, said, “We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help, they don’t want — they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the phone — make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background — will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.”

Again, as a candidate in 2019, Biden argued, “Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids.”

Just last August, Biden said, “Unlike the African-American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly diverse attitudes about different things.”

In March 2020, as Biden was ascending to the Democratic nomination, Kamau Franklin, a New York lawyer turned podcaster, wrote at the left-wing website Truthout, “When it comes to race, Joe Biden’s record and rhetoric reflect the broader hypocrisy of U.S. politics.” He was referring to the fact that Biden could one-day label Trump a racist, and then on the next tout his friendship with a Mississippi Democrat who once said, “the white race is the superior race and the Negro race an inferior race and the races must be kept separate by law.” 

“The mainstream Democratic Party has perfected the art of subtle — or at least subtler-than-Trump — racism,” Franklin wrote. “We must ask ourselves: How will we challenge the president’s racist actions, even if a Democrat is elected?”

The answer seems simple, based on the reaction Biden generated last week: We won’t challenge them, unless it’s done by conservative media.