06-16-2021, 08:34 PM
(06-16-2021, 04:32 PM)Dill Wrote: I think the statement was bad judgment; Biden has a history of gaffes, and it cannot be denied and this was one.
But I am not clear on how it is "racist," as it doesn't seem to imply one race is better than another. As I understand it, he was implying someone who voted for Trump over him would be voting for a representative of the tradition which has traditionally denied the goals of civil rights/Black politics in the U.S. So in effect he was using a cultural meme to question the identity and cultural "authenticity" of black voters who, from his perspective, were voting against the interests of Blacks as a group in the U.S. And he was speaking from a political platform which set the further advance of civil rights as a goal.
I think it is not "racist" to advance such goals, whereas it may indeed be racist to obstruct or mock them. Were I working to portray the statement as racist, then the best I could probably do is claim Joe was "speaking for" Blacks and implying they couldn't determine their own interests without help from whitey or some such. I.e., whites are better. But I think that's a stretch. Same for his comment "They want to keep you in chains," also frequently cited as evidence of Biden racism.
So I don't think I am "excusing" Biden's statement, not disputing it was a serious gaff and showed bad judgment. Rather I am saying it cannot set up some baseline equivalence with Trump's reference to "shithole countries" or the "great genes theory." It does not at all establish some equality between Biden and Trump on the issue of race and civil rights in the U.S. It does not make Biden "racist too" in the sense Trump is racist, and perhaps the greatest mocker of minorities since Nixon.
What some of my colleagues that are well versed in CRT have done to explain it is that a white person saying anything about the blackness of a member of the African American community is in itself an example of the white supremacy institutions in this country. It is 100% an example of racism. I would agree with you on many things in this argument, but trying to say that statement was not racist is not one of them.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
