Joe Biden is a good man.
He’s consistent and loyal — he’s been married to the same woman for more than forty years, served the American people while in Washington for more than fifty years, and steadfastly had Barack Obama’s back for eight. He’s an optimistic, empathetic, and mature man. He’s earnest and tells the truth as much as any modern day politician is allowed.
I love it when Joe Biden suddenly launches into a story. When he starts off a sentence with those two words, “you know,” his eyes become wistful. And then I smile to myself as I settle in for his latest pearls of wisdom. At almost eighty years old now, Joe Biden is a fountain of knowledge, experience, and information. He might not be as quick in his advancing age, but Joe is a guy whose words you should heed.
I will be voting for Joe Biden in November.
Now Joe Biden is not a perfect candidate. Because he is a white man who was born in the first half of the twentieth century, or a few years after the end of the first economic depression. So, Joe Biden has some racial blind spots. He was formerly against busing children of color into white neighborhoods, co-authored the 1994 crime bill that imprisoned so many people of color, and chaired the all male Senate Committee that performed the unfair inquisition of Anita Hill.
And just recently, while being interviewed by Charlamagne tha God on the Breakfast Club, a popular radio show, Biden looked straight into the camera after breaking into smile and said, “You’ve got more questions. Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” I shook my head and emitted a long sigh. They’re going to ding him for that comment. And sure enough, Daniel Cameron, the first black Attorney General of Kentucky and a Republican, pounced like a feline on a ball of twine. Cameron gleefully professed his support for Donald Trump before accusing Joe Biden of generalizing members of the black community. “Mr. Vice President look at me, I am black,” said Mr. Cameron. “We are not all the same, sir. I am not in chains. My mind is my own. And you can’t tell me how to vote because of the color of my skin.”
I imagined members of Mr. Biden’s team cringing as they watched Mr. Cameron, a handsome young man of thirty-four, give his eloquent speech. I cringed because I know that black people don’t view themselves as a monolith. There are more than forty million of us living in this country, one that we love despite itself. We come in different shades, subscribe to different social and religious beliefs, and aspire to disparate goals.
Of course Joe Biden apologized for the “you ain’t black” generalization of the black electorate. He’s had to apologize, walk back, and self-reflect more than once when it comes to race. Which is exactly the point. Joe Biden, as a grown man, is able to accept responsibility and is willing to grow when it comes issues of race. Biden’s capacity and willingness to grow is encapsulated by his recent action as a candidate. Kamala Harris, an unapologetically black and Indian women, eviscerated John Biden at the first democratic debate a few months ago. After she turned to Joe and highlighted his short-sighted opposition to busing, subtly accusing him of propagating racist policy, everyone thought Joe absorbed a knockout blow. A few months later, presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden, picked Kamala to be his running mate. By selecting Kamala Harris, Joe Biden exhibited his commitment to becoming a better representative and advocate for black Americans. Kamala Harris will help Joe Biden monitor those blind spots.
Donald Trump — age seventy-five — was born just a few years after Joe Biden arrived in the world. When the Central Park Five — a group of young black and Latino teenagers based in New York who’d been confined to prison for raping and beating a white woman in 1989 — were released from prison after being proven innocent of heinous crimes, Donald Trump, a wealthy real estate mogul who publicly called for the execution of these young boys, did not apologize. Some decades later, after When They See Us premiered on Netflix in 2019, President Donald Trump was asked about what he thought about the Central Park Five. Did Donald Trump express any ability for reflection and growth in this area? Did he at least offer any apology to those men? No. He did not.
In a recent interview, Trump puckered his lips to make an oft-said claim:“No one has done more black Americans than I have.”
Oh really?
Right now, the unemployment rate for black Americans is twice that of white Americans, Covid-19 is killing black people at disproportionate rates, the cops are killing unarmed black men and women at disproportionate rates, and hate crimes are on the rise. What has Trump done to alleviate the suffering of black Americans? Nothing except to denigrate high profile black citizens — Maxine Waters in an example — who dare to oppose him. Four years ago, when speaking before a raucous audience at one of his rallies, white MAGA hat casting a shadow over his beady eyes, Trump asked this ridiculous question of the black populace: “What do you have to lose?”
We’ve lost a lot under Trump over four years. We’ve lost a whole lot.
It is more than apparent that Donald Trump values ingrained white supremacy more than he values black bodies and minds. Most black Americans — I would say at least eighty-eight percent — understand Donald Trump’s racism to be a fact of life and will therefore vote against him during the upcoming election season. That leaves approximately twelve percent of the black populace that is either undecided or leaning toward voting for Trump in November.
Most black Americans who will vote for Trump will be men — thirteen percent of black men and four percent of black women voted for Trump in 2016. As I black man myself, I cannot understand why and how some black people can be moved to vote for that piece of shit. This is Donald Trump, the same man who sought to prevent black people from moving into his apartment complexes in the 1970’s and referred to Neo Nazis as very fine people in the summer of 2017. Unlike Joe Biden, time and events have not seemed to lead to any sort of growth with Trump.
I’ve heard rumors that some black people are attracted to Trump’s tacky lifestyle. Trump is rich and brash about his wealth and revels in the privilege that his skin color and money affords him. While it may be true that some black Americans carry these lofty aspirations, their skin color prevents them occupying the same rare air as Trump, a rich white man with seemingly no limitations.
What are the small percentage of black people who vote for an avowed racist trying to prove? Alan West, a famous black republican and former member of the United States House of Representatives, insists that his embrace of modern republicanism is a reflection of a free mind. For he is unlike those other black people who’ve been herded into the democratic plantation.
Prominent black republicans believe they are a special breed of black American, as if their embrace of modern republicanism sets them apart from those unfortunate black people who always vote to elect democratic politicians. These black Americans are of course living under a dangerous delusion. Republicanism does not protect them from the real dangers that come with being a black man or woman in this country. Their skin color makes them a target for white racial violence and intolerance. They’re no freer than the rest of us who vote democrat.
Look at what happened to Michael Steele, a bespectacled prominent black republican from Baltimore, Maryland. Shortly after Obama won the White House in 2008, and became the first black United States President, white republican power brokers responded to Obama’s ascendancy by selecting Michael Steele to lead the Republican National Committee. Steele was instrumental in guiding Republicans to a historic victory during the 2010 midterm elections, achieving a net gain of sixty-three seats in the House of Representatives and six seats in the United States Senate. Michael Steele’s reward for victory was his ultimate dismissal.
Herman Cain was a black man who ran as a Republican for president in 2012. Cain, a former CEO of Godfather’s pizza, hadn’t earned any experience running for office before he declared his candidacy. I think I know why Herman Cain made the decided to run too. He was like many prominent black republicans who were responding negatively to the meteoric rise of Obama, the vaunted black democrat: they were afraid that Obama’s ascendance would take away from their status as token republicans. Republican primary voters briefly flirted with Cain, the champion of the “9–9–9” junk tax policy. But after a few weeks atop the polls, Cain’s popularity fell precipitously before he ultimately dropped out of the race. In the age of Covid-19, Mr. Cain, age 74 at the time, espoused the views of many republicans. He didn’t want to wear no stinking mask as protection from Covid-19. He attended a Trump rally in Tulsa Oklahoma, mask less, and posed for photos that were posted on twitter. He died of Covid-19 a few weeks later.
So Joe Biden was definitely wrong in a big way. Black people who side with republicans are still very black. Because their skin color makes them more likely than anyone to encounter violence from police, die from Covid-19 illness, or get fired after performing well at a job. But if you sort of finagle with the “you ain’t black” statement made by Biden, you can arrive at reasons for why some black Americans choose modern republicanism. Many are selfish and solipsistic aggrandizers of their own merit. Some are elitist and opportunistic. Some more even hold racist views against black people who vote democrat. They are the things that most black democrats are not.
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