Biden thinks Trump is the first racist president.
Dude.
“We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has,” Trump’s Democratic challenger said, the Washington Post reports.
The “peculiar institution” loomed large over the first few decades of American presidential history. Not only did enslaved laborers help build the White House all of the earliest presidents (except for John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams) owned enslaved people. George Washington kept some 300 bondsmen at his Mount Vernon plantation. Thomas Jefferson—despite once calling slavery an “assemblage of horrors”—owned at least 175 enslaved workers at one time. James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson each kept several dozen enslaved workers, and Martin Van Buren owned one during his early career.
William Henry Harrison owned several inherited enslaved people before becoming president in 1841, while John Tyler and James K. Polk were both enslavers during their stints in office. Zachary Taylor, who served from 1849-1850, was the last chief executive to keep enslaved people while living in the White House. He owned some 150 enslaved workers on plantations in Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana.
And then there were the racists who didn’t own slaves.
I think it’s fair to say Trump is by far the most overt and explicit racist we’ve had in many years, but the only? Please.
Comments
10 responses to “The only racist…”
Sigh. You guys had the pick of far better people than Biden :(
I would read Biden’s comments,” we’ve had racists in my lifetime”. Or in the past 50 or 60 years, So “we’ve had” meaning exactly we living. That fits rhetorically, and I doubt he’s unaware of pre-Civil War slaveholders. I’d bet he’d know much of the Wilson BON story as well.
Just saying….
Holms, I know. It makes me so FURIOUS. Why why why did we get stuck with Biden?
Loren, could be, I guess, but “He’s the first one that has” doesn’t quite sound like that.
I’m sure he’s well aware of the slaveholders, but a lot of people define racism very narrowly, such that it excludes even slaveholders. That was the story the slaveholders told about themselves.
We got stuck with Biden because we need to wean off the stupid assholes gradually, a return to fully competent, articulate people would be too much of a shock. Biden is our rest area on our ascent back from hell. :D
But (to take the joke seriously for a moment) we could have done that and still have had someone without Biden’s many liabilities. A mediocrity but without…all…that…
I think we’re stuck with him, hopefully he won’t be so bad. He does have an annoying tendency to say stupid shit, so we will have some presidential commentary forthcoming either way? :D
Here’s an interesting take, it was sort of soothing to read even though I don’t fully agree, Hillary way outclasses Biden in my opinion >>
https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/joe-biden-says-stupid-things-and-nobody-cares-43c7db9a81a6
It’s a useful lie anyways… It’s what the people we need voting think.
Perhaps Biden will pick someone truly transformative as Vice President…
I blame several factors.
1. Default choice bias. Biden ran/is running on being the continuation of the Obama administration. This makes him the default. Because he was the default, he didn’t have to prove himself and other candidates had to prove both that they were worthy and that Biden wasn’t. Our national media played into this narrative, strengthening it. Which brings me to
2. Our national media suck donkey balls. Not only did they portray Biden as the default choice, their coverage of other candidates was ludicrously slanted. They also are complicit in reinforcing the notion that we always have to vote for
3. The lesser of two evils. This is a disastrous strategy. It’s a greedy algorithm that’s basically analogous to hill climbing, and that shit quite often returns terrible results.
My first thought was ‘in living memory’, too–and then I hit the Nixon years and the Southern Strategy, and Reagan’s “welfare queens”, and I gave the fuck up–Trump is the most nakedly racist president in living history, but that’s about as far as I’ll grant.