The Patriot Post® · Biden Exposes the Democrat Party's Racial Mindset
In one sentence, Joe Biden encapsulated decades of Democrat Party thinking. But just in case his message wasn’t clear, Nikole Hannah-Jones, architect of the New York Times’s historically revisionist Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, offered a similar take on the matter. “There is a difference between being politically black and being racially black,” she tweeted before deleting it. “I am not defending anyone, but we all know this and should stop pretending that we don’t.”
America should stop pretending all right. And the first pretense that should be tossed on the ash heap of history is the self-aggrandizing notion that the Democrat Party is the only entity standing between an inherently racist America and a black American community that must vote Democrat for their self-preservation — and to avoid being deemed “inauthentic” at best or race traitors at worst.
Yet if people like Hannah-Jones wish to illuminate America’s history of racism, the Democrat Party’s role in it would be a great place to start. Why not reveal that, from 1868 through 1948, the Democrat Party embraced political platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject? Or the fact that the 1924 Democrat Convention known as the “Klanbake” was held in Madison Square Garden, during which a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright, and a KKK celebration attended by 10,000 hooded Klansmen was held in New Jersey immediately afterwards?
Shouldn’t more Americans know that Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, banning slavery, guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves, and granting black Americans the right to vote, respectively? Or that Democrats provided the lion’s share of the opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including a filibuster led by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), a former KKK member, Kleagle (recruiter), and Exalted Cyclops?
As for Democrat assertions that America is institutionally racist, shouldn’t Americans be reminded that Democrats segregated the federal government at the direction of Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, that Democrat Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Conner turned the dogs and the water hoses on black protesters in 1963 in Birmingham, that Democrat Mississippi Governor Ross Robert Barnett denied James Meredith entry to Mississippi University, or that Democrats passed Jim Crow laws and Black Civil Codes that created separate drinking fountains and other segregated facilities?
How about illuminating the failures of LBJ’s Great Society responsible for a massive spike in out-of-wedlock birthrates and single-parent families in black communities, and the despicably racist remark attributed to LBJ as his rationale for doing so?
And how about reminding America that eight years of Barack Obama’s administration — with a president who shaped a divisive tone in racially charged cases, insisted most Americans believe the nation is racist, accused religious Americans of being xenophobic “bitter clingers,” and hired an attorney general who asserted America is a “nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race — widened the racial divide in the minds of a majority of Americans?
How about policy? Despite a nearly 60-year alliance between Democrats and national education unions, the black/white achievement gap in education remains as wide as it ever was. Despite the deleterious effect on black employment and wages, Democrats still support amnesty and sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants at best, and open borders at worst. Despite largely gang-related, black-on-black crime sprees that afflict many Democrat-controlled urban centers, Democrats still stoke anti-police sentiment based on false narratives generated by an equally corrupt media. And despite the party’s feigned commitment to Rule of Law and the Constitution, they have precipitated some of the most draconian lockdowns in the nation — during a pandemic Democrats also seek to exploit in racial terms.
The Democrat Party’s future? Even more divisive. “We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice,” stated Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) during a 2019 panel discussion at the Netroots Nation convention in Philadelphia. “We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice.”
Those who refuse to toe the party line? Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been so throughly demeaned for his conservatism that “Uncle Clarence” is defined in the Urban dictionary as an “African American who has improved his lot by kow-towing to the white establishment; an Uncle Tom; an oreo.”
By contrast, Pressley is one of an increasing number of Democrats pushing the party to embrace identity politics, where the content of one’s character takes a back seat to skin color, gender, and sexual preferences. Thus, it is completely unsurprising that a recent Washington Post op-ed authored by seven female black activists warns Biden that when it comes to selecting a running mate, he has no choice. “Though we have propped up the Democratic Party for decades, the return on our investment in the party might as well read, ‘insufficient funds,’” the writers assert. “Those days are over. We are here to collect.”
Perhaps those women might might ask themselves a simple question: Why haven’t they “collected” long ago? The answer is as simple as it is damning. Columnist Dov Fischer explains, “The strength of any political interest group in this country is to keep both parties guessing, both vying for your vote. When you signal to one side that they own you — or let them believe that they have you enslaved to them — you lose your leverage.”
It is precisely that loss of leverage that engendered Joe Biden’s statement, and no amount of backtracking or pretending it was said in jest can obscure it.
“There is no question — the Democrats cannot win an election without a 90 percent Black vote,” Fischer reminds us. “So they turn every screw they can to maintain that hegemony.”
That’s as “authentic” as it gets.