When the primary talking point of an American president is also a categorical smear of 60% of the American people, that president is playing with fire. And judging by Joe Biden’s lame walk-back of his recent comments about the “systemic racism that plagues American life,” maybe his handlers are beginning to realize it.

Or perhaps South Carolina Senator Tim Scott simply forced Biden’s hand last Wednesday when, following the president’s speech to a third of Congress, he said, “Hear me clearly. America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination, and it’s wrong to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.”

“No, I don’t think the American people are racist,” said Biden in an interview after his speech, “but I think after 400 years, African Americans have been left in a position where they are so far behind the eight-ball in terms of education, health, in terms of opportunity. I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow and before that, slavery, has had a cost, and we have to deal with it.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, but the big question is the one that columnist Liz Peek asks: “How can [the] country be racist if its people are not?”

Unfortunately, Biden’s questioner failed to ask it.

“A nation is defined by its citizens,” Peek writes. “Its people determine whether a country is optimistic, educated, hard-working, fair-minded and … whether it is racist. Surely a country cannot be racist if its people twice elected a black president or if they back policies demanding equality.”

This is especially true if that black president was elected despite having been the least experienced candidate in our nation’s history, and despite his first term having exposed him as a race-baiting, anti-American mediocrity.

In any case, Biden’s walk-back is missing something — namely, a directive that his federal government stop perpetuating policies that are utterly at odds with his professed beliefs. Critical Race Theory, whose fundamental purpose is to categorize white people as racist and drench them in white guilt, is infecting our government institutions, our school systems, and our corporate HR departments. How else are we to interpret Biden’s silence regarding these policies except as tacit approval of them?

Following the jury’s conviction of Officer Derek Chauvin on all counts for the death of George Floyd, Biden had a chance to soothe racial tensions by talking about how justice was served and how the system ultimately worked. Instead, he threw gas on the fire and his country under the bus. “It was a murder in the full light of day,” he said, “and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism … that is a stain on our nation’s soul.”

And here we thought Barack Obama’s incessant apologies on the world stage were a disgrace.

Conversations about race are inherently difficult ones, primarily because the Left is so intolerant. And yet Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff purposefully wades in: “America has been ‘dealing’ for decades with the effects of slavery and Jim Crow on African-American education, health, and opportunity. Welfare checks go to blacks to a disproportionate degree. In terms of health, blacks benefit to a disproportionate extent from free care (Medicaid) and from subsidized care (the Affordable Care Act). In terms of education and opportunity, Blacks receive preferential admission to American colleges and universities — elite and otherwise.”

As Mirengoff put it, “Now that Biden is on record that Americans aren’t racist, let’s see him act as though he actually believes this.”