Joe Biden’s History of Racist Comments

Ever since he came to Washington half a century ago, Joe Biden has been on the wrong side of history. From working with known segregationist Strom Thurmond to pass mandatory minimums for African-Americans, to voting in favor of protecting the tax-exempt status of segregated school, to praising the civility of segregationists, Joe Biden can’t be trusted to unite Americans.

Let’s take a look at a timeline of Joe Biden’s racially charged comments:

• 1973: “I have had a number of conversations with southern senators, I think there is a change in attitude… Other than the fact they still call me ‘boy,’ I think they’ve changed their mind a little bit.”
• 1975: I do not buy the concept, popular in the ’60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’ I don’t buy that. I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation. And I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”
• October 1975: “I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace — someone who’s not afraid to stand up and offend people, someone who wouldn’t pander but would say what the American people know in their gut is right.”
• February 1976: “We Hear That All The Time, About It Being Black And White, Rich And Poor, Christian And Jew — Therefore We’re Strong. I Told You Then, I Thought That Was A Bunch Of Poppycock.”
• 1977: “Unless we do something about [desegregaion policies], my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.”
• May 1984: “[Jesse Jackson] is one of the brightest guys around. That boy ain’t no dummy.”
• June 1991: “We passed a law through the leadership of Senator Thurmond and myself and others, a law that says if you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years. You get no probation. The judge doesn’t have a choice.”
• November 1993: “[U]nless we do something about that cadre of young people – tens of thousands of them, born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing … because they literally have not been socialized … [A] portion of them will become the predators 15 years from now.”
• July 1993:  “The Senator made a very moving and eloquent speech, as a son of the Confederacy, acknowledging that it was time to change and yield to a position that Senator Carol Moseley-Braun raised on the Senate floor, not granting a federal charter to an organization made up of many fine people who continue to display the Confederate flag as a symbol.”
  
• July 2003: “I was honored to work with [segregationsit Strom Thurmond], privileged to serve with him, proud to call him my friend.”
• November 2006: “[Delaware] was a slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.”
• October 2007: Biden said schools perform worse if they have more Black students: “There’s less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5% that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with.”
• January 2007: “You got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
• February 2007: “You Cannot Go To A 7-Eleven Or A Dunkin Donuts [In Delaware] Unless You Have A Slight Indian Accent. I’m Not Joking.”
• August 2007: “I spent last summer going through the black sections of my town, holding rallies in parks, trying to get black men to understand it is not unmanly to wear a condom, getting women to understand they can say no, getting people in the position where testing matters. I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS.”
• July 2010: Eulogy for Former KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd: “He was a friend, he was a mentor and he was a guide.”
• August 2012: “[Romney’s] Going To Let The Big Banks Once Again Write Their Own Rules—Unchain Wall Street! He’s Going To Put You All Back In Chains.”
• September 2014: “On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.”
• February 2015: ‘If you ever come to the train station with me you’ll notice that I have great relationships with [the Somali community] because there’s an awful lot of them driving cabs and are friends of mine.”
• June 2019: “Even in the days when I got there, the Democratic Party still had seven or eight old-fashioned Democratic segregationists. You’d get up and you’d argue like the devil with them. Then you’d go down and have lunch or dinner together.”
• September 2019: When asked about segregation and slavery: “Social workers help parents deal with how to raise their children. It’s not like they don’t want to help, they don’t know what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television—excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the—make sure that kids hear words.”
• June 2019: “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me boy. He always called me son.”
• August 2019: “[W]hy aren’t we sending into homes of economically distressed families, whether they are of color or otherwise, why aren’t we sending into homes social workers who help the single moms or the single dads know what they should be doing raising their children … the fact of the matter is when people from minority communities come or don’t show up for parent-teacher meetings – why don’t they come? Bingo. It’s about trust and it’s about being embarrassed because they don’t know what to do.”
• May 2020: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”