THE GREAT WHITE NOPE
Who’s The Real Racist?
Totally not a trick question
Donald Trump’s racist tendencies have been on public display for many years. The US Department of Justice sued him for discriminating against prospective black tenants in the 1970s. He expressed violent racist sentiments in a full-page NY Times ad related to the Central Park Five rape case of the 1980s. A decade later, he made bigoted remarks about indigenous people in Connecticut who were planning to build casinos. He was a leader in the birther conspiracy claiming that former President Barack Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen and was therefore ineligible for office in the 2000s.
It seems that roughly once per decade he steps in some form of racist or bigoted crap — including his years in office, with open hostility toward the BLM movement in 2020, and his both-sidesing of the Charlottesville white supremacist pride parade in 2017.
He has excluded a number of black people who had sought to rent from him years ago. He has also used some stunning language — rude, insensitive, hurtful language — for which he has never apologized.
But what, exactly, has he done to affect the lives of black Americans collectively? Let’s hold that thought for a moment, because President Joe Biden, in sharp contrast, never says anything disrespectful about black people, aside from once praising Barack Obama for being the world’s most successful apprentice white person, declaring him “articulate and bright and clean.”
Joe Biden, unlike Trump, has a record of sponsoring national legislation that affects the lives of every black American, hopefully for the better. By recalling his record in the US Senate, we can appreciate how much of an ally he really is.
Let’s begin with his sponsorship of the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1983. Federal agents were granted power to seize assets from suspects. Not convicts, suspects. And of course the American criminal justice system targets blacks and other minorities disproportionately, so the burden naturally falls on those least able to resist the shakedown, or afford the harm done.
He also helped shape the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, alongside flagrant white supremacist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina [Biden was not named as a sponsor but was involved in drafting it as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman]. This brought in new federal crimes and longer sentences, lowered the the burden of proof for asset forfeiture to the agents’ “belief,” and introduced the “equitable sharing” scheme allowing state and local cops to keep up to 80 percent of any assets seized. What this did to black people in rural and small-town America is itself criminal.
Our Joe also drafted the Senate version of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, signed by an eager Bill Clinton. With this sadistic piece of legislation, America reached new levels of authoritarianism with greatly increased criminal sentences and prison capacities, and big federal grants to fatten police department budgets and hire more staff. This would put a lot more black men behind bars.
Biden has called the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (Title IV of the ’94 Crime Control Act above) his proudest accomplishment. Unlike much of Biden’s legislative output, the VAWA has actually yielded some social benefit, but, like everything he touches, it involves increased surveillance, police targeting, and incarceration of black men — an endeavor to which he has literally devoted his political career.
This patently racist legislation would dovetail neatly with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 [not Biden sponsored, but he was one of only 21 Democrats who voted Yea], designed to “end welfare as we know it” (code for doing dirt to poor black people), which drove the least fortunate among us out of their homes and onto the streets. Luckily, there were plenty of cops to welcome them.
Again as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as a champion of the bank-friendly Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.
This one introduced means-testing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, forcing more Americans to file under Chapter 13, which involves repayment schemes, sometimes lasting many years. It also made it impossible to discharge any student loans. (President Biden’s student loan forgiveness is like the occasional gulp of air you might be permitted by the mob stooge holding your head under the faucet.)
This legislation has hit single-parent families harder than any other group. Since there are substantially more female heads of household than male, the burden has fallen on women disproportionately. And of course, anything bad for American women will necessarily be worse for American black women.
Biden’s legislative record and voting record tell us that he fears and despises working class and poor blacks, men especially, and actively strives to do them harm. Trump already spent four years in the White House and hasn’t done one percent of the real, measurable damage to black lives that Biden has. Donald, as we know from his extensive history of accomplishing next to nothing, is mostly talk. Yes, he has insulted women, black folks, and other minorities; he has spouted threatening rhetoric; and he has failed to denounce white-supremacist assholes. But our Joe has actually harmed millions of black Americans, and, by extension, their families, through federal legislation that bites deep into all of our lives.
The racism rooted in Biden’s rotten soul is now driving his devotion to Israel’s brutal annihilation of Gaza and its people. Go ahead and “but Trump” all you like: Biden is inescapably evil. Neither man is fit for public office, but understand, President Biden is the more racist of the two, by a mile.
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