Joe must go! That was word from MSNBC contributor (and Time editor-at-large) Anand Giridharadas on Joy Reid's MSNBC show Saturday morning. While acknowledging that Biden is not a guy-in-a-hood racist, Giridharadas accused Biden of being a racist of a more subtle sort: a throwback to the "Mad Men" era, a "Thanksgiving uncle" racist, and someone who believes "Americaness means whiteness."
While mentioning Biden's history of racially-dubious statements [such as calling then-candidate Obama "clean, bright and articulate"], Giridharadas focused on Biden's statement at this past week's debate. Asked what he would do to repair the legacy of slavery, Biden implied that blacks lack parenting skills.
Giridharadas opined that Biden would be the wrong person to take on President Trump, whom he accused of being a white nationalist. Giridharadas' concluding words on Biden: "He has to drop out." Check out the transcript below to read all the nonsense.
MSNBC's AM Joy
September 14, 2019
10:01 a.m. Eastern
JOE BIDEN [from debate of 9/12]: We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It's not that they don't want to help. They don't know quite what to do! Play the radio, make sure you have the television, make sure you have the record player on at night. The phone. Make sure the kids here words. A kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear four million fewer words spoken by the time they get there.
(....)
JOY REID: I noticed your tweets. You went on a tweet storm about that comment, that answer that Joe Biden gave, and this is what you wrote: "Joe Biden's answer on how to address the legacy of slavery was appalling, and disqualifying," you wrote. "It ended in a sermon implying that black parents don't know how to raise their own children." And said, "this cannot go on."
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: I think that on Thursday night, without intending to, Joe Biden threw himself a retirement party . . . And there have always been, and this is really important to understand, two traditions, two manifestations, of racism in American life. There's racism with a hood, which is very easy to see, and there's racism with a smile. There's the racism of firebombing churches, which is very obvious. And then there's the racism of "can I touch your hair?" There's the racism that is flagrant, and the racism that is insidious. And it is very clear, and everybody knows this, that Joe Biden is not out of that tradition, the evil tradition of racism of the hood. And he's not a white supremacist. But Joe Biden has revealed himself to be deeply steeped in, anchored in, and unwilling to cut ties to that second, subtler tradition of racism in America life . . . It is Thanksgiving-uncle racism, right? . . . Joe Biden has so clearly not changed. He has not changed. He is the person that we all know who is so steeped in the idea that Americaness means whiteness.
The basic trope of racism has always been: what you are observing is actually their own fault. And on Thursday night, Joe Biden, who wants to be President of the United States, and run against a white nationalist, reprised that theme, and basically blamed black people's parenting skills, and lack of music, for the legacy of slavery. He has to drop out.
