RACISM AND KEEPING IT REAL

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

 

 

I know that even before writing this that there are people who will not agree with what I am about to say here. I can take the incoming flak. I consider myself to be a liberal and part of my core beliefs are things to do with fairness. Sometimes I agree with people’s general beliefs but I am not a big fan of bullshit no matter who is slinging it.

I am a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and believe the American cops have killed a number of blacks in cold blood without just cause. I am a 100% in favour of complete civil rights. I also believe that there is a lot of racism in the US and that that country had a horrible past of slavery and Jim Crow laws.

Joy Reid

 

Here is where I take exception to some black voices, particularly show hosts on MSNBC like Joy Reid, Al Sharpton and some weekend black hosts. They all claim over and over that black women are the core of the Democratic Party. They have all applied pressure on Joe Biden to select a black woman as his running mate. Joy Reid likes to say that black voters are not a monolith like they have other options. They really don’t but she keeps saying it. It isn’t complicated as to why most blacks would vote Democrat instead of Republican. First of all the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Bill in 1964. The Democrats elected a black man, Barak Obama, president of the United States twice. Obama had 2 black Attorney Generals when he was in office. There are 52 black Democratic men and women in congress. There is only 1 black Republican in congress and he isn’t running again. Add on all the social programs the Democratic Party is in favour of and it is absolutely a no brainer for blacks to vote Democrat. Oh, and one last thing on this topic, you can be a racist in the Republican Party and still remain in office but you can’t be a racist in the Democratic Party.

Joy Reid is very selective in the data she uses to support her claims about black women voters like something close to 90% of black women who do vote vote Democrat. This is true but all black women and black men for that matter don’t vote. Black people make up about 13-14% of the American population. In most areas of the US a black person can’t get elected without a large white turnout supporting them. There are approximately 50 million black Americans in America. In the last general election Trump won states where over 31 million black Americans live. The math says that close to 60% of black voters had no effect on getting a Democrat elected president. It’s just a fact.

What is rarely mentioned by Joy Reid and others who think like her is that white people are not a monolith either. Back in the 60s a number of whites marched with Martin Luther King. LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act in 64. Millions of white people have stood up to racism over the last 60 years. If you watch the protests and demonstrations on TV you can clearly see many white people supporting Black Lives Matter.

Lots of white people supporting Black Lives Matter

 

Let’s go back to the Democratic primaries which occurred some time ago. Biden was struggling. Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were giving him a run for his money and had a Democratic party favourability of over 45%. The Democratic “old boys and girls” people behind the scenes were starting to panic. Could the progressive candidates stand a chance against Trump? In stepped the 79 year old Jim Clyburn from South Carolina who threw his total support behind Biden and the rest is history. Everyone knew that Biden was prone to gaffs but he also is a very likable guy who shows sincere empathy for his fellow citizens. Biden is now leading Trump by a substantial margin.

So what else went on at those Democrat primaries? The front runners were Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Mayor Pete who all had their moments. There were a lot of candidates. Two of them were black, Corey Booker and Kamala Harris. Corey Booker is a very likable guy and many had seen former prosecutor Harris effectively go after Republicans in hearings. In the 1^st debate Harris pulled the rug out from Biden about bussing. It was a well planned attack that ended with her saying “….and that little girl was me!” What she didn’t mention was that there was no bussing in her high school years because she was living in Canada during those times. In the 2^nd debate Harris had the rug pulled out from her by an obscure and weird candidate from Hawaii. It didn’t look good on Harris. She was done.

My question to Joy Reid is if black women voters in the Democratic Party are so powerful why did Booker or Harris have so few votes for them? There were a lot of blacks in California who weren’t big fans of Harris’s because she had a number of them incarcerated.

It took a long time for Biden to pick his VP running mate. He said he was going to pick a woman. This was not good enough for Joy Reid and her friends. It had to be a black woman, not a Hispanic/Latino who are 20% of the US population, not a white woman like progressive and effective Elizabeth Warren who is really liked by at least 45% of the Democratic Party. To me it seemed like Biden was almost being blackmailed. Don’t pick a black VP running mate and maybe black voters would just stay home because there would be nothing in it for them.

I am not saying Harris is a total disaster. She is very bright and had a great laugh. On the other hand she seems to go where the wind blows sometimes like taking back her plan for universal health care.

Biden is 77. He will be 78 in November. A lot of people don’t think he could serve 2 terms if he gets elected and I would agree. Being president is an exhausting job. Normally when a president decides not to run the next person up is the VP.

There is no doubt racism is still a big problem in the US. Personally I would like to see a bit more on TV of black political show hosts saluting white Americans who have stood with blacks over the years. 6% of Californians are black and yet Kamala got elected senator. Also racism isn’t always a 1 way street. Some time ago Kamala Harris mentioned that there were some white kids when she was a kid who weren’t allowed to play with her. I’m not sure what her point was other than show that she too had experienced prejudice. Harris grew up in a middle class family with a well paid single mother. She hasn’t exactly had a hard life. I wonder what black people would say if a white politician said that some black guy stole his bike when he was a kid. Most likely they would say it isn’t fair to label all of us with that. The same thing would be true if white people are generalized as racists. Most of us aren’t.

In the scheme of things what I have written here is not extremely important. To me fairness is fairness. The most important thing at this point in time in America is getting rid of the total asshole that has been ruining the US.  Hopefully the close to 4 year nightmare will come to an end.