Of Joe Biden and Racist Presidents

I guess it’s a good thing we missed out, then, on Mitt Romney, whom Joe proclaimed to an audience of African-Americans just 8 years ago “wants to put y’all back in chains!” We might’ve had our “first racist president” a whole 4 years earlier. I mean, not even Trump wants to “put [black people] back in chains.”

Of course, Joe’s statement is both ahistorical and demonstrably false. I’d like to chalk this latest comment up to just Joe being Joe, but I think that downplays what a truly sad thing dementia can be… Here’s a brief rundown on some of America’s most racist presidents:

There is a whole list of presidents who actually enslaved black people, only two of whom — Washington and Grant — manumitted the people they held in bondage.

Then there’s Andrew Jackson, the founder of Joe’s party, a party he built on the strength of slavers and Indian killers, who is responsible for a little thing known as the “Trail of Tears” … and who called for Congress to impose the infamous “gag rule” that kept any anti-slavery petitions coming before Congress for a generation.

Then there’s James K. Polk, another member of Joe’s party, who prosecuted an unjust war to deprive Mexicans of half their land and “inspired” Americans with the notion that it was their “manifest destiny” to own the entire continent, even if it required moving the native peoples who were already there out of their way. To top it all, Polk fought relentlessly against those who would ban slavery in the territories he had just acquired.

Then there’s Andrew Johnson, another member of Joe’s party, who despite having served as the vice-president of The Great Emancipator, is the one person almost single-handedly responsible for the failure of Reconstruction to provide newly freed African Americans a real chance in America. Among other things, Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and Civil Rights Bill of 1866.

Then there’s Woodrow Wilson, the father of the modern progressive Democrat movement. The fly in the ointment of the left’s “party switch” lie that posits Democrats and Republicans “switched places” at some point. Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, and the “progressive” stamp he placed on Joe’s party abides to this day. Wilson, prior to becoming president, had supported Jim Crow and the racial intimidation and disenfranchisement efforts of what he referred to as the “great Ku Klux Klan.” As president, Wilson segregated the federal civil service, depriving blacks of a key source of employment to which they had had access for over 40 years since the Grant Administration. Wilson pointedly refused to appoint black ambassadors to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as had been customary. Finally, near the end of his presidency during the international negotiations after the conclusion of WW1, Wilson opposed and effectively killed a treaty provision proposed by Japan calling for racial equality.

And then, finally, there’s the presidential hero of Joe’s party, one Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s 1942 executive order rounding up over 100,000 Japanese Americans and forcing them into prison camps during WW2 is probably the most racist executive order in American history, and certainly more racist than any orders issued by Trump. Prior to that, FDR had made common cause with Southern segregationists — even appointing some of them, like former Klansman Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court — in order to push his “New Deal” policies. Those policies, in many respects, excluded blacks from their relief efforts. And, lest we forget, despite inviting several Olympic athletes to the White House after the 1936 Berlin Games, FDR pointedly failed to invite the unquestioned hero of those games — the man who had shown up Hitler to his face, 4-time gold medalist Jesse Owens.

The 1619 Project falsely claims that slavery, racism and white supremacy is in the DNA of the American Founding. I have repeatedly pointed out how that is not true. But one thing is certain: slavery, racism, and white supremacy have been in the DNA of the Democrat Party from the moment of its founding. In this time of reflection in the wake of the George Floyd murder, and as America comes to grips with its often racist past, it is high time for Joe Biden (and don’t get me started on some of his more “colorful” racist comments) and the Democrat Party to own up to theirs.

Racebaiting-always the key feature of the Democrat Party.