'I Don't Have a Racist Bone in My Body'

That's what you're going with? This board.

Lke when (white) people say "I don't see color." It's such an unnecessary exaggeration. You can show your unbigoted bona fides without making such a high-flying declaration.

to expose my racism whenever he can.”

Further, Biden should have acknowledged that “although I meant that Eastland called us younger WHITE senators ‘boy’ or ‘son,’ context doesn’t matter. “

He should have vowed that if elected president, he would change John-boy’s name to plain John.

“No joking,” he should have added.

SARCASM

he could kiss his candidacy goodbye. You don't win elections by calling your potential voters racist. Or deplorables, for that matter.

candidate can possibly respond well to allegations that refuse context, change a word not meant as racist into a racist word in any context, and demand that a candidate fight intentionally divisive battles without digging a bigger hole while they sit like vultures waiting to pounce on the next
verbal misstep.

The very point I was making is that to satisfy these kinds of charged complaints is impossible.

Biden explained his reference to Eastland’s use of “boy” to address WHITE, younger, less experienced senators, and Booker has doubled down.

have failed to use the sarcasm thingy myself. I now understand your point.

demonstrate that pretty much everyone has racist biases.

So perhaps instead of proclaiming oneself 100% racism free, our candidates should instead acknowledge that we all harbor prejudices, and discuss how we can work together to mitigate the systemic effects of those biases.

Biden’s not a ‘racist.’ Warren is not a ‘corporatist tool of the establishment,’ Both claims are bullshit.

All of our candidates are going to be lied about by the MSM and the twitterverse.. Even your candidate, whoever it turns out to be.

I am not at all interested in amplifying that garbage.

Policy discussion is a good thing. Baseless character smears on twitter is a terrible thing.

My goal is to lift up our candidates and push back on the attempted character assasination of these good women and men.

of the black protest in South Bend.

The poster relayed what he thought he heard on MSNBC, and then added biased commentary.
His post was, unintentionally, completely debunked by another post running a story from the news,
which included praise for Buttigieg.

I am not a Buttigieg primaries supporter but I registered my outrage.

The poster more easily supported his negative interpretation with a change in tense of Buttigieg’s response to a black woman who said he would not get her vote. I don’t want to start linguistic parsing wars by getting more specific.

At DU, we must fight back against obvious “ hit posts.” They, like racism, are easy to spot.

sniffing the waters for blood, to feast on for the next year and a half.

If Biden seems politically to shoot himself in the foot, to you, I can only say he would be putting a gun to his head with your suggestion.

An enlightened shrink shared this truth with me when I was struggling to dismiss my “insignificant” problems in contrast to people starving in Africa.

Copping to racism is hard for us bleeding heart liberals. Nevertheless, it’s a cop out to insist we are innocent. I was born in Wisconsin in 1948. Racist conditioning was baked in the cake of my cultural conditioning. It’s a high alert toxin I monitor every day.

Biden’s defensiveness is both understandable and unacceptable in a presidential candidate.

have noticed Biden’s racist shadow side or at least that he was “tone deaf” politically and racially
insensitive.

If he did, it is amazing he handed off so much responsibility to Biden and didn’t just keep him busy
attending funerals.

He handed gun control, Iraq, reviving VAWA, and many legislative negotiations to Biden.

Eight years he relied upon and trusted Biden. They are friends to this day.

John Lewis, James Corbyn...

But we can expect more racism detection to come.

Biden leads the field in black voter support.

Where else to undermine Biden. This vote, which is not monolithic, it should be mentioned, is essential to winning the election, so anti-Biden’s must go after his black voter favorables to make the case, that, contrary to what polls show and Biden supporters think, Biden is not electable.

It might work.

Unfortunately, a great voice for Democrats and Biden’s value as a campaigner for whomever will be the nominee will emerge seriously wounded.

racist biases.

Just about everyone has them.

by claiming they are ‘racists’ when they aren’t isn’t a winning strategy. Its not morally right either.

Someone cited John Lewis above. I take his word over yours.

Maybe you should consider self-deleting your post as well.

Thanks in advance!

This post is suspiciously overthetop, IMO.

The likelihood of someone working for a political campaign and posting here is pretty small. What is much more likely is someone who's voting for the same candidate as you is not the same type of person you are. It happens, that's just human nature.

I don’t think anyone here has suggested OP is working for a political campaign. Just that their views don’t represent Warren.

So maybe I just interpreted that part differently.

You are both right. I know Warren’s camp wouldn’t put this vibe out there, and I am suspicious when someone takes it upon themself to make such a dramatic OP targeting Biden right after posting a series of proWarren articles. I’ve witnessed set ups in the past. This may NOT be, but, it has happened a number of times before.

PS: DU has had and does have quite a few members engaged in political campaigns. Most are careful to NOT post overthetop attacks against each other during the primaries.

being part of a systemically racist system.

Your point is valid, it's impossible to be in American culture for long without having the divisions and contrived distinctions between "black" and "white" etched into your brain. And it's incumbent on us white people to come to terms with that and to reject it and correct for it to the extent possible.

The statement "I don't have a racist bone in my body" is not meant to deny that our culture is racist, or that white oriole benefit from that even if they do nothing knowingly to further it.

It's just meant to deny being a racist, emphatically.

Ain't biting.

and should NOT be promoted in a primaries forum under Elizabeth Warren’s banner.

Sorry, but, your post is suspiciously over-divisive for this forum.

And his inability or unwillingness to promptly fix them keeps them alive for days on end. That's a great recipe to get Trump re-elected. I really wish he had not decided to run. The press is spending more time talking about his missteps than kids being treated like dogs in puppy mills or worse, Trump is accused of rape by a writer, Trump is trying to start a war with Iran and no one is discussing it because of the seemingly endless gaffes. We can do better and we better or else we are going to lose.

but voters aren’t distracted by this. They care about policies, not “gotcha moments”

Trust me, Beto will make a mistake and you’ll read all kinds of things on Twitter that say he’s not fit to be President.

Will you be on board with that? And amplify the bullshit articles we will read in the press about how “bad”?

Or will you recognize that it is bullshit and not important when it comes done to saving our country?

I think you will do the later.

As I said to OP, tearing down Biden as a “racist” when he isn’t won’t help Beto win.

Beto is on my short list, please don’t associate him with “taking out Biden”

I would not be supporting him.

Beto has been getting attacked on twitter (and in some cases even here) since before he even got into the race.

I'm not trying to "take out" anyone. I'm frustrated because there are BABIES lying on cold concrete wrapped in freaking TINFOIL, sick, spoiled food around them, filthy, disgusting conditions with no soap, in THIS country! And because a candidate will not just ADMIT they made a freaking mistake and say sorry people are arguing about that instead of rallying to defend ABUSED BABIES! I'm pissed. But hey, let's make another 10-15 threads making excuses and bickering while babies die.

/rant off

So let’s stop rewarding the MSM for playing “gotcha games” with Democratic candidates while Trump destroys our country.

We need a candidate who can through the distractions a d avoid making new ones.

Do we REALLY want to go down that road? That is what Republicans do. That's how things continue to get worse and worse...because no one speaks up. We need to be better than that.

The problem is not that Biden messes up with gaffes that is an issue...it's how he deals with them AFTER the fact. He doesn't deal with them well. He is becoming defensive and does NOT listen when people try to help him navigate his way out of the gaffes. That's a real problem.

Unless he starts listening and stops being defensive this will just happen over and over again every week with something new. He's got to get it together because he IS becoming a distraction from things that are important.

and instead let’s focus on policy, and on defending all of our candidates from character assasination.

All of our candidates are human. They will make mistakes. I’ll argue that there is one of our candidates who is even more “gaffe prone” than Joe.

While they make mistakes, All of them are good men and women.

We have a monster in the White House. He’s clearly the actual racist here.

The stakes are too high to play gotcha games with good Democrats and pretend they are racists when they aren’t.

Agreed that Biden needs to be a better candidate. But I will never believe that we should do the dirty work for the GOP against any of our candidates by promoting false smears.

say that he's sorry that anyone found his words hurtful?

If he could just do that when he screws up it would not turn into what these gaffes keep becoming.

He tried to get Biden to understand, even with an example of the time Mrs King admonished himself (Sharpton) by saying you can't say things that hurt people. Sharpton said to Biden "It hurts when you talk about 'boy'. It means something different to us." Biden said he fully understands but that that's not what he said. (Except, of course, it was.) His tone the entire time was unpleasantly insistent. Then he went into the gish gallop thing he does, listing all his accomplishments. The clip is on Sharpton's twitter account, also a discussion of it later with a panel of people where Sharpton was visibly exasperated, saying I tried to give him every opportunity!

Biden could've nipped all this in the bud with a rueful acknowledgment that he spoke clumsily. It even could have been endearing. Instead he reacts defensively, repeating that his intentions are good. He can't seem to see that what he intends isn't always what comes out of his mouth. It's not a strength, and it is sure to happen again.

Like it or not, these things do affect voters. Maybe not right away, but eventually they end up lost in a fog of minutiae, sort.of like we are right now.

destroying the country. Not in the mood for “gotcha games” against good Democrats or seeing any of them being “Hillaried” by the MSM.

Times are too serious for that “luxury”

that’s what I hear from people I talk to. Anecdotal I know. But I do think voters don’t want to play around w nonsense when the stakes are so high.

by Election Day. I'm not convinced he won't succeed.

I’m sure you won’t either!

why are you supporting a racist?

White women are somehow exempt from Systemic Racism?

.... as to the purpose for which it is intended is there is not a lot left at the bottom of the barrel to be scraped off and thrown at Biden.

As for racist bones in my body????
Neither do I.

I'm whatever you call that.

Do you think the attacks, and criticism, were valid?

I ask because I doubt you do. I doubt you thought she was fairly treated. And yet, there's no question Warren handled it about as badly as someone could - and there's no doubt Warren appropriated a race that wasn't her's to appropriate - even identifying it in her career. If you're going to attack Biden, or insinuate some hard truths about the situation, then you better be willing to do the same for your candidate.

It's funny how easy we forget this.

Speak for your own racism. I really don’t give a good goddamn about what you think about another person’s heart.

yes I understand the power play but ANYONE CAN BE RACIST

And they aren't. There are many times that people who are not racists say or do things that are racially insensitive without even realizing they are doing it. It really sucks if you aren't a racist but do or say something you didn't even realize would offend someone and then get attacked. I think that is part of why Biden is not handling this well at all. More than this gaffe, I see his defensiveness and refusal to listen to others as a far bigger problem.

always has, always will

not the candidate whose responses constantly need explaining

I hope you understood that. If I sounded like I have no idea what I'm talking about... well, that is sometimes true no doubt. More so with each passing birthday.

White Fragility is the term Robin DiAngelo uses to describe the tendencies of white people to often interpret discussions on racism as a personal criticism when it is never about us- not even when it is about our behaviors and words.

This is weak tea. Joe is a gaff machine, That's one of the reasons he hasn't engaged with other candidates as much as his rivals have.
The odds of Joe misspeaking reach 100% the more off script comments he makes.

But that shouldn't be held against him.

Biden has a record several decades long. If you want to go after Biden, try for substance.

For the trump campaign to make the ge a circus.

Reading your comments above bears this out.

As opposed to other black men was implied.

This was a quote from a Designing Women episode in the 1980's. In 1994, my husband and I were watching this syndicated rerun episode called "There's some black people coming to dinner". For some context here, I'm in a gay interracial marriage (was a very young and new relationship at the time we watched this episode, but I digress). The father of the son, near the end of the episode uttered the subject quote. This utterance caused one of the first heated debates/arguments between myself and my husband. To that point in my life, I fully and completely believed that I was not a racist.. at all.. period.. end of story. I was raised by 1960's hippies, and absolutely did not "have a racist bone in my body." There was no way that line could be accurately applied to me. I was wrong.

You see, it is not possible to exist in this society and not be racist. As a litmus test: Say you are interviewing people for a job. You have 2 prime candidates. One is a white male. One is a dark skinned male. The white male has a marginally better education background, and/or work experience. Whom do you hire?

The "colorblind" person will hire the first candidate, since they are basing their decision purely on education and experience. This completely ignores the systemic and systematic racism challenges that the 2nd candidate may have come to the table with. It ignores all the statistics and data out there on the additional challenges women and minorities face in education, and employment opportunities, and propagates the continuance of said stats and trends.

Even if you are a person who will take all of that information, and decide to hire candidate #2 based on the more complete and enlightened use of information, you are still knowingly and willingly deciding to hire a less qualified/educated candidate based on the race and background of the candidate. That is still racism, even if it is a more socially aware and enlightened version of it.

And this hypothetical is just one of MANY.. Who does/doesn't get invited to our children's birthday parties, social gatherings, PTA meetings, or whom we are looking at and weighing evidence present on in a court room.

Some of the other comments to your thoughtful post are.. illuminating.. as well.

Our black politicians would not have been able to have the working relationships with segregationists that Biden had.

Trump enjoys the benefits of white privilege and openly panders to racist voters.

And why stuff from the civil rights era is relevant now is that America has gotten more diverse so the GOP in many southern states have implemented systemic voter suppression to stop nonwhites from voting. In many southern states, a Democratic presidential candidate would need more black voters than white and shouldn't take anyone for granted.

The difference is that I don't repeat those terms. Growing up in a different time means remembering how things were and refusing to perpetuate them in the now.

The casual sexism/racism of the past was usually followed by "why are you so sensitive?" or "can't you take a joke?"

Wanting our leading candidate to be better than the other side doesn't mean I want Joe (or any candidate) to fail.

Everyone of them is going to drop a clinker or two, how they handle it is the telling factor.