Biden's answer on 'repairing the legacy of slavery' and 'inequality in schools and race' [View all]

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...brought forward a response from the former VP which harkened back to something he got into hot water for in 2007.

...the question

Mr. Vice president, I want to come to you and talk to you about inequality in schools and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter, "I don't feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I'll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago."

You said that some 40 years ago. But as you stand here tonight, what responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?

...Biden's answer:

BIDEN: Well, they have to deal with the -- look, there's institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Red-lining banks, making sure that we are in a position where -- look, you talk about education. I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title I schools, triple the amount of money we spend from 15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise, the equal raise to getting out -- the $60,000 level.

Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need -- we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It's crazy.

The teachers are -- I'm married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. We have -- make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School. We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children.

It's not want they don't want to help. They don't -- they don't know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television -- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the -- the -- make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school -- a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

Here's what I'm looking at here. I'm not 100% certain Biden was speaking specifically about black kids, but I'm fairly certain.

It's a problematic answer which assumes the things he's proscribing aren't already being offered children in black families. I don't know what he believes would precipitate bringing a 'social worker into homes,' or why he believes those families don't know how to raise their children.

It's a problematic answer, even if he's just referring to 'poor kids,' but it's an odd response to 'inequality' in schools, which I don't believe was meant to be a reflection of the financial status of families, but rather about the inequality in resources in black communities compared to others.

Going on about 'problems brought from home' appears to blame these children and their families for broken school systems which are beside the point about families which may be having difficulty.

And here's what's puzzling to me about Biden's answer. This is the same kind of response which got him into hot water a decade ago, interestingly, using much the same argument, but his spokespeople later insisting then that he was only talking about poor families, not black families.


here's what he said in 2007:

WASHINGTON (CNN) - In what the Washington Post is describing as a "stumble," Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said in an interview with the paper Wednesday that Washington's high minority population is one of the reasons for the city's education problems.

Explaining why schools in Iowa are performing better than those in Washington, D.C., Biden told the Post, "There's less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with."

"When you have children coming from dysfunctional homes, when you have children coming from homes where there's no books, where the mother from the time they're born doesn't talk to them - as opposed to the mother in Iowa who's sitting out there and talks to them, the kid starts out with a 300 word larger vocabulary at age three. Half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom," the Delaware Democrat added.

The paper reports Biden's campaign quickly sought to clarify the remarks, saying in a statement that the senator was not making a "race-based distinction" but rather a "socio-economic" one.

Where is Biden getting this stuff? It's offensive to ALL families, on its face, and just wild if he's talking about black families, in particular, which he appears to do in both instances.

I know what to expect here questioning Biden on his comments on race, but I do not believe he's a racist. I do, however, think he's tone-deaf and outright regressive in these remarks.