Did VP Joe Biden Play The Race Card?

August 24, 2012
Written by Rita Rizzo in
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President Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter, told MSNBC that, “For months, Speaker Boehner, Congressman Ryan, and other Republicans have called for the ‘unshackling’ of the private sector from regulations that protect Americans from risky financial deals and other reckless behavior that crashed our economy. Since then, the Vice President has often used a similar metaphor to describe the need to ‘unshackle’ the middle class.” Photo Credit: opencuba.blogspot.com

August 14, 2012 is a day to remember. It is the day the GOP publicly played the race card for the first time in this election cycle. It was a sly move. They dealt the first card off a deck held by Joe Biden. Complete with contrived outrage, the party indulged in a full-fledged temper fit and demanded a full apology for a racial reference that oddly, had nothing to do with race! Confused? Let me help you sort this out.

"(Romney) is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street," Biden said at a campaign event in Danville, Virginia. "He is going to put y'all back in chains."

No, there isn’t any more. That is the entire statement that raised the ire of Republican Party leaders. True enough, the crowd to whom Biden was speaking was about 50 percent African-Americans, but the remark was in response to the GOP’s own verbiage and wasn’t, as alleged, a coded reference to slavery aimed at the blacks in the audience.

“For months, Speaker Boehner, Congressman Ryan, and other Republicans have called for the ‘unshackling’ of the private sector from regulations that protect Americans from risky financial deals and other reckless behavior that crashed our economy,” said former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs within hours of the faux scandal.

Biden's comment sparked Romney to call the Obama campaign one of "division and hate and anger." According to Politico, Obama, speaking in Dubuque, Iowa, “seemed unrattled by the controversy.” He said Biden's words needed to be considered in context; that he was only saying "you, consumers, the American people, will be a lot worse off if we repeal these [Wall Street reform] laws as the other side is suggesting." Biden himself gave similar clarification to an audience at his next Virginia campaign stop, but the pretend outrage spread like wildfire anyway.

Every important Republican piled on declaring that Joe Biden implied that Romney was going to return black folks to slavery. "That was an absolutely blatant appeal to racism," Rudy Giuliani said on "Face the Nation. "I would consider [his statement] to be an absolutely disgusting appeal to racial sentiment." Really? Whose racism was the Vice President appealing to, Mr. Giuliani? I have always noticed that racism has little appeal to black folks.

In the days following the big brouhaha, the GOP pundits doubled down on their claims that “race baiting” had occurred. On the other side of the issue, African-American pundits like Toure, an MSNBC host, stated that recent comments by Romney carried the distinct whiff of racial dog-whistle politics. 

alt“He's really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man. This is part of the playbook against Obama. The otherization, he's not like us. I know it's a heavy thing to say. I don't say it lightly. But this is ni--erization. You are not one of us, and that you are like the scary black man who we've been trained to fear," is the message the GOP was attempting to telegraph about Obama, Toure said.

So what can we take away from the first racial volley of this year’s silly season? Some say that this controversy will serve to rev up the Democratic base and mobilize the black vote. Others believe this will scare more people into voting against a President who cares more about pandering to black folks than helping to lift the entirety of America out of a prolonged recession. Whatever the long range impact is, one thing is for sure; this is only the first attempt by the GOP to play the race card in their campaign.

Can this sort of chicanery work? Do you believe that our white Vice President is race baiting on behalf of our black President? Are white Republicans truly offended by a reference that is totally unrelated to race, or will they latch onto any opportunity, real or imagined, to point out the President’s race and to reinforce the stereotypes that make white folks shrink in fear?

Stay tuned. In my opinion, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

 

 

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