Biden's 'Racial Jungle' | INFJ Forum

Biden's 'Racial Jungle'

Is It Racist?

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Reason

Percolated
Nov 17, 2017
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46,350
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The Roaring 20s
MBTI
INTP
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-racial-jungle-quote/

Joe Biden, 1977:
“Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle [emphasis added] with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this.”

Is this racist? And is Biden a racist in general?
 
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-racial-jungle-quote/

Joe Biden, 1977:
“Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle [emphasis added] with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this.”

Is this racist? And is Biden a racist in general?
Imho, Biden is what I call a generation bigot. Yes, and Racist. However, he's come along way from what he once was and with the statement above it sounds like he's calling everyone out to make a change. For them to look in the mirror and accept their personal position on Racism and then do something about it.
The callout being for America, and the world in general, to put aside the idea that there is some sorting criteria that one human is some how above, or greater, than another human. (Thanks Darwin for seperating the classes and the masses, *said with deep sarcasm.)

It's time to break that repetitive generational curse. I think Biden is trying to convey a message that we all need to hear. That in accepting, whether some like it or not, we are indeed all equal in all measures, it's what we do with it that causes seperations and segregations and the great divide, be it color, creed, social-economic standing, or any other criteria humans have made up to say I'm better than You.

For example, a bit of American history. The Mississippi River was referred to The Great Divide after the Civil War. It was refferred as such because every one who didn't like Lincoln's freedom stance could pack up and move west, and they did.

Division has been in this country since the first man set foot on the dirt and disrupted the natives, the aboriginal inhabitants. It can be compared to Australia and Queensland through seeing how it's historical population was established. The dirt was more important than the people that lived on it to those that wanted it. Why did they want it? Greed. It was a money maker. Invading populations have had this same mindset for eons; they couldn't all control it so they drove out others and took it over as their own.

We can see the pattern being repeated in modern day wars that are still fought because one group sees something the other group has and they want it, and by whatever means necessary they are going to have it.

This is also obvious in racism.

Racism is learned and can be unlearned. Once an individual digs deep to analyze their personal stance, their beliefs, regarding racism, accept it, and live from that perspective instead of what society assumes we should do change will come.
It make take generations, but it will come.

Racism isn't just a black thing, it's a LACK thing. A lack of standing up for the rights in the world, by rights I mean acceptance of the goodness of human kind. Working together towards equalities in all facets of life not just the division of color. All the values and beliefs that aren't attached to money and status...the classes and the masses are a divisionary ideology that is long beyond being outdated.

Personally, I don't agree with either of my choices of leadership candidates. It doesn't sit well with me that I am going to be forced to chose the lesser of two evils yet again.
 
I don't know much about him generally but that quote, to me, is not racist.

What I took from it is that society has the potential to regress to the 'law of the jungle', which is true of any society, and that this is most likely to occur in America due to racial tensions. Pointing out that there is such a thing as racial tension, and that this can reach catastrophic levels, is not in itself racist.

I struggle with this idea myself because people, mostly politicians admittedly, in the UK bang on about how multi-culturalism is this great thing and I would tend to disagree. I think it is an inevitable thing and a natural thing as the world becomes more and more easily connected, but there seems to be this naive view that because it is the right thing ultimately for everyone to co-mingle that there ought to be no misgivings along the way and that is the problem I have.

I've never gotten a strong sense of what exactly the 'English culture' is besides tea and the Queen...maybe Morris dancing, too. With that in mind, despite my ancestry being Irish, I do see where people are coming from when they express unhappiness with multi-culturalism being forced upon them because, in reality, it is only the working class and lower who have to experience the full impact of it. It's a big change to expect people to go through quietly in one or two generations, especially if they have roots in an area for many generations, and if anything, I think that this branding of people as racist for being unable to articulate what their misgivings are precisely is what causes the more black-and-white thinking to emerge and ferment.

The quote reminded me of Enoch Powell and his 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which, again, I don't see as racist in and of itself. As far as I am aware, it was pointing out a potential danger. The measures that can be taken to avoid calamity may well be very racist but pointing out that there may be trouble ahead if we don't address tensions is not.
 
Biden's racist freudian slips are well documented going back decades but as always with the democratic party history gets white washed whenever it suits them. They should have chosen Sanders instead of dementia anyway as what they are doing constitutes elderly abuse.
 
Mandatory busing has its roots in the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregated schools inherently unequal. But it wasn’t until later that the reality of desegregation arrived in much of America.

In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that districts had stalled long enough, and federal courts began requiring communities across the country to desegregate their schools by busing white children to mostly black schools, and vice versa.


As Biden took his seat in the Senate in 1973, a case challenging racial segregation in Wilmington and its suburbs advanced through the federal courts, and resistance grew. Whites in the North tended to support civil rights as a general matter, but many saw it as a problem for the South, not one that should affect their lives or schools.


“When activists started to push for racial justice outside the bounds of the Jim Crow South, and whites in those communities were threatened with busing, we see this kind of backlash,” said Brett Gadsden, professor of history at Northwestern University and author of a book about desegregation in Delaware.

Resistance came from some African Americans as well, who resented being forced to attend schools where they were not wanted and not always treated well, though other black parents strongly supported the move, said Leland Brett Ware, a professor in Africana studies at the University of Delaware.


“I can recall going to a meeting when suburban parents were up in arms,” Ware said. “There’s opposition to busing, for sure, from white suburbanites, but also a number of black city people object to busing because they feel their children are not being treated fairly in the suburban districts.”


Through it all, Biden’s children attended private schools, according to an aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose the matter.

The ultimate court order in Wilmington was far more expansive than the orders in other northern cities. The Supreme Court had ruled that desegregation plans would be limited to the city schools unless plaintiffs could prove intentional discrimination involving the suburbs. In Wilmington, the challengers proved just that, and the court required busing urban black students into the suburbs, and vice versa.


Biden has long insisted that he supports busing when discrimination is intentional. Asked Friday to explain why Biden opposed the Wilmington plan, two of his legal advisers said he believes the court was wrong in finding the suburbs of Wilmington complicit in segregation.


“He thought the court got it wrong,” said attorney Mark Gitenstein, a former Biden aide.

During the debate, Biden also said he supported voluntary busing programs.

In the Senate, Biden was also fighting the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which was enforcing powers given by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Under that law, school districts that discriminate on the basis of race risk losing federal dollars.


The Biden advisers said that the agency had overreached, and that Biden believed it should not hold districts accountable for discrimination unless a court had found a violation.

Back home, Biden initially declined to outline his views on busing before announcing his opposition in December 1974. He called the practice “increasingly discredited,” even if it had a “laudable goal.”


The following year, Biden told NPR that liberal Democrats for too long had kept quiet about the matter because it would put them in the company of Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D), a leading segregationist.

Speaking to a Delaware weekly called the People Paper, Biden put it starkly: “The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with. What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist!”


Biden, meanwhile, led a faction of Democrats to sponsor legislation that would restrict the ability of federal courts to institute busing orders, according to a 1978 account in the Wilmington Evening Journal. During this period, he worked to sponsor anti-busing legislation with Southern senators with segregationist backgrounds.


That upset Democrats who supported busing, and some of them took Biden aside and asked how and when “the racists had gotten to me,” as Biden told it in his autobiography. An aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told Biden he was being “duped.”

“It provided him with kind of political cover with his constituents,” Gadsden said. “He could say, ‘I did my best to oppose busing,’ even if it had no practical effect on Wilmington and the surrounding suburbs.”

This provides further context to the backdrop at the time, though it is through the lens of the Washington Post. I think that the answer to Reason's question about that specific statement would have best been obtained then and there, but we can't go back to ask him to elaborate. (Edit: I would not put it past him, or anyone, but I can’t say for sure, and often times when people are put on the spot in the moment, they may say something more telling of their true motivations). Outside of that, I think that people of all races may have had understandable misgivings about how busing might affect their kids' education. Busing is not a perfect solution to the problem of equal opportunity in education, and honestly, I would probably be fearful for my kids if they were to get sent to a far away school where they might experience hostility based upon their race. The reasons behind any given person’s reluctance to integration in that form could very well include racist beliefs, but fear of racial tension or discrimination is also a legitimate reason to be worried.
 
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As much as I don't like Biden as a candidate, it's this type of nitpicking that I detest the media does 24/7 to Trump and I'm not a fan of it being utilized against Biden, either. I don't so much care what Biden says minute to minute as much as what his legislative history says about him and what stances he is currently taking on issues.

Just as I think Trump has some sort of disorder like Adhd or similar that makes him unable to censor himself and impulsive, Biden has been actually diagnosed with a speech disorder and so a lot of his stuttering and inability to form sentences is a result of this. I sympathize with him on that because I think I have the same thing; this sort of "stutter" where words are slippery in your mouth and you even sometimes say similar words that sound like the one you mean to say, then you have to correct yourself. Mine is so bad that I actually switch vowels in a sentence.

That was a bit of a tangent, but I don't think Biden has memory issues more than any other person his age. His speech disorder just makes it seem worse.

In terms of Biden's character he is a "party Democrat", and we can expect him to follow the footsteps of the Obama and Clinton administration in passing legislation that diminishes Americans rights like the indefinite detention act Obama passed, exponential deportation of illegal immigrants (3.2 million under Obama more than any other president), and the continual invasion of other countries to feed the military industrial complex (Trump has been heavily criticized for withdrawing troops whereas Obama dropped so many bombs we ran out).

So am I excited for the globalist Democrats to take charge? Not really. Although I will say it's possible that at this point the military industrial complex is something we're trapped in unless we remove it from the entire world at the same time which is why Bernie Sanders ideology wouldn't really result in much more than making America vulnerable to takeover by other superpowers. Although Trump ran on protectionism, those ideals aren't realistic to keep us safe so he has had to rely on imposing a lot of taxes on international trade in an attempt to subvert actual war which I think is smart. A financial war is always preferable over one with military force. We go to Biden we go back to boots on the ground and bombs because money money money.

Luckily, I don't think Biden will win.