Institutional racism has underpinned Joe Biden’s politics for decades. But now with racial conflict roiling our country from coast to coast, as Malcolm X once famously said, the chickens are coming home to roost.
One example that stands out to me is Joe’s conduct as vice president when in June 2010 he memorialized Democratic Party icon and former West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd.
Here’s a quote from a written statement Joe’s office put out on the day Byrd died. Note the gushing warmth, the empathetic tone, and the date, June 28th. Also bear in mind that Robert C. Byrd began his political career by earning the title of exalted cyclops in the Klu Klux Klan:
“… a very close friend of mine, one of my mentors -- a guy who was there when I was a 29-year-old kid being sworn into the United States Senate shortly thereafter; a guy who stood in the rain, in a pouring rain, freezing rain outside a church as I buried my daughter and my wife before I got sworn in, Robert C. Byrd. He passed away today. He was the -- we lost the dean of the United States Senate, but also the state of West Virginia lost its most fierce advocate and, as I said, I lost a dear friend.”
Wow, so since 1972, Senator Joe Biden, who has closely allied himself with the Congressional Black Caucus but who now has a fractured relationship with his black vice president, was mentored by Dixiecrat Robert Byrd, a man who fought vigorously against passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Hmmm.
Pretty sure Joe’s 2010 tribute to old white guy Robert Byrd would raise a ruckus with the CNN/MSNBC/BLM wokesters of today. Might even get him a reprimand from Kamala. But he definitely made that statement, and it’s still viewable on Obama’s WhiteHouse.gov website.
Here’s a screenshot of the full version.
Got that, on June 28, 2010, when there weren’t any reporters present or cameras rolling, Joe Biden went on record referring to Senator Robert C. Byrd, a Democrat with a storied racist past, as one of his “mentors” and “my dear friend.”
Haven’t heard about this with Joe? Not surprised. There’s a reason: Joe is Democrat politician, which is another term for a crafty institutional racist whose party is protected by a lenient media.
Here’s how you can tell. Four days later, on July 2, 2010, Joe, along with many other prominent Democrats, including Presidents Obama and Clinton, eulogized Byrd on the hot, sunny steps of the West Virginia Capitol.
And remember this was a midterm election year, 2010, so with Obama and Clinton speaking, there was major media coverage of this event. C-SPAN broadcast two hours of it live. Politicians love that.
Now here’s the crafty part. Joe not only got himself a speaking role on that epic day, but he was far more calculated in his description of Byrd in his remarks then than he was on June 28th. That’s what’s known in politics as “stepping back,” though when you do it without the press pushing for it, that’s just being sly.
Here’s a telling excerpt:
“But to me and many people here today, like guys I see, Bill Bradley and Jim Sasser, who long [ago] left the Senate for greener pastures, and I hope better remuneration -- we used to kid about that, too -- but I -- for a lot of us, he was a friend, and he was a mentor and he was a guide.”
See how Joe did that? Not my friend, not my mentor, not my guide. He started to say “I,” but then stopped himself cold and went to “us,” making his praise less personal, less heartfelt and more … institutional. Praise, yes, but a personal tie-in, no, not that day.
This was a heartbreaking time for Senator Byrd’s family, and Joe Biden is renowned for his empathy, so why wouldn’t he publicly say the same words of praise and friendship as he’d used in his more private statement?
I don’t have the answer to that. At least not fully. But the partial answer is beneath his warm, gregarious surface, Joe Biden is a cold, calculating politician who does what’s good for Joe Biden. And if privately placating the powerful racists in his party but then publicly distancing himself from them was good for Joe Biden, well then, that’s what he did.
As one of the most ambitious vice presidents in recent history, Joe Biden wanted very much to impress a national audience of Democrats. But he had to be careful. Even in death, Senator Robert C. Byrd was controversial, and downright toxic with progressives, even the reasonable ones of pre-Trump of 2010.
So rather than describe him as the personal mentor and friend he was, Joe deftly put some impersonal daylight between himself and Byrd.
It was quick deflection, masterfully done. And in the era of Google, it worked. That watery description retains prominence in an internet search of “Biden Byrd eulogy.” Most reporting — even the conservative outlets — on the Biden-Byrd relationship uses that phrase from the eulogy. And that means in 2021, Joe still gets a pass for describing an ex-Klansman as his “mentor” and “dear friend.”
Heck, the media didn’t even have to protect Joe for that speech then or in his 2020 campaign. He got that done on his own.
By the way, doesn’t that show you the power of Google to shape the national narrative? If I hadn’t known firsthand about that written statement from my days in the White House Stenographers Office, we would not have this understanding of Joe Biden’s institutional racism.
And for those traditional Dems who knew better than to let a little racism interfere with party business, who knew of Byrd’s past and didn’t care, Joe delivered a warm eulogy, packed with personal observations. That day was definitely a win-win for him — checked the box with the traditionalists, checked the box for the progressives.
Robert Carlyle Byrd’s memorial service occurred in 2010 when our country was not yet as divided over race as it is now. The mere fact that he died in office is a testament to that.
Byrd was an Appalachian Democrat who famously had to apologize in 2001 for twice saying “white n***er” in a TV interview. By today’s wokester rules, Byrd would have been hounded out of office within days. But back then, the Joe Bidens and Nancy Pelosis and Chuck Schumers, all who worked with Byrd, and needed him to accomplish their business, accepted his apology without hesitation.
And those same Democrats are still running the show. If that isn’t institutional racism, I don’t know what is.
But the Byrd memorial service was to be a big day for the Dems and their unfolding inclusive era. Barack Obama, their newly elected black president, was speaking to a largely white West Virginia audience with a specific role to play: He was there to deliver a public absolution of Byrd and all the rest of the old school racists who haunted the Democratic Party, of which there are many. This was a day when the modern Democratic Party, lead by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, was going to bury not only its venerated Senator Robert Byrd, but the racist ghosts of its Dixiecrat past.
Here’s what Obama said about Byrd:
“He was a Senate icon. He was a Party leader. He was an elder statesman. And he was my friend. That’s how I’ll remember him.”
Here’s the link to both speeches.
So it fell to Obama to go on national television to simply say the words “my friend” to describe the ex-Klansman from West Virginia and thus free America and the Democratic Party from its racist past.
If only it were that easy.
Because now, with Joe Biden bringing the institutional racism he learned from his Senate mentors — there were more than Byrd — back to the White House, the chickens really have come to roost.
Next column topic: Institutional Racism Joe Biden Style, (Part Two)
Thanks to my association with MarcoPoloUSA.org I’ll be writing about information gleaned from the alleged Ashley Biden diary, the verified Hunter Biden laptop, and my book Joe Biden Unauthorized and the 2020 Crackup of the Democratic Party, available at www.joebidenunauthorized.com
And note that I donate 10 percent of my website purchases to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
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