During his commencement address at a historically black college on Saturday, President Joe Biden made a questionable remark about whites, sending his detractors into a tailspin.
“The harsh reality of racism has long torn us apart. It’s a battle. It’s never really over, but on the best days, enough of us have the guts and the hearts to stand up for the best in us, to choose love over hate,” Biden said during his speech at Howard University.
“Union over disunion. Progress over retreat. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy, I did in my inaugural address to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland,” he said, without providing any evidence to support his claim.
After some audience members applauded, Biden continued, “I’m not saying this because I’m at a historically black college or university. I express it everywhere I go.”
One source of Biden’s allegation appears to be a misunderstanding of FBI Director Chris Wray’s statements. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) inquired before Congress about the number of domestic terrorism cases or prosecutions involving white supremacists.
“What I can tell you is that, within the domestic terrorism bucket category as a whole, racially-motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group, and within the racially-motivated violent extremists bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that,” the director said.
Wray’s statement clarified that white supremacist ideology is frequently observed among racially motivated domestic terrorist acts. However, due to the possibility of misinterpretation, his comments have been misunderstood to imply that white supremacist incidents are the greatest terror threat overall, as opposed to being the greatest threat within the subset of “racially motivated incidents.”
Without Wray’s precise percentages, it is impossible to determine whether racially motivated incidents initiated by whites comprise the majority.
BIDEN AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY: "The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy — and I'm not saying this because I'm at a Black HBCU. I say it wherever I go.”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 13, 2023
In addition, Biden took a not-so-subtle jab at his most likely opponent in 2024, former President Donald Trump, who “in 2019 signed bipartisan legislation providing more than $250 million annually to the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, as well as dozens of other institutions serving large shares of minority students,” according to the Associated Press.
“Let’s be clear: There are those who don’t see you and don’t want this future,” Biden said. “There are those who demonize and pit people against one another. And there are those who do anything and everything, no matter how desperate or immoral, to hold onto power. And that’s never going to be an easy battle.”
In response to Biden’s abhorrent tone, conservatives reacted with rage and their own history lessons.
More on this story via Conservative Brief:
“The Democratic Party spent most of the 19th Century and much of the 20th using overt racism to win elections. They are doing again in the 21st century. The racism just looks a lot different than the 19th century version,” Foundation for Economic Education managing editor Jon Miltimore wrote in a post that included a period political poster depicting a white Democratic candidate against an opponent who favored rights for blacks. CONTINUE READING…
