What a lifeguarding job on the black side of Wilmington taught Joe Biden about race

[DemocratSinceBirth]

The furor about Joe Biden’s race politics started as soon as he decided to run for office. As a candidate for the New Castle County Council in 1970, he made expanding public housing central to his campaign. Angry white residents, worried that poor black families would become their neighbors, gave Biden a derisive nickname.

“The first time the phone rang and someone said, ‘You nigger lover, you want them living next to you,’ I was shocked,’’ Biden told the Wilmington News Journal at the time.

On the black side of Wilmington, residents weren’t surprised. They had been using that provocative phrase to describe Biden for years, but as a term of affection.

“Joe was one of us,” recalled Richard Smith, 71, a black resident whom everyone here knows as “Mouse.” “We helped make him who he was.

...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-a-wilmington-pool-pranks-nicknames-and-the-racial-education-of-joe-biden/2019/07/12/29fcc8fc-a191-11e9-b732-41a79c2551bf_story.html?utm_term=.61c720f3815e

Love ya, Joe Pop.

[Cha]

1. Thank You for this, DSB!

[oasis]

2. Joe is seasoned by his life experiences with real people.

It is a good thing.

[betsuni]

3. K&R