The "question about reparations" Biden's accused of answering incorrectly WASN'T about reparations

[highplainsdem]

I'm beginning to think no one in the media, and certainly not Biden's critics, even heard the question that was asked.

Which did not use the word "reparations" once.

And which was NOT about the reparations-via-payment debate at all.

It was about ""inequality in schools and race."

That's an exact quote from the moderator's first sentence framing the question.

If you're saying "Huh?" it's probably because the media has failed so badly in reporting it, and Biden's critics have been so gleeful in amplifying the misunderstanding.

You might be wondering what the question was in fact about, because all we've been hearing is how poor addled old Joe Biden for some reason talked about preparing kids for school when he was asked about slavery and reparations.

This is how that question from moderator Linsey Davis started:

"I want to come to you and talk to you about inequality in schools and race."

See the article at the Mediate link below for video of the question and answer (I've provided the full first sentence because the video cuts off her first words).

She did, at the end of her question, which referred to schools again in the second sentence, refer to the "need to repair the legacy of slavery in our country."

But it was clear she was talking about schools, not reparations-as-payments, and the "need to repair" inequality.

She did NOT say, "I want to come to you and talk about reparations for slavery."

And Biden answered her question about inequality and schools with remarks similar to some of President Obama's own remarks and proposals for making education more equal by preparing children for school.

I've seen Biden excoriated for having referred to social workers coming into the home to help parents. That supposedly makes him a racist.

He's also been called a racist for referring to vocabulary problems.

But so did President Obama, and it's a safe bet that during Biden's many meetings with Obama, including their private lunches, they would have discussed what Obama's own thoughts and plans were. And he would have been aware of Obama's legislative proposals.

From Mediaite:

https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-barack-obama-and-hillary-clinton-both-used-joe-biden-millions-fewer-words-talking-point/

And then-future President Barack Obama campaigned on, then delivered, funding for “voluntary programs that provide nurses, social workers, and other professionals to meet with at-risk families in their homes and connect them to assistance that impacts a child’s health, development, and ability to learn.”

President Obama also cited the vocabulary gap frequently, as he did in this February 27, 2014 speech that also referenced resources like those Biden spoke about.

[W]e know that during the first three years of life, a child born into a low-income family hears 30 million fewer words than a child born into a well-off family. And everybody knows babies are sponges, they just soak that up. A 30-million-word deficit is hard to make up. And if a black or Latino kid isn’t ready for kindergarten, he’s half as likely to finish middle school with strong academic and social skills. So by giving more of our kids access to high-quality early education — and by helping parents get the tools they need to help their children succeed — we can give more kids a better shot at the career they’re capable of, and the life that will make us all better off.

I was wondering what programs the first paragraph of that excerpt referred to, so I did some googling and found this:


https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/occ/fact_sheet_president_obama_508.pdf

Fact Sheet President Obama’s Plan for Early Education for all Americans

-snip-

The President is proposing to expand the Administration’s evidence-based home visiting initiative, through which states are implementing voluntary programs that provide nurses, social workers, and other professionals to meet with at-risk families in their homes and connect them to assistance that impacts a child’s health, development, and ability to learn. These programs have been critical in improving maternal and child health outcomes in the early years, leaving long-lasting, positive impacts on parenting skills; children’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional development; and school readiness. This will help ensure that our most vulnerable Americans are on track from birth, and that later educational investments rest upon a strong foundation.

Emphasis added.

[Cha]

1. Is it any wonder I don't

pay any attention to Biden's critics?

I appreciate that Joe Biden has you as someone who researches and doesn't just accept at face value what they're trying to push.

Damn.. it's so damn convoluted.

Thanks for adding the emphasis!

[highplainsdem]

12. Yes, it's convoluted, Cha. Unfortunately.

Biden's also been attacked for what he said about Venezuela, after these remarks on education, but if you remember the earlier portion of the debate, or check the transcript, it's clear he's referring back to what had been said earlier about Venezuela, when Sanders and Castro were asked about it and gave their answers. (Not sure why Biden, who has many times the foreign policy experience of any of the others, wasn't asked then.) You do sometimes see candidates in debates spending part of their time for answering one question instead responding to another one asked earlier, including questions asked of other candidates.

I think he assumed people would know what he was referring to, whether to the earlier discussion of Venezuela in the debate, or to Obama-era policy goals involving social workers going into homes.

[Garrett78]

2. The quote Linsey Davis read had to do with Biden's thoughts on reparations and school segregation.

He also said, "I do not buy the concept, popular in the ‘60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’ I don’t buy that."

And then Linsey Davis asked Biden how we repair the legacy of slavery. He could have mentioned any number of things but he chose to imply that Black parents don't know how to parent.

No amount of obfuscation on your part will change the fact that Biden gave a horrific response. And, no, Obama was not addressing a question about repairing the legacy of slavery, nor did Obama ever make statements such as the one I quoted. Nice try. Keep on obfuscating if you must.

That there's more outrage at the outrage than there is at Biden's 1950-esque/Republican response is both sad and pathetic.

[highplainsdem]

4. No, you're misrepresenting her question. As the media have all too often, too, by quoting just the

last few words of what she said, and making the assumption that it was about the reparations debate and not school inequality and race.

Biden was no more implying that black parents don't know how to parent than Obama was, in what I quoted.

And btw, Obama's response to the broader question about repairing the legacy of slavery has been to stress educaton:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/26/bernie-s/reparations-for-slavery-sanders-obama-clinton/

"You know, I have said in the past — and I'll repeat again — that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed.

"And, you know, I think that strategies that invest in lifting people out of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but that have broad applicability and allow us to build coalitions to actually get these things done, that, I think, is the best strategy.

-snip-

"And so, you know, I'm much more interested in talking about, how do we get every child to learn? How do we get every person health care? How do we make sure that everybody has a job? How do we make sure that every senior citizen can retire with dignity and respect?

[Garrett78]

6. No, you're the one misrepresenting and obfuscating.

This was her question: “What responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?”

Biden's response was to imply that Black parents need to be taught how to parent. That was his response to the question asked. Period.

You're taking quotes from Obama completely out of context and trying to suggest that Obama gave the same response as Biden to the above question from Linsey Davis.

And you're ignoring the fact that Biden - not Obama - made some extremely ignorant statements.

Again, nice try.

[highplainsdem]

8. Again, Biden was not implying that any more than Obama was in his remarks and program goals.

And since the first two sentences of Linsey Davis's question/statement were specifically about schools, there was no reason to take the last few words out of context as a question about the larger issue of reparations. Especially when Davis didn't even use the word "reparations." If she meant that to be a broader question about reparations, she phrased it very clumsily.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

27. It's ALL about reparations. Joe's "record player" response entirely missed the boat...

and now we're seein past comments by Joe coming back to haunt him.


Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!! or
Elizabeth & Bernie 2020!!
Either way, welcome to the revolution!!!

[Loki Liesmith]

28. Harris should be dropping out soon huh?

Lol

[pnwmom]

3. Why did you leave out the part of Davis's question that specifically asked Biden

about how he felt today about what he had said in the 70's? That was the whole point of her question.

The Biden statement she quoted when she asked about the legacy of slavery:

"I do not buy the concept, popular in the ‘60s, which said, ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race.’ I don’t buy that."

[still_one]

5. Do you believe the Democratic party should make reparations a major part of the 2020 campaign?

According to the Gallop poll from June 2019:

67% say government should not provide cash payments to slaves' descendants
Most blacks support cash-based reparations from the government
Democrats are divided on the question

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In June, the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held a hearing on reparations to African Americans for the first time in more than in a decade. While reparations could take many forms, the most straightforward would be cash payments by the government to descendants of American slaves. Most Americans (67%) say the government should not make such payments, but 29% say it should, including the solid majority of black Americans (73%).

https://news.gallup.com/poll/261722/redress-slavery-americans-oppose-cash-reparations.aspx

"President Barack Obama did not endorse reparations or support creating a reparations program. In 2016, Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic nominee, also did not support reparations. (Sanders in particular was criticized for focusing his opposition on the fact that reparations were “divisive” and would not pass Congress.)
The issue was, and still is, politically unpopular, particularly among white voters.
It’s clear that the Democratic Party is being pushed to have difficult conversations about race and racism — but where did this conversation about reparations come from? And what does it say about the party as a whole?

Here is a discussion on the Democrats position on reparations:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/11/18246741/reparations-democrats-2020-inequality-warren-harris-castro

Personally I believe if we want to focus on issues like this it will make us vulnerable in the general election, regardless how unpopular Trump may appear to be in national polls, especially since it is states, and the electoral college that elect Presidents, not the popular vote

[pnwmom]

10. I think we need to have a serious discussion of reparations,

but I haven't seen a good argument that cash payments is the way to do it.

[still_one]

13. Except for about 4 of the current Democratic candidates, most give very vauge responses when

asked, and I think there is a good reason for that, they know it is a polarizing issue

I agree that there needs to be a serious discussion on it, but except for about 4 of the candidates, I think most would rather not make this a campaign issue in the general election.

[still_one]

15. I think reparations are a trap, and both President Obama and Hillary Clinton

saw that, and why they choose that instead of reparations, to focus on the addressing the inequalities in society

[pnwmom]

17. I agree that direct reparations shouldn't be the position of any of our candidates,

though they should all be talking about ways to fix structural inequality (such as when banks were forced to end redlining).

Are any of the four you mentioned advocating cash payments?

[still_one]

18. I can name a couple from earlier this year who expressed monetary subsidies, but I would

rather not because they very well might have changed their position on that since then.

From what I sense, not know, it seems to me like most of the Democratic candidates seem to be moving toward some kind of study first, to determine the best way to deal with reparations, which leads the door open to a lot of options, but actually doesn't say very much, but I understand that, because it is a darn complicated issue.

The good news is I have to believe that most of the campaigns are now putting focus on this issue, which means serious thought and solutions should come out of it.

It is going to be interesting how this evolves as the primaries continue.

[pnwmom]

19. I think the non-African American public still needs a lot of education on this issue.

Most are unaware of how they're continuing to benefit from structural inequality, whether they intend to or not. And even if all their own ancestors arrived recently and had nothing to do with the slavery era.

[still_one]

20. absolutely, but that isn't going to happen overnight

[brush]

38. No cash payments but job training and placement, college tuition, small business grants, school...

modernization (computer labs etc.) neighborhood/community development and improvement, upgrades and improvement, housing/mortgage assistance and so forth.

Enslaved people had their labor stolen for 250 years, I repeat, 250 years of dawn-to-duck labor without getting paid. Of course there should be a program to compensate for such an unprecedented crime against humanity.

And think about this. By the principle of compounding interest money doubles every seven years. All that uncompensated labor compounding for what is it now, 400 years because the nation has done nothing about it since the end of the Civil War, no 40 acres and a mule as promised, the terror of KKK lynchings and jim crow, not being allowed to participate in the prarie land rush for free land as whites where, having absolutely nothing to pass down to kids and grand kids because of not getting paid and discriminated against at every turn in society, no wonder the average household wealth of whites is ten times that of black families.

If that 400 years of unpaid labor after compounding and doubling every seven years had to be paid out it would break the US Treasury so my above recommendations to attempt to right the horrendous wrong of enslavement would be a huge bargain.

A bargain, so let's get it done ASAP.

[highplainsdem]

7. No, that isn't what she quoted. See the transcript:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/full-transcript-democratic-debate-houston-n1053926

This is what Davis quoted:

In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter, "I don't feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I'll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago."

Obama, too, focuses on what we can do in the present. See the Politifact link in reply 4. The article there points out how similar Obama, Hillary Clinton and Sanders are on this.

IF Linsey Davis had wanted to ask Biden his position on the separate debate about reparations and payments, she should have done so.

She asked him specifically about inequality and schools, and he responded by referring to some of their concerns during the Obama administration.

[pnwmom]

9. Why did you leave out, from the OP, the part you just quoted?

In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter, "I don't feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I'll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago."

In his long, rambling response, he never addressed that issue. What is our responsibility for dealing with the legacy of slavery?

It is, for damn sure, not sending in social workers to make sure parents are playing the radio and record players enough.

[highplainsdem]

14. Sigh. Again, she was talking about education. Not just to Biden, but to the 4 candidates she

questioned immediately before addressing Biden.

And then she moved on to Castro and Booker, who also talked about education.

Education, not reparations.

And Biden also talked about tripling funding for Title I schools, and raising teachers' salaries.

[Hekate]

11. This dead horse is going to be beaten until it's ready for canned dog food or until morale improves

Last edited Mon Sep 16, 2019, 04:11 AM - Edit history (1)

On edit: I am referring to the ongoing swarms, not the OP. When every post on page 1 of the Primaries forum is about the unworthiness of Biden, something out of the ordinary is going on.

[Cha]

22. Oh it's good to read your

edit, Hekate.. Thank you!

Do mind telling me when you changed your choice to Biden?

[Hekate]

24. It's hard to say. I initially didn't want him to run, because I foresaw the ugliness...

No respect for his 40 years of public service, no respect for his growth as a man, just trawlng for ways to twist everything about him. He's a good guy -- he doesn't deserve to end his career that way.

So mostly for something to do in the moment I said I was supporting my Senator, Kamala Harris. She's great. But so are several of the others.

But Biden hooked me with his opening gambit, his Charlottesville/Soul of the Nation video. In my estimation he got it exactly right. We have a fascist wannabe dictator in the White House, a man whose father literally marched with the goddam KKK. Joe Biden knows exactly what he is looking at.

People griping about -- going to get myself in trouble if I say what I really think -- his being "patronizing" in the debates need to check their own selves. If nothing else, they should go back and review the news reports from Charlottesville and Trump's responses, then watch Biden's campaign video. The worst offenders at DU never even say who they think is the appropriate alternative: they just rip and tear at the frontrunner. If Joe is no longer the frontrunner, dollars to holes in donuts they do the same thing to the next man or woman. In fact it's already starting with Kamala, with the excuse that she was a prosecutor.

In any case, I think it was really only a matter of time for me before giving in and admitting that he's my cuppa joe. Very rapidly certain people noticed my new icon and I was accused of "bias" even though I am saying exactly what I've been saying all along.

[Cha]

26. Thank you for that,

Hekate.

".. accused of bias.. " I wouldn't say that to anyone. Of course, we have our preferences unless we don't. So What? We've been around long enough to know who we are and who we like and don't like.

And, yes you have been standing up for truth and Not putting up with any obvious smearing. I appreciate that so much. That kind of attitude is what gives class to these forums.

It's really good to have you on TEAM Biden at DU, sistah!

[treestar]

31. And it is all aimed at race!

Even a pool dedication arising out of teenaged Joe the Lifeguard!!!!!! The early 60s, no less.

[crazytown]

16. Another week, another 'splain controversy

I fear supporters are going to have to Bidensplain every week till the nomination
but not one of these controversies has hurt him in the polls.

[oasis]

21. Many folks here "get it" but won't admit they do. nt

[Celerity]

23. This seems a strawman, I have not seen reparations used as the subject of the question, certainly

not to the point it is now considered the main point of the question.

[jcgoldie]

25. Geez

The answer was such a mess of word salad that splitting hairs over whether the moderator referenced education hardly seems to matter. The only debate it seems to me is whether Joe was just being completely incoherent because he couldn't come up with the words he was searching for or whether his thought process was as paternalistic as seems possible in suggesting that black families can on some level combat institutionalized racism by playing record players for their children.

[cwydro]

30. This.

Thank you.

[samnsara]

29. until Joe chummies up to international tyrants, is accused by multiple women of..

....rape ( which btw is different than hugging someone at a rally)..tears up treaties with our allies.. hurls damaging insults every day..is sadistic and uncaring..allows russian spies into the presidency.. and LIES on an hourly basis.. and threatens to blow the world up every time his feefees get hurted....I will cont to think he is our best bet beating trump.


But I will vote for the Dem nom no matter who it ..or what... it is.

[StarfishSaver]

32. If you're trying to help your candidate, you're only making it worse

When a candidate's answer to a question needs as much explaining and deflecting as you and others have been doing, to the point that five days later, you feel the need to post a treatise diagamming the question, dissecting his response and dragging out a 5-year-old quote from Obama that Biden tried to emulate but managed to both miss by a mile and get tangled up in, your candidate screwed up. Period.

The more you try to explain and cast aspersions on anyone who has the sense to know his answer was an unfortunate mess, the more you demonstrate what an unfortunate mess that answer actually was.

You might want just to let it go now and move on to something because this dead horse ain't getting up.

[peggysue2]

33. Thanks for that, highplainsman

I am really weary of the so-called 'vetting' turning into a character tear down for political expediency. Some people appear to forget what we experienced in 2016 which is one of the reasons we have a budding fascist sitting the White House.

Thank you for pulling back the curtains. Sunshine being the best disinfectant and all that.

[StarfishSaver]

34. Can you point to any "vetting" that anyone, including other candidates, has done on Biden

that you think was acceptable and didn't get criticized by his supporters on DU? Specific examples would be good.

Thanks.

[peggysue2]

35. Can you point out anything we've been reading in these attacks that a reasonable person would . . .

consider vetting for the actual job? Verbal slip ups from a man who overcame stuttering as a kid and who has had years on the world stage as a respected leader? Or a man who is now being arm-chair diagnosed as a dementia patient? I find the latter really, really offensive. Or insinuating that Biden is in his heart a racist after he served 8 years, shoulder-to-shoulder, with our first AA POTUS? You don't think he was vetted by Obama's team and the FBI? Or that he's a corrupt fraud in the pocket of lobbyists and scheming corporations, a Wall Street hack? Or that putting your hands on a woman's shoulders is equal to sexual assault or something dark and shady and just not right.

This should give you a touch of deja vu because it's not unlike the garbage we read and heard about Hillary Clinton, a woman who left the State Department with 70% approval, yet by the time the election neared was badly underwater. That damage came from the Right but also within our own party, the constant criticisms on her character, her past, even her marriage to Bill Clinton. And we now have frigging Donald Trump squatting in the White House risking all our lives.

This sort of constant harangue isn't vetting. It's character assassination. It's wrong and frankly disgusting.

[StarfishSaver]

36. I'll wait for my answer

My question was: "Can you point to any "vetting" that anyone, including other candidates, has done on Biden
that you think was acceptable and didn't get criticized by his supporters on DU?"

Pretty simple.

Unless you can't answer my question with anything other than a deflecting question, which, of course, actually answers my question.

Thanks.

[peggysue2]

37. My answer is my answer

You're welcome.