Friday, May 22, 2020

Black Blog The Root Most Despairing Spin of Biden's "You Ain't Black"


We Need to Talk About Joe Biden’s The Breakfast Club Interview


This year’s election is going to be tough and it shouldn’t be, but now I’m fully accepting that America is either voting for a Russian-loving, sun-beaten orange Skittle or a soggy white sock with a black stripe and a Southern old white man blaccent.
Let me start this by saying I’m voting for Joe Biden. Full stop.
Let me also add that you should vote for Joe Biden.
Let me also add that if a hat were found in the woods and that hat was running against President Trump, I would have a sign outside my house that read: “Homeless Hat in 2020!”
See, my biggest problem with Joe Biden is well, Joe Biden. He’s the old white guy at the job who always wants to talk with you about basketball or hip-hop to prove that he’s not like the other white guys who mistake you for the valet. The problem is that all of his conversations about Jay-Z and whether Bradley Beal is getting traded are supposed to make him endearing, but he can’t even do that right.
Maybe it’s because Biden still believes in democracy. He still believes he’s fighting a fair fight. Biden still believes that he can rally up the votes to beatPresident Bane in an election he’s trying to steal! Currently, the president of people who enjoy videotaping themselves being thrown out of stores for not wearing masks, is rallying his base to believe that mail-in voting is akin to voter fraud.
And Joe Biden is supposed to save all of Gotham, except Joe Biden isn’t Batman; he’s more like an overly aggressive Alfred.
This could all be so easy. All Biden has to do is announce that his running mate is a black woman and then get out of her way. We know who Joe is and nothing he’s doing is making it better; in fact, he’s only making things worse.
On Friday, Biden made a virtual appearance on The Breakfast Club in which he was interviewed by Charlamagne Tha God, and it might’ve been the most cringe-inducing shit I’ve seen in some time.

“Man!”

First, he keeps calling Charlamagne, “man.”
“I’m following the rules, man.”
“Totally different, man.”
This is Biden’s version of a blaccent. This is the thing he’s doing to make himself cool and hip to the young black community. Imagine a white guy calling you his main man; that’s the way Biden says it. Except, he doesn’t realize he’s playing himself and the community he’s supposed to be reaching out to. Biden isn’t alone in this.
This is a thing that out-of-touch white politicians do all the time. I call it theLove Don’t Co$t a Thing move. It goes like this: Can’t Buy Me Love is a teen romantic comedy that premiered in 1987. It’s an underrated classic that centers around a geeky kid using his savings to pay a cheerleader to help him be cool. When Hollywood wanted to re-create the success of Can’t Buy Me Love, they went and grabbed a young Nick Cannon to star in a remake called Love Don’t Co$t a Thing. Two things are wrong with this idea: The first is that black audiences didn’t like the original movie. The second is that in order to get black audiences to come out, the studio had to hip-hop the title up a bit with that dollar sign for an “s.” What the studio didn’t realize and what Biden doesn’t realize is doing that is degrading and shows just how out of touch they are with the community they’re trying to reach.
You don’t endear yourself to black people by trying to talk the way you believe they do. You endear yourself to black people—hell, all people—by being genuine. Imagine if Obama went on Ryan Seacrest’s show and started calling him “dude” after every sentence.
“See how fucking stupid that sounds, dude?

What the fuck is Biden even talking about?

When talking about something—hell, even I forget now because Biden went off on a goddamn tangent—he noted that Trump is like a carnival act who’s running a con. He claimed that the work is to figure out that you’re being conned and then there is no illusion.
“Let me tell you something, my community figured it out a while ago,” Biden said.
I don’t know who Biden’s community is. Is he talking about the community of old, white rich men? Is he talking about Democrats? Is he talking about his neighbors in Scranton, Pa.? Who is this community he speaks of?
In the same rambling sequence, Biden noted that had Trump listened to him and others and responded sooner to the COVID -19 warnings, there wouldn’t have been 36,000 people “Dead. Dead. Dead. And you guys are wondering what he’s doing? Come on, man. Get a life. Get a life.”
Umm, huh? Again, who are “you guys”? Seriously, who are the “you guys that are wondering what he’s doing”? Is anyone wondering what Trump is doing? I’m wondering WTF Joe Biden is doing.

Biden has a manifesto for black America.

I don’t know how I feel about a white man and a manifesto, but Biden has one and it sounds promising, I guess. Biden mentioned said manifesto after Charlamagne pressed him on his reluctance to admit to his role in locking black folks up. Biden started rambling but nothing he said sounded like, “I’m sorry.”
The New York Times did a whole piece on how Biden’s been trying to downplay his role in the mass incarceration of black and brown people. Biden’s history of working with segregationists on major crime bills is extensive, but no matter what he says now, just remember that this was his boast on the Senate floor:
“The truth is, every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the State of Delaware: Joe Biden.”

So what about Amy “I once ate a salad with a comb” Klobuchar being vetted for VP?

“I’m not acknowledging anybody who is being considered, but I guarantee you, there are multiple black women being considered. Multiple,” Biden said,Politico reports.

The Pièce de Résistance

“Listen, you’ve got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden,” Charlamagne said. “It’s a long way until November. We’ve got more questions.”
“You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
I can’t with this nigga. I can’t. I mean the more I try, the more he just does this. He even made Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham stand up for black people.

It might be time for Symone Sanders to take Biden behind the bleachers and fuck him up.
Still, I say: Vote soggy sweat sock in 2020. That’s about the best I can do.

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