(WatchDogReport.org) – President Joe Biden’s commencement address at Atlanta’s Morehouse College has led to accusations he was “race baiting” in an attempt to stir up support among black voters for his presidential campaign.
In the speech, Biden suggested that democracy could not work for black graduates, suggesting they must work ten times harder to succeed in America. The president also claimed that black men were being gunned down in the streets, referring to George Floyd.
Lou Valentino, a New York resident, called Biden a “race baiter” on Fox & Friends following the controversial speech and accused Biden of aiming to “set back” African Americans to pursue a fight for civil rights rather than doing his best to deliver results to black communities.
This isn’t the first time Biden has been called out for being divisive on the subject of race.
As the U.S. approached the 2020 presidential election, Derecka Purnell, a writer and social movement lawyer based in Washington D.C., expressed her exhaustion with Biden. She argued that black voters were in an “abusive relationship” with the Democratic Party, accusing the president of being condescending towards black people and mistreating them both “verbally and politically” for years.
One example the columnist gave was Biden’s apparent lack of concern over cutting social security and other benefits that many from black communities have to rely on. While on the House floor, Biden drew comparisons between his approach to criminal justice and Richard Nixon’s. Despite black communities experiencing drug use rates comparable to struggling white communities, Biden’s bill resulted in African Americans being arrested “in droves,” according to Purnell, and in many cases, remaining in prison to this day.
In 2023, Biden was condemned by conservatives for politicizing race and utilizing “overt racism” to make political gains after he claimed in a speech to students at the historically black Howard University that white supremacy was the biggest terrorism threat in the United States. Biden had been accused of using what proved to be a controversial speech at Morehouse College to try to win over black voters. In April, students and teachers called on the college to cancel the speech, but the protest failed to gain traction.
According to polls, the president’s popularity among what was a key voter base for Democrats in the 2020 election is dwindling, as many feel the Biden administration has not delivered its promises. Biden’s speech follows another recent controversy involving the Democrats and their discussion of race; earlier in May 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul was slated after she suggested that black children in the Bronx do not know what a computer is.
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