Northam now says it wasn't him in the photo. Was it Joe Biden?Ralph Northam has a long, horrible, conservative career in Virginia politics. For starters, he admits he voted for George W. Bush-- both times. In his own 2013 campaign, Northam said "I don’t consider myself as a liberal... I think the less government, the better" and said he is "very conservative fiscally." He has a record in the state legislature to back it up. He's also been generally anti-immigrant over the course of his career until very recently. Soon after he was first elected to the state Senate in 2007 he announced he was leaving the Democratic caucus and joining the Republicans, which would have thrown control of the Senate to the GOP. He said the reason he was switching was because of his fiscal conservatism. I don't know what the Democrats promised him-- plenty, no doubt-- but they persuaded him to change his mind." So the offensive picture in the yearbook didn't exactly shock my socks off. Soon, even conservative Democrats, like Terry McAuliffe, started calling for Northam to resign at once, all outaged.It was a photo of Northam in blackface with a KKK goofball on his page in a 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook, although early this morning, Northam says it isn't him in the picture (and he won't resign-- so there). Republicans-- who normally celebrate this kind of thing in their own politicians-- had already been howling for his head... and had been quickly followed by Democrats of every stripe doing likewise. Friday night the Congressional Black Caucus and the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus each demanded Northam resign. Kamala Harris jumped in fast and furious: "Leaders are called to a higher standard, and the stain of racism should have no place in the halls of government. The Governor of Virginia should step aside so the public can heal and move forward together." Other presidential candidates did the same. Julian Castro: "It doesn’t matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. This behavior was racist and unconscionable. Governor Northam should resign." Cory Booker jumped in quickly with a call to resign. So did Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, John Delaney, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who will sooner or later go through the same kind of crucible over her equally horrible xenophobia and anti-Latino bias from when she was catering to a different constituency than the one she's sucking up to today. And then there was Joe Biden:Sputnik News is an arm of Russian state propaganda, a rival these days with Fox News for pushing out Republican talking points. It isn't a new story that Biden was an anti-integration Democrat, eventually palling around with KKK hero Jesse Helms in the Senate. His past racist agenda was part of why he was the protagonist in out Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President-- Part IV. But here's how Russian/Republican propaganda tells that story and will tell it much louder and more instantly if he-- God forbid-- manages to get the nomination:
Biden, who is considering a 2020 run for the White House, has a record of pushing for measures to end busing, which were originally intended to end racial segregation in US public schools. Newly-discovered comments reveal that Biden was once an outright advocate of school segregation.Joe Biden, who served as US Vice President for two terms under the nation's first black president, once endorsed school segregation in an early nod to identity politics."I think the concept of busing… that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest, is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride," then-Delaware Senator Biden said in an interview with National Public Radio in 1975, discovered by the Washington Examiner in the congressional archives.Ultimately, he maintained, desegregation would lead to a "totally homogeneous society," something that would prevent black people from embracing their culture.Biden, who was supporting an anti-busing amendment to a federal law, called desegregation "a rejection of the entire black-awareness concept, where black is beautiful, where black culture should be studied and the cultural awareness of the importance of their own identity, their own individuality."He said he spent "close to 300 hours" weighing up his anti-busing proposal, during which he questioned his aides whether he was a racist deep inside. "I put in over 100 hours by far, I would say close to 300 hours on just torturing this thing, meeting with leaders, meeting with the people on my staff, calling my staff together, um, uh, and the blacks in my staff together, saying, 'Now, look, this is what I think. Do you think I am? I mean, is there something in me that deep-seated that I don't know?'"His comments came after in 1974, US District Judge Arthur Garrity ruled that Boston's traditional neighborhood schools fostered de facto racial segregation, which he qualified as unconstitutional. He ordered that African American students be bused to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods and vice versa in a bid to desegregate schools-- a decision that sparked protests among white residents.Biden is said to have initially supported busing but later backed down, following a backlash from his white constituents. While many white families in 1970's America sidestepped busing by moving to suburban municipalities with independent school districts, a US District Court in Delaware mandated county-wide busing, and strict racial quotas were applied throughout the most populous county in the state.It is unclear, however, what the reaction of voters will be as Joe Biden is now considering a presidential run in 2020. "I think I'm the most qualified person in the country to be president. The issues that we face as a country today are the issues that have been in my wheelhouse, that I've worked on my whole life," he said in December.Plenty of commenters were quick to voice their outrage over Biden's comments, contending that he made a case in favour of maintaining racial segregation and is thus a racist.While some believe that these new revelations may kill Biden's 2020 chances, others maintain that Biden's "black awareness" concept is totally in sync with today's progressive trend of celebrating identity."The Left love their identity politics, so don't be surprised if Biden's racial segregation support in the '70s doesn't actually hurt his chances at the White House," wrote columnist Quin Hillyer.
