Title : Can Biden escape criticism for the political use of race by accusing the critics of racism?
link : Can Biden escape criticism for the political use of race by accusing the critics of racism?
Can Biden escape criticism for the political use of race by accusing the critics of racism?
I'm reading "Australian newspaper cartoon of U.S. candidates Harris and Biden criticized as racist" (Reuters):The cartoon by Johannes Leak in The Australian newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and is known for its conservative views, depicted a beaming Biden saying, “It’s time to heal a nation divided by racism.” The drawing then showed him pointing to Harris, the first Black woman on a major-party U.S. presidential ticket, and saying, “So I’ll hand you over to this little brown girl while I go for a lie-down.”...In fact, as the article points out, Biden introduced Harris as his running mate by saying, “This morning, all across the nation, little girls woke up - especially Black and brown girls who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities - but today, today, just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way: as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents.”
The cartoon drew immediate criticism from some officials, and other critics. “It’s offensive and racist,” Andrew Giles, an Australian Labor politician and shadow cabinet minister, said on Twitter. Former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus tweeted, “If The Australian has any respect for decency and standards it must apologise immediately, and never again publish cartoons like this.”
The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Christopher Dore, stood by the cartoon, saying Leak was mocking Biden’s own words. “The words ‘little black and brown girls’ belong to Joe Biden, not Johannes, and were uttered by the presidential candidate when he named Kamala Harris as his running mate yesterday; he repeated them in a tweet soon after,” Dore said in a note to the newspaper’s staff, provided to Reuters by News Corp.... “The intention of Johannes’s commentary was to ridicule identity politics and demean racism, not perpetuate it.”
That is, Biden used race for political purposes. He said the words "black and brown girls" as he presented his running mate as an exemplar. Maybe that's okay. Maybe that's excellent. But it's not above mockery. The idea that the cartoonist is a racist is an effort to defend Biden, to give him free rein to use race and to make anyone who would criticize him afraid that they'll get called a racist and cancelled.
There are people who think that any use of race is racist. These people are mostly on the right. They'll say that anti-racism demands austere colorblindness. But these people are not dominant in mainstream politics and culture at the moment. So speaking in racial terms is quite common among people who don't want to be considered racist. But no one can control where the line is between the talk about race that's worthy and beneficial and where it begins to get racist. The cartoonist was implying that Biden's use of race is at least a little racist, and one defense of Biden is to say that the cartoonist was racist.
One thing is clear to me: If Biden is going to use race the way he has, he must be open to ridicule for using it the wrong way or using it too much. We are lost if we let American culture degenerate into power-seekers who use race as a manipulative tool and masses of people who look on blankly and nod because they don't know how to object without getting accused of racism.
ADDED: Here's the cartoon:
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