Bugger Off, Biden
Posted by
Kevin
Oh, this is just lovely:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Christ, what next? A visit to Bob Jones University?
the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy
Yep. The very first one.
Jesus . . . even if he just meant “as a realistic contender for a major party nomination”, it’s idiotic. Sometimes Biden is sharp as a tack, and sometimes it’s like he’s got George Bush living in his head, occasionally crawling out through his mouth.
Comment 1/31/2007
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
I thought he was talking about Thomas Sowell.
Comment 1/31/2007
I think it’s pretty obvious he meant
..the first mainstream African-American candidate, who also is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy..
In other words, the first politically viable black candidate for President who also presents very well on TV. Keep in mind politicians (especially higher profile politicians in DC) are talking (and potentially being quoted) all the time. Everyone is guilty of poorly constructed sentences now and then, but few have them turned into sound bites.
Comment 1/31/2007
Ted
Still inexcusable - -Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, And Carol Mosely-Braun weren’t clean bright and articulate? You don;t use code words like that. Period.
Comment 1/31/2007
The most charitable gloss I can put on Biden’s comments is this…
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American [presidential candidate, someone] who is articulate and bright and clean[-cut] and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
…and it still makes me cringe.
Set aside the casual insult to Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, and others. Give him a pass on the weird and creepy “clean.” Ignore the dunderheadedness of the whole thing. And you’re still left with this:
Joe Biden has been a Democratic member of the US Senate for more than three decades, and he still doesn’t know that calling the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review “articulate” is going to piss people off.
Comment 1/31/2007
Kevin, err, no. It’s not that they were not articulate, it’s that they weren’t mainstream.
Try adding a comma to the transcription of Biden’s remarks and things might become more clear:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
See how that changes everything?
I have to admit that before I read this piece I was completely unaware that articulate was a code word. To be honest, I am still not convinced it is.
Comment 1/31/2007
I don’t think it’s a code word, Ted, so much as a red flag — a word with lots and lots of cultural baggage.
Is every white person who calls a successful black person “articulate” expressing covert racism? No. But it’s a loaded thing to say, and it’s often taken as offensive — with good reason in many cases.
Comment 1/31/2007
Ted:
Try adding a comma to the transcription of Biden’s remarks and things might become more clear: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American, who is . . .”
Doesn’t work.
If the phrase before the comma is his basid description of Obama, and everything after “who is” merely characterizes that person, then he’s literally saying Barack Obama is “the first mainstream African-American”. Even ignoring the implied importance of being “mainstream”, that’s still just asinine.
It also doesn’t erase the racially/socially loaded meanings of the terms he used to describe “the first mainstream African-American”. He really thought it was necessary to point out that Obama was “clean”? And “articulate” *is* a heavily suggestive term - not literally a “code word” in the sense that “inner city” or “criminal element” are, making an unstated reference to blacks by way of negative association, but it’s a well-worn damning with faint praise that has been used so often that it has become a point of sensitivity in its own right. It’s a phrase that has been used condescendingly or dismissively so often that blacks are primed to read it in that light, which in turn makes it an offense in the way that using any known offensive term is an offense, whatever the literal meaning of the term.
Comment 1/31/2007
Sorry, Ted, but I’m with the Kevins on this one. I’m not sure Biden intended the derogatory meaning, but it’s clearly going to be received that way (even if I suspect Obama will be gracious in letting it roll off). Are you telling me you’ve never heard anyone talking about some African-American athlete and expressing surprise at how “well-spoken” or “articulate” they are? I used to hear it all the time. (Hell, at one time in my life, I was one of the ones guilty of saying it.) I just can’t believe that you’re ignorant of that history.
Comment 1/31/2007
KTK, given the content of Biden’s statements (a rundown on each of the democratic candidates for president) I think it is safe to assume he was speaking within that context when he uttered the sentence in question. In other words, it can be assumed he meant first mainstream black presidential candidate. Keep in mind this was not a planned speech. The guy was talking extemporaneously in a diner while eating lunch. Also, if you don’t think a guy running for president (Biden) doesn’t place significant importance on the fact that another Democratic candidate is perceived to be mainstream (read electable)…
Tgirsch, when responding to Biden’s remarks, Obama’s spokesperson said something like “Obama has articulated his opinion on Iraq”. I don’t recall the exact wording, but I am positive the word “articulated” was used. Does this mean the spokesperson is also speaking in code? And the whole athlete thing is bogus. Most athletes cultivate a certain image, and it does not include being articulate. An articulate hockey player is a surprise. Now go ahead and make that into a racist statement.
Comment 1/31/2007
An articulate hockey player is a surprise. Now go ahead and make that into a racist statement.
‘Cause there are so many black hockey players . . .!
As for the “he was obviously saying . . .” tack, you’re working awfully hard to make him sound reasonable. First we have to read a bunch of extra words into his statement. Then we have to repunctuate it. Then we have to assume that he didn’t know the racial history of the words he uses to talk about black people. Then we have to assume that history doesn’t matter . . .
Why don’t we just assume he’s Winston Churchill and not a dumbass fumble-mouth - then he’d really sound good and it would take a lot less effort on our part?
Comment 1/31/2007
KTK:
Why don’t we just assume he’s Winston Churchill and not a dumbass fumble-mouth
Ahahaha, that made my afternoon.
Ted:
An articulate hockey player is a surprise. Now go ahead and make that into a racist statement.
Given the percentage of the NHL that’s made up of Eastern Europeans and French-Canadians, it really wouldn’t be all that difficult. But quit playing coy. You know the point I was making and are intentionally sidestepping it. Cut it out.
To espouse the point of view you’re espousing on this, as KTK points out, one has to ignore history. You’ve given exactly zero compelling reasons why we ought to ignore history in this context.
Comment 1/31/2007
DAMNIT! I’m a very well spoken coloured man. WHERE ARE MY PROPS?!?! I’m so bloody articulate I can’t stand myself! I want to be able to be complimented backhandedly like this!!!
Comment 1/31/2007
KTK, he is a dumbassed fumble-mouth. There is clear and consistent evidence of that, and I don’t deny it. In fact that is precisely my point. What there is no clear and consistent evidence of is Biden speaking down to blacks. Clearly we don’t know his true intentions. As was the case with Kerry, I choose to assume his intent based on his history, not his fumbled words.
TGirsch, I am not being coy. I am surprised when any pro athlete speaks articulately. Listen to the cream of the retired crop as announcers. White or black. They are for the most part very far from being articulate. And finally, the street talk that most young urban blacks (and yes most blacks live in urban environments and most athletes are young) does not lend itself to articulately expressing one’s self. On the other hand, I don’t find it at all surprising when a doctor or lawyer (white or black) expresses themselves articulately. If any of this makes me a racist, then so be it, I’m a racist. Maybe I’ll run into Biden at the next Klan meeting…
Comment 1/31/2007
TGirsch, you wrote: “Given the percentage of the NHL that’s made up of Eastern Europeans and French-Canadians, it really wouldn’t be all that difficult.”
WTF. Everyone is from somewhere. Do we need to carefully monitor our speech whenever the audience is not 100% comprised of people with our exact same heritage for fear of being perceived as racist? I made a statement with no racist intent (I know this; I am the one who made the statement) about hockey players. And you say it would be easy to make it into a racist statement. Which is to say it would be easy to make it into something that it is not. Or at the very least easy to make it into something it is not intended to be. Think about that for a second. And perhaps think about it in the future when someone gets pegged as racist when they might only be guiilty of fumbling a sentence. Finally, think back about similar incidents over the past year and see if you tend to give the benefit of the doubt to those you otherwise respect (Clinton’s plantation quip, Kerry’s joke, etc) and not to those you don’t (Allen, Biden, etc). It might be a telling exercise for many people.
Comment 1/31/2007
Most Black people live in the South, actually Ted.
Comment 1/31/2007
OK, I just heard a tape of Biden’s remarks on the 11:00 news. I was wrong about inserting the comma. It should be a period being inserted, not a comma (and yes I know that doesn’t work. My point is there is a long pause and then a change in inflection that clearly split the two halves of his comment. I defy anyone who hears the tape to say that there is any way Biden was stating or implying or anything else that Obama is the first anything other than first mainstream black.
And the quote as circulating on the internet is incorrect in another way. Not that it changes anything, but the quote should read “..is the first, sort of, mainstream..” The “sort of” comes across as an gap filler (like an “ummm”) so maybe that is why it was left out of the transcription.
Jesse Jackson was asked about Biden’s remarks and said approximately “Biden did not mean to be offensive. It could be interpreted that way, but it is not the way Biden meant it.” For whatever that is worth. I’m sure bloggers who have never met the man know Biden’s intentions better than those who know him well.
Comment 1/31/2007
Ted:
I’m not calling you a racist or accusing you of racism. To be painfully frank, what I’m accusing you of is being woefully ignorant of the history of these terms. View Biden’s statement like Kerry’s “stuck in Iraq” joke, only worse. Kerry only blew one word. Biden said at least three things exactly the wrong way. It’s not about whether he intended to offend people; the fact is, he did, and those who were offended weren’t without justification in being offended. And Biden should have known better.
You seem to be obsessing on Biden’s intentions, but they’re not the only thing at issue here. You could probably argue that Reagan wasn’t “speaking in code” when he went to Philadelphia, MS trumpeting about states’ rights, but even if you convinced someone that he had no racist intent (which would give him way too much credit, but I digress…), that wouldn’t make what Reagan said any less stupid and offensive. That someone doesn’t intend to offend doesn’t mean that they didn’t offend, or that any offense that is taken is unjustified.
Getting back to your hockey example, you once again are trying to look at your statement in a vacuum, completely devoid of context, without explaining why we ought to look at it that way. That you had no racist intent in making the statement doesn’t mean that there’s no history of such talk being commonly and prevalently used in racist ways. “I didn’t mean anything by it, therefore it’s okay to assume that nobody else ever did, either” isn’t exactly what I’d call a compelling argument.
I keep repeating myself, but history and context, man. They’re both important. And yet you insist that we ignore both. I have no idea why.
As to this:
For whatever that is worth. I’m sure bloggers who have never met the man know Biden’s intentions better than those who know him well.
I simply have no idea where that’s coming from. For starters, it’s quite a nice straw man, since I don’t think anybody here claimed any such thing; for another, the day we’re disqualified from speculating about the intentions of others, we may as well close up shop and quit blogging entirely.
Comment 1/31/2007
Tgirsch, yes, I am obsessing on Biden’s intentions. That is what is important to me. Not a version of his words that he did not intend. He is a clumsy speaker who said something that some people took the wrong way (ie they interpreted his meaning in a way other than he intended it). Some of those people were offended. He has already apologized to them. That’s it. Is that worth a couple of headlines on Lean Left and a couple hundred more throughout the blogosphere? Of course the right wing talk show guys are all over Biden for this, which in turn has Keith Olbermann defending Biden. One of the few times he is out of step with the lefty bloggers.
If you read the two Kevins’ comments on this subject, it seems to me they are not just making the case that Biden unintentionally offended some people. As for your comments, yes I am guilty of being completely unaware that the words “articulate”, “mainstream”, “clean”, “bright”, and “nice looking” have racist connotations. 100% ignorant of that. I wonder if you can find a single reference anywhere on the internet written before yesterday that cites any of those words as having a racist connotation. Seriously. Maybe I am out of touch, I don’t know. I honestly think you have fallen victim to an internet legend that has a lifespan of about 36 hours.
I will say this, equating peoples reaction to black athletes and their reaction to Obama, simply becasue he also is black, strikes me as a bit racist. Given Obama’s life to date, I would damn well assume he is quite a bit more articulate than virtually every pro athlete - black, white, or green. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about that argument that rubs me the wrong way. Plus, anyone who has ever heard him speak knows he is very articulate, so to state that he is just doesn’t strike me as patronizing, much less racist. Is it OK to describe Obama as “well spoken”, or is better off to altogether avoid the subject of his obvious oratory skills? Doesn’t this get a bit silly at some point? I admit to an aversion to extreme political correctness, so maybe I’m off base here. Heck I watched Lisa Lampanelli on TV last night and laughed the whole way through her act.
Comment 2/1/2007
OK, I did the search and to my surprise I found a couple of threads where the term “articulate” was described as having racist overtones. So the concept is not new, just new to me. Didn’t find anything on clean, bright, nice looking or mainstream though.
Comment 2/1/2007
Mark, if you are still with us, I neglected to address your comment about most blacks living in the south as opposed to in urban areas. First, I would like to point out that there are urban areas in the south, so the two are not mutually exclusive. Second, according to the 2003 census, 53% of blacks live in the south (in this context, the south includes DE, MD, DC, VA and TN). Finally, the same census reports that 87.5% of blacks live in central cities or metropolitan areas.
Comment 2/1/2007
[…] I figured that Biden’s comments about Barrack Hussein Obama would be defended with some righteousness from the lefty blogs. Instead, they came down on him. Good for them. Though some commenters are defending him. […]
Pingback 2/1/2007
Ted:
As for your comments, yes I am guilty of being completely unaware that the words “articulate”, “mainstream”, “clean”, “bright”, and “nice looking” have racist connotations. 100% ignorant of that.
In this regard, we’ve been putting it somewhat the wrong way. In most of these cases, it’s not just about the specific words used, but the general concept of the backhanded compliment. You’re “praising” someone for traits that ought to be expected of most people (or most people in their position), as though that sort of adequacy is somehow unusual or unexpected. The implication there has historically been crystal clear. What’s said is something like “he’s intelligent,” but when you put in the implications, it becomes “he’s [surprisingly] intelligent [for a black guy].” No, I’m not saying that this was what Biden was trying to convey. What I’m saying is that people using language just like Biden’s to convey the types of messages I’m talking about has historically been quite pervasive, and that’s why Biden’s remarks drew so much ire. Does this make sense to you?
Now the Kevins are basically arguing that there is at least a little bit of that in Biden’s subconscious somewhere — not an overt racism, but some deep-seeded racial prejudice of the sort all of us have to some degree or another — that helped drive him to say those things the way he said them. I’m inclined to agree with them on that count, and you may not be. But even if you give Biden the benefit of the doubt, the history behind statements like that is not terribly ambiguous.
Comment 2/1/2007
TGirsch, OK, I understand what you are saying. The one point where I strongly disagree is that it is expected that politicians be all those things (articulate, bright, clean - from scandal I guess - and nice looking). After all, you guys spend most of your time pointing out that virtually every republican politician is lacking in one of those areas.
Let me make my point another way. Forget race. Who was the last “storybook” candidate? I would go with JFK. What were the five attributes that made him so? He was articulate (or at least his speech writers were - much fewer unscripted moments back inthose days), he was bright (as in intelligent in a non-threatening way - the general public likes that), he was nice looking, and he was personally clean of scandal (and his father was able to keep the lid on his own past pretty effectively pre-election). (I stipulate my interpretation of “clean” might be inaccurate here, but it is the only one that I have come across that makes sense so I’m going with it.) And finally, he was within the mainstream of politics at the time.
All of which to say that I think Biden’s accessment of Obama is spot on. He is the perfect real world candidate. Which is why he is in the position he now is.
Comment 2/1/2007
Forget race. Who was the last “storybook” candidate?
I’d go with Clinton, actually. From Governor of the nation’s poorest (at the time) state to the White House? That’s storybook.
As for what we expect of politicians, we’re cynics. How we view them doesn’t count for much in this context.
And there’s a difference between us complaining about them, and them bashing their peers under the guise of “complimenting” them.
Comment 2/2/2007
TGirsch, You can’t include Clinton’s presidency as an achievement while he was a candidate. And if we do move on to the time each man spent in office, the Kennedy years were referred to as “Camelot” by the press whereas Clinton seemed to spend half his time dealing with scandal. Of course Kennedy would have as well had press coverage in his time matched that during Clinton’s tenure…
Comment 2/2/2007