Biden Uses Inauguration to Accuse America of Keeping Justice from Minorities
President Joe Biden spent much of his inauguration speech repeating his call for unity. Yet in the very next breath, he gave credence to the idea that America has been racist since its founding.
“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart,” Biden said.
“Racism, nativism, fear, demonization, have long torn us apart — the battle is perennial,” says Biden #Inauguration https://t.co/CMJvsH7VUa pic.twitter.com/tfjbiXSCIx
— Bloomberg Opinion (@bopinion) January 20, 2021
“A cry for racial justice, some 400 years in the making, moves us,” he added. “The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.”
Biden makes pledge for racial justice: “A cry for racial justice, some 400 years in the making, moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.” pic.twitter.com/GcmtiqapRY
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) January 20, 2021
Once again, Biden seems unaware that these two ideas are in direct conflict with one another. If a majority of Americans come to believe that our country has been racist for 400 years, we will increasingly run out of ideas on which to unify.
“No country can survive its citizens seeing one another as enemies rather than friends, seeing their country as a reflection of continuing evil embedded in its history,” conservative commentator Ben Shapiro wrote in a syndicated column in July.
He is correct. If Biden and his supporters truly believe that America is systemically racist, our country as we know it will fall apart.
That is not a unifying idea.
All of this is not to say that America has not been infected with racism in the past. As Shapiro puts it, the Founding Fathers had a view for an equal United States, and despite imperfections, we have been striving toward it ever since.
“American history is replete with racism; racism was indeed the root of systems ranging from slavery to Jim Crow,” Shapiro wrote.
“But the story of America is the story of the cashing of Martin Luther King Jr.’s promissory note: the fulfillment of the pledge of the Declaration of Independence to treat all men equally, to grant them protection of their unalienable natural rights.”
In other words, what makes our country great is both the vision of the Founding Fathers and the subsequent fight by Americans to get to where they were leading us.
To acknowledge the beauty of America is not to ignore its checkered past. It has been people like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. who have continued the fight toward equality that started in 1776.
Joe Biden’s words, however, suggest a completely different picture. They suggest that America has always been racist, which would render our Constitution and Declaration of Independence useless for today.
I say “Joe Biden’s words” because I am not convinced that he himself really believes the Founders were evil or racist. It is possible that he is failing to realize what his words truly mean.
No decent American, Republican or Democrat, wants there to be racist policies in place. Biden would be well served to push unity on that idea instead.
Thankfully, we as a country have made huge strides since our founding in that regard. That progress can be seen in many areas of everyday life.
“Some problems of wealth inequality are in part products of history — history always has consequences,” Shapiro says.
“But overwhelmingly, the pathways to success are not barred by discrimination. Black Americans occupy many of the most prominent positions in American society, from government to entertainment to education to finance.”
Those statements were not always true in America, but they are today. We should be recognizing our progress toward equality, not pretending that we are no better off than were during the Jim Crow era.
While racism is less prevalent in our country today, it certainly still exists. Fighting it can be a unifying idea.
However, to reach that unity, we must stop vilifying past and present Americans and instead strive towards the Founders’ vision together. The sooner Biden realizes that, the better off we will be.
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