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Eastland was known as the “Voice of the White South.” He opposed the Civil Rights Act, complained of “mongrelization,” and spoke of black people as “an inferior race.” He may have liked you, @JoeBiden. He still voted to undermine our humanity. You just disproved your whole point.
I’m just going to ask this straight out: what the hell is wrong with @JoeBiden? Eastland, an arch-segregationist, “never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son’”? You don’t say! Now, why was that the case? Was it your special talent for reaching across the aisle? Or whiteness?
I’m just going to venture a guess and say that his whiteness is the reason why a white supremacist in the Senate thought Joe Biden, despite their policy differences, just might be an okay guy. That Biden considers this a selling point for his 2020 candidacy should set off alarms.
At first, I thought Biden merely hoped to skate on his melanin proximity, being Vice President in the Obama era. But consistent fuckery like this has me thinking that he simply takes his black electorate for granted, and for fools. How many segregationists did you coddle, Joe?
Biden actually disproves the very point he aims to make. He seems to imply that his record of coddling racists prepares him well for working with today’s Republican. But folks like Eastland made Biden feel like part of the club of whiteness while still subjugating black people.
Enlisting the white moderate’s help in suppression, whether through direct action or other forms of complicity, is an essential weapon of white supremacy. Eastland was trying to kill us, and Biden talks about him like he was his goddamned buddy. Well, because that is what he was.
I could write for days about this, but I have to go feed and walk my puppy. I’ll just say again: please think more critically about these candidates. Now is when we should vet them, not later. We have plenty to choose from. Consider who is taking us, and this process, seriously.
Eastland worked with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission—which, per @KWestSavali, aided and abetted in the assassinations of civil rights leaders. “Yet, he was apparently not only a model of civility for Biden,” she writes, “but a political accomplice.” essence.com/news/politics/…
