The word ‘boy,’ race politics, and Democratic wrangling raise the interest of Black voters
1st July 2019 · 0 Comments
By Hamil R. Harris
Contributing Writer
(TriceEdneyWire.com) — The Iowa Caucus isn’t until Feb. 20 and with the first Democratic Presidential debates behind us, African-American voters are already taking sides. The rhetorical slug fest between Vice-President Joe Biden, at the top of the polls, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who is trailing.
Welcome officially to the 2020 Presidential Primary because from now until next summer’s Democratic convention, contenders will be working hard to knock each other out of the political box in hopes of taking on President Trump in the general election and everything will matter in this political contest.
In Round 1, former Vice President Joe Biden recently told a crowd at a New York City fundraiser that when he was in the U.S. Senate, “at least there was civility,” between Democrats and Republicans. And then Biden went on to say that he even worked with segregationists like former Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland. As a 29-year-old senator, Biden, now 76, recalled, Eastland “never called me boy; he always called me son.”
The comment went viral as Biden was met with a firestorm of criticism; perhaps most notably from Booker, who called for him to apologize for even repeating the word, “boy,” a racial insult endured by millions of Black men during Jim Crow segregation and beyond.
Booker said, “As a Black man in America, I know the deeply harmful and hurtful use of the word boy and how it was used to dehumanize and degrade.”
Whether or not Biden was attempting his own version of the Southern strategy, which fires up white voters at the expense of African-American candidates, he fired back on national television saying, Cory is the one who “should apologize” for injecting race and implying he meant something untoward.
“He knows better,” Biden said. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”
In the wake of Booker’s comments, some members of the Congressional Black Caucus came to Biden’s defense and Rev. Al Sharpton invited Biden to his show on MSNBC where Biden said, “I do understand the consequences of the word boy… but it wasn’t said in any of that context at all.”
At a time when African Americans make up the largest voting block in the Democratic Party, Booker must navigate choppy political waters because he wants to stand as a champion of his convictions while at the same time not draw fire from older African Americans who see Biden as the best person to beat Trump.
“I certainly wish that he hadn’t have said it,” Rep. Karen Bass of California, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus told CNN last week. “I certainly wish he wouldn’t have used that example. I think there’s a lot of other examples of where he has worked in a bipartisan fashion, but I would like to see us move on from there.”
While Biden met with members of the CBC last week, the real question is how much will their endorsement matter 12 months from now and will African-American women play a big part in who will be the next Democratic Presidential nominee.
Melanie Campbell, CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable, said the fight is on because, “You have 20 candidates and eight months before the primary. No candidate has a lock on the Black vote.”
Campbell said she planned to be in Miami for both Democratic debates this week. But her biggest worry is the electoral process being compromised by outside forces whether it is the Russians, Americans or anybody else.
“We need to push the issue in terms of asking the candidates what they plan to do for Black America,” Campbell said. “The role of Black women is paramount to any progressive candidate that wants to win and no one candidate has a lock on the Congressional Black Caucus or any other group.”
Campbell concluded that people of color have a chance to make a difference in this election if the political game is fair. “There is a big concern about Democracy and the suppression of the Black vote.”
This article originally published in the July 1, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
