Help! I’m up to my nose in boxes. Man. You never realize how much stuff you accumulate in 10 years. And the books. They’ve been breeding! (I’m moving to California, by the way.)
Anyway, I’m breaking briefly to blog about Barack Obama’s choice of vice presidential running mate, Senator Joe Biden. I couldn’t resist reminding you about Biden’s “controversial” remarks.
Last year, a journalist asked Biden what he thought of his opponent (Biden had recently announced his candidacy for president), and this is what he said about Obama:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
That one statement set off a sh**storm, and mainstream media and bloggers were right in the middle of it. Calling a black person “articulate” and “clean” conjures up negative racial stereotypes, which imply that black people normally aren’t well-spoken or hygienic. Yes, I know it’s ridiculous, but some black people can be overly sensitive about these things.
Of course, Biden said he didn’t mean anything by it, and some figured he probably meant that Obama was clean of scandals. Here’s Biden’s explanation:
“My mother has an expression clean as a whistle sharp as a tack, that was the context.”
Did he really mean that? I guess you have to take the man at his word, but it didn’t quell the criticism. Being called articulate and clean isn’t offensive per se, but as you’ve seen, people look for racism in the most innocuous of comments and fleeting of glances.
Read more about Obama’s pick at Memeorandum.
I thought the whole thing was funny, and I had more fun with it in Barack Obama: The Clean Negro.
Obviously, Biden’s remarks didn’t bother Obama. I wonder, though, why the infanticide-supporting “citizen of the world” didn’t choose a woman or another “minority” as his running mate. Theories?
