Joe Biden, American racism, and optimism

I must admit my first reaction to Joe Biden being chosen as Obama’s running mate was “meh.”

I’ve had running debates over Joe Biden with a friend for most of the primary season. She loves him, and, well, my feeling was as above. She never managed to convince me, mostly because her arguments were simply that “He’s so intelligent.” Compared to whom?

After watching the first Democratic debate of the primary season, I was impressed by Biden. He was funny, managed to be concise despite a reputation for running his mouth, and made very good points. He’s got a good record on women’s issues (though a so-so record on abortion rights, having voted for the partial-birth abortion ban and for abstinence education) and a long history of foreign policy experience, right?

Well, his foreign policy was what tripped me up. I’m one of those Americans who sees our president’s biggest opportunity to do good or cause damage in his or her foreign relations. While most domestic policy has to get through Congress, the President and the State Department can cause all sorts of problems with the wrong attitude, let alone actions.

Biden’s proposal to partition Iraq gave me shivers. We’ve already invaded the country and are viewed as occupiers by the population there and across the world. We’ve already got a paternalistic attitude towards the country, and now we should announce to them that we’re going to divide it up into three bits?

I know Iraq was arbitrarily created in the first place, and that while we’re at it, most borders are arbitrary. But it seems to me that if Iraq is to be partitioned, it shouldn’t be Whitey McBiden who proposes it. We’re already doing way too much to revive the colonial era as it is.

In any case, once it seemed clear that Obama wasn’t going to choose my favorite rumored VP choice, Janet Napolitano, I was pretty neutral on the whole game. I didn’t sit up late waiting for my Obama text message to tell me who would be chosen. I just waited.

I’ve mentioned some of the negatives already. Others include: he’s from Delaware. He’s a career Senator, which doesn’t bring any executive experience and does bring lots and lots of compromise votes that can be brought up in negative ads. He voted to loosen restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. Next to no one was excited about his campaign. He was DOA after Iowa. And to top it all off, he voted to authorize war in Iraq, and says he would not have voted that way if he had realized the administration was going to be so incompetent. Which is fine and all, but what about the realization that we had no reason to go into Iraq in the first place?

Obama looks to be balancing out the critiques of himself as inexperienced, though for my money, a governor would’ve been better on that level. Bill Richardson? My hope here is that they’re saving Richardson for Secretary of State in the administration, rather than the VPship which is, Cheney notwithstanding, just ceremonial. By choosing someone like Biden, though, he’s undermining his “change” message a bit.

But all that said, Biden’s growing on me.

After reading several rather violently negative reactions to his past stupid comments on race—“articulate and clean”?—I was surprised to find myself realizing that that may be exactly why Biden was chosen.

He’s clearly not a hateful guy. He’s just kind of a typical white man: born in 1942, in a fairly powerful position most of his life, and never had any reason to think about race in any deeper fashion than he has.

He’s from Scranton, PA, which is not exactly a bastion of equality. One of my friends ran the Obama office there during the Pennsylvania primary race, and they had rocks thrown through their windows, had Obama signs burned in the street, and were called n****-lovers. My friend had a voter tell her straight out that he wouldn’t vote for Obama, even though he agreed with everything he said, because he was black (and “black” wasn’t the exact word he used).

And the thing is, a lot of America thinks that way.

So when Obama chooses a guy who’s been publicly criticized for statements like the ones mentioned above, he’s choosing to embrace that part of America. Obviously, he is not embracing the ones who burn his signs in the street, but he is embracing the ones who might say racist things at times. The ones who don’t really know any black people, and who fear that Obama might have a Black Agenda, because deep down they are aware that black people have good solid reasons to be pissed off.

He allows them to not be the bad guys. He says “See, I like Joe even though he’s said some stupid things in the past. I can like you too. We can work together.”

I hope that Biden won’t say anything else that’s dumb on the campaign trail, and will stick to going after McCain. I hope that his son, about to head off to Iraq, and his long history of commuting to DC from Delaware will preclude some of the negative ads I’m sure are coming.

But most of all, I hope that having him in the picture will allow us to shift the conversation on racism away from black and white binary sort of discussions—“I can’t possibly have said something racist! I have black friends!” and “If you vote for that guy, he’s going to put only black people in power.”

Racism isn’t so simple as that. It’s entrenched, it’s deep inside all of us, and sometimes we all screw up. But we’ll never learn if we aren’t allowed to make mistakes without becoming monsters.

I hope that people can look at Joe “whitebread Catholic blue-collar roots single dad” Biden and see that he accepts Obama, that Obama accepts him, and that they can be more comfortable feeling accepted by Obama and accepting him in return.