OK. Joe Biden isn’t the most eloquent person on the planet. Now we have a full-fledged feeding frenzy attacking him and trying to paint him as a racist which he manifestly is not,
Let us recall the moment Al Sharpton referred to New York City as Hymietown.
So.
Is none of us without sin? Should I boycott MSNBC because they feature him? His comment was WAY more offensive than anything Biden has said and reflects a deeply antisemitic sentiment.
The Democratic Party by definition is a big tent. We pride ourselves on our diversity. For that reason we need to be able to think the best of each other. We need to have a sense of humor. We can’t take offense at every slight, deliberate or otherwise. We can’t relitigate the past.
The Russians and Cambridge Analytica skillfully suppressed the vote in 2016 by spreading calumny about Hillary Clinton, dredging up an unfortunate comment she made back in the early 1990’s, which despite her decades of commitment to civil rights and human rights some young people regarded as dispositive. So they stayed home or voted for Jill Stein.
Now, we have an actual racist in the White House. Children are stripped from their parents. Communities live in fear. We’re on the brink of war. The environment is suffering and every day the billionaires are empowered and threaten the rule of law. A handful of people is buying up the land and threatening our national parks, forests, animal sanctuaries.
Our alliances are being damaged and the global economy is threatened by unnecessary trade wars even as our own farmers can’t get their crops in because of climate change.
Think about the stakes.
I’m not asking any of us to overlook racism, antisemitism, misogyny. I am asking people not to go looking for the same in clumsy comments especially when a person has spent a lifetime NOT being a racist, an antisemite, a misogynist. And for the record I’m a Liz Warren supporter. So please don’t accuse me of being a right winger, Biden-apologist, etc.
But since we have a huge, diverse coalition we ALL have to be sensitive and aware of the big picture and develop a sense of humor. I have to vote in and participate in the same coalition which often expresses antisemitic opinions, sometimes really blatantly. I don’t like it but I’m not going to stay home or vote Green or whatever because so & so offended me, especially when it wasn’t clear that was the intention.
Let’s pull together ok? We share the same goals. Young and old, don’t we all seek justice, a thriving environment, the preservation of democracy and human and civil rights? It’s fair — more than fair — to seek the truth but it seems to me we indulge in self-defeating attacks on our own. We did it in 2016 and if Biden is the nominee I fear we’ll see more and more of the same, and we will once again lose to Trump and the increasingly tyrannical GOP.
Update: I was mistaken about Al Sharpton. He did not refer to New York as “hymie town.” That was Jesse Jackson. Al Sharpton referred to a Jewish shop owner as a “white interloper” and greatly inflamed tensions in Crown Heights.
Interestingly it has taken Donald Trump to reunite Sharpton and the Jewish community.
So the point stands. We stand together or we’re prey to fascists.
Quoting a Washington Post article about Sharpton,
This modern-day miracle was on display Monday, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Mall, 54 years to the day after the great man gave his greatest speech. There, clergy of all varieties, but mostly rabbis and black ministers, came together in common cause against the despicable anti-Semitism and racism Trump has unleashed, most conspicuously in Charlottesville.
Sharpton has been a controversial figure in the Jewish community for decades, earning criticism during the Crown Heights riot in 1991 and when he called a Jewish landlord in Harlem a “white interloper” before a deadly attack on the man’s store in 1995.
But that was long ago, and a rehabilitated Sharpton, who has privately expressed regrets to Jewish leaders for his past actions, made Jews the centerpiece of his Thousand Minister March for Justice on Monday. The civil rights leader, joined by Martin Luther King III, stopped in at a pre-march prayer session held by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and addressed the assembly of 300 rabbis, cantors and lay leaders.
Sharpton told the Jews that “we could not commemorate this day and face the challenges today without standing together as Dr. King stood 54 years ago.” Invoking those murdered in the Freedom Summer of 1964, he went on: “We should never forget that it was Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner that died together — two Jews and a black — to give us the right to vote.”
www.washingtonpost.com/…
So I state again. We can’t afford to snipe at each other. We have to overlook insults, slights, mistakes, misspeaking, if there is no harm done don’t go looking for harm.
People make mistakes. I made mistakes in this piece and in this thread. For that I apologize.
But the point stands.
Democrats are the most diverse party ever maybe. We are going to accidentally offend each other or sometimes, maybe some of us are deliberately offensive but the overwhelming need to defend our democracy and work for justice must be greater than our individual suffering or sense of grievance.
This election, we’re confronting something truly evil, backed by the GOP, the Attorney General, probably the Court.
If we’re defeated it’s game over.