Nationally syndicated talk radio host Charlamagne tha God said Sunday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden is going to have to do a lot more than just pay “lip service” to the black community if he’s going to count on their vote in November.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Charlamagne discussed his viral interview last week with Mr. Biden, in which the former vice president told him he “ain’t black” if he votes for President Trump.
“I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” Mr. Biden said on “The Breakfast Club” radio show.
MSNBC host Joy Reid asked Charlamagne whether Mr. Biden’s comment was further evidence that Democrats take the black vote for granted.
“I know that’s the attitude,” Charlamagne answered. “That’s why I don’t even care about the words and the lip service and the apology is cool, but the best apology is actually a black agenda.
“They’ve got to make some real policy commitments to black people,” he continued. “We’ve got to stop acting like the fact that blacks are overrepresented in America when it comes to welfare, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, drug addiction, crime, coronavirus — that’s no accident. The whole function of systemic racism is to marginalize black people.
“And as the great Dr. Claude Anderson says in the book ‘Powernomics,’ white society has an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude about racism and they don’t like to have discussions of substance about systemic racism,” he said. “So when you have black people that have the nerve, the audacity, the unmitigated gall to act like citizens and demand something of our votes, it’s a problem? It’s like, you got whites telling us to stay in our place and you got black people saying, ‘Stop, now is not the time, you’re going to get Trump re-elected.’ It has to come to the point where we stop putting the burden on black voters to show up for Democrats and start putting the burden on Democrats to show up for black voters.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks Friday sparked a firestorm on social media after he implied that black people who vote for Mr. Trump aren’t really black. Republicans such as Sen. Tim Scott and Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson, who are both black, slammed the comment as racist.
Mr. Biden later issued an apology saying he shouldn’t have been so “cavalier” in the interview.
“I’ve never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted,” he former vice president said. “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy. I shouldn’t have been so cavalier. … No one should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, their background.”
Mr. Biden made the controversial remark after Charlamagne claimed that some black people were disappointed he was considering Sen. Amy Klobuchar as a running mate instead of a black woman. On Sunday, Charlamagne said a Klobuchar pick could result in “voter depression” among the black community.
“On top of possible Russian interference and voter suppression, Dems have to worry about voter depression,” Charlamagne said. “That’s people staying home on election day because they just aren’t enthused by the candidate.
“You can’t act like this is the most important election ever, but run a campaign from your basement and not make some real policy commitments to the black community,” he said of Mr. Biden.
“I think people are sitting around hoping that Trump loses instead of going out there and actually beating him,” he added. “He has to do something that energizes his campaign, that brings some actual enthusiasm to his campaign so those 4.4 million Obama voters who stayed home in 2016, more than a third of them black, you know, don’t do that this year. You’ve got to make them come out.”
