If you are a Black person, you already know what I’m talking about. If you are white reader, then let me explain something that doesn’t work with Black people around the world: tone. Tone is the raising of your voice. It can also be associated with “talking to me like I’m a damn child.” It is usually met with a confused look and even possibly a turned head to see if the perpetrator is possibly speaking to someone else in the area and is most likely followed by, “Who the fuck are you talking to?”
So it’s with that I say, respectfully, to President-elect Joe Biden, “Who the fuck are you talking to?”
Biden was apparently on what our ancestors call “one” when he spoke with civil rights leaders. In leaked bits of audio reportedly from the virtual meeting, Biden appears to be, at one point, raising his voice and claiming that he was the only one willing to “run on Charlottesville.”
Listen to this fuckshit here:
Oh, and he wasn’t done. Biden also appeared to claim that “defund the police” is at least partially responsible for Democrats’ dismal showing in down ballot races and even added that civil rights leaders needed to be more cautious in their criminal justice messaging.
“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country,” Biden said. Umm, let me stop this man right here. While Biden was using getting “the living hell beat out of us” as a metaphor for down ballot losses, I think the former vice president didn’t realize that he was speaking to a room full of people who’ve been fighting for Black folks and have literally gotten the “living hell beat out of” them or worse by the police.
He continued: “...saying that we’re talking about defunding the police. We’re not. We’re talking about holding them accountable,” Biden said Tuesday, but news is only coming to light now that audio is being leaked, NBC News reports.
Biden began soft-shoeing around issues of systemic racism but promised to follow through with his pledge to address it, adding, let’s not get “too far ahead of ourselves” with critical Senate runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5.
“We can go very far. It matters how we do it. I think it matters how we do it,” Biden said, NBC News reports.
If Kamala’s lil friend, aka Father Crime, don’t get the fuck out of here with this respectability politics bullshit around systemic racism when Black people are disproportionately fucked over more than any other race. But Biden thinks that when being systemically beaten the fuck up and over, we need to watch the tone in our voices as we yell.
Some civil rights leaders had the niggadacity to ask Biden to use his executive authority to aid criminal justice reform, like creating a national database of police misconduct.
Biden said he’s willing to undo much of Trump’s bullshit by executive order but added, “I am not going to violate the Constitution.”
“Where I have executive authority, I will use it to undo every single damn thing this guy’s done by executive authority,” Biden said, according to the audio, NBC News reports. “But I’m not going to exercise executive authority where it’s a question where I can come along and say I can do away with assault weapons. There’s no executive authority to do that. And no one has fought harder to get rid of assault weapons than me, me. You can’t do it by executive order.”
Biden’s in-your-face and animated style has become a cornerstone of his legacy and not something that his press office wants to shy away from.
His transition team didn’t deny that was Biden on the audio and, in fact, doubled down on his position and his tone; at least that’s how this statement they gave to NBC News reads:
“President-elect Biden is the same person behind closed doors that he is public; honest, direct and realistic about the challenges facing our nation the day he is sworn in. As he made clear throughout the campaign, he believes in supporting bold and urgent reform to our criminal justice system while continuing to support law enforcement’s mission to keep our communities safe.”
But I still have one question, “Who the fuck does he think he’s talking to?”