Visiting a black church bombed by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights era, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has framed current racial tensions as part of an enduring struggle that is older than the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is trying to capitalise on his strength among older black voters while navigating criticism from some African American and other nonwhite leaders, particularly younger ones, who take a skeptical view of the 76-year-old white man\u2019s willingness and ability to address systemic racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During his 20 minutes at the pulpit, Biden condemned institutional racism as the direct legacy of slavery and lamented that the nation has \u201cnever lived up to\u201d the ideals of equality written into its founding documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former vice-president called out the names of the bombing victims Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley and he drew nods of affirmation as he warned that \u201cthe same poisonous ideology that lit the fuse on 16th Street\u201d has yielded more recent tragedies, including in 2015 at a black church in South Carolina, in 2018 at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh and in August at an El Paso, Texas , Wal-Mart frequented by Latino immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn a centuries long campaign of violence, fear, trauma, brought upon black people in this country, the domestic terrorism of white supremacy has been the antagonist of our highest ideals since before the founding of this country,\u201d Biden told the 16th Street Baptist Church congregation in downtown Birmingham as they commemorated the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four black girls in 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in the wake of these before-and-after moments,\u201d Biden added, \u201cwhen the choice between good and evil is starkest.\u201d Biden\u2019s appearance comes at an inflection point for Democrats\u2019 2020 leader in the polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Birmingham church, Biden said, offers an example to those communities and a nation he said must recommit itself to \u201cgiving hate no safe harbour demonising no one, not the poor, the powerless, the immigrant or the \u2018other.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From his long time in government, first as a senator and then vice-president to Barack Obama, the first black president, Biden has deep ties in the black community. Though Biden didn\u2019t mention President Donald Trump in his remarks, he has made withering critiques of the president\u2019s rhetoric and policies on race and immigration a central feature of his candidacy.Yet Biden sometimes draws searing appraisals from younger non-white activists who point to complexities in his record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Visiting a black church bombed by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights era, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has framed current racial tensions as part of an enduring struggle that is older than the nation. He is trying to capitalise on his strength among older black voters while navigating criticism from some African […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70582,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70580\/revisions\/70582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}