President Obama's former campaign chair, former Democratic Congressman from Alabama Artur Davis has called VP Biden's remark an example of 'racial viciousness'. He says he has spoken with African Americans who say VP Joe Biden's remarks about being 'put back in chains' by unregulated banks is offensive.
(CNN) – Artur Davis, the former four-term Democratic congressman from Alabama, said Wednesday that Vice President Joe Biden was propagating "racial viciousness" when he said Mitt Romney's regulatory policies would "put y'all back in chains."
Davis, who is black, said the comment smacked of a type of divisiveness he said was all too common in the South.
"It brought back memories for me," Davis told Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "The Situation Room." "It brought back memories of these Democratic politicians in the South, who think they can go before crowds and say one thing and nobody else will hear it, and they'll somehow get a cheer in the room and that they can blithely go on about their business."
Saying Biden went to a place he "never should have gone" in his remarks, Davis called the vice president's words insulting.
"It's a divisive tactic that's insulting to African Americans," Davis said. "It's insulting to the American people.
I don't know exactly what racial 'viciousness' is supposed to mean. It seems to me enslaving people is a form of viciousness, not reminding people that it once happened. Is he saying slavery is off limits as a topic of discussion because it is an unpleasant reminder, or merely that is a pandering applause line. Because (even as Wolf Blitzer points out), it doesn't stay in the 'quiet room', there are TV cameras everywhere and it went viral immediately.
For what it's worth I don't think this was a racial reference at all, and yes, banks can and do enslave the middle class.
But I happen to have spoken to a few African-American audiences in my time, represented a predominantly African-American district," Davis said. "I know what Joe Biden was doing yesterday, and every black person in the room knew who the 'y'all' was, they knew what the chains were about, and they knew what the metaphor was."
Fine Artur let's accept your premise. Talking about it is viciousness? It's worse to talk about enslavement, than to enslave.