White House Dodges Questions on Joe Biden’s Role in History of ‘Systemic Racism’
White House press secretary Jen Psaki dodged questions about President Joe Biden’s role in the history of “systemic racism” Wednesday.
“To what extent does President Biden acknowledge his own role in systemic racism? And how does that inform his own policy positions?” Steven Nelson asked Psaki.
“One of the president’s core objectives is addressing racial injustice in this country,” Psaki replied, sidestepping the question. “Not through his rhetoric but through his actions,” she added.
Psaki then detailed Biden’s pending legislative “action” before saying that Biden has “asked his leadership team, here in the White House, to prioritize these issues in his presidency,” which she added, “is current, today, and not from thirty years ago.”
Nelson followed up, “Does he [Biden] believe it’s important to accept his own culpability…”
Psaki cut Nelson off, ” I think I have answered your question.”
The reporter initially prefaced his query by detailing Joe Biden’s history of being an “architect of federal laws in the 1980s and the 1990s that disproportionately jailed black people and contributed to what many people see as systemic racism.”
“The activist Cornel West,” the reporter continued referencing, “said Biden was ‘one of the core architects of the mass incarceration’ and that ‘I think Biden is going to have to take responsibility and acknowledge the contribution he made to mass incarceration.'”
To this, Psaki had no response.
Q: “To what extent does President Biden acknowledge his own role in systemic racism?”@PressSec: “One of the president’s core objectives is addressing racial injustice in this country.” pic.twitter.com/W3UeWZ0yUu
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 21, 2021
The concept of “systemic racism” derives from critical race theory, which the Heritage Foundation summarizes as the “main philosophical school in the identity politics of today” and an “unremitting attack on all of America’s norms and traditions… that will introduce a more leftist model of governing.”
“The philosophy has come to light in the modern day with the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, called ‘one of the most significant attempts to propagandize history.’” Breitbart News reported.
Critical race theory developed in 1937, when Marxist academics from Germany’s Frankfurt School issued a manifesto, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” which contends there are no universal truths. Instead, truths are “competing narratives,” providing a basis for the “Left to impose its own” values.
