Joe Biden on Black and White

By Ashok Argent-Katwala

Joe Biden was quoted in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago (emphasis added):

"I'm going to say something presumptuous," Biden said to me. "The reason I've been relatively successful is that I have never questioned the motive of other senators, and that's instinctively Barack. Barack doesn't start off, 'Well, you disagree, you must be a, you know, an S.O.B. or you must not care about the poor or you're sexist or you're racist or you're a whatever.' He doesn't think that way." Biden continued, veering slightly into stream-of-consciousness, "I think it comes from a guy who is, you know, who's half white and half black. You know, this idea – he is a black man because society won't let him be anything else. But he's as much his mother's child as he is his father's child. And here's a guy raised in an environment that was relatively normal in the sense that there was no—he wasn't able to be squirrelled away somewhere, or he didn't live in a homogeneous neighborhood where he was part of the homogeneity. You know what I mean?"

That's a pretty simple story, and a compelling one.

I'm pleased that the Obama campaign have taken a pretty noble line in responding to the various attacks on grounds of race and creed. I had been hoping for more direct assertions of Obama's joint heritage; I'm pretty sure now that I was wrong. Obama and his campaign have played that very subtly. They draw attention to his white family who raised him, but always as part of a wider narrative.

As we come to the close of a very long campaign, I have great hope for a restored American ideal. I don't think Obama has it in the bag yet, but it does look promising. Watching the grace and calm portrayed by Obama over recent weeks and months is reassuring. I hope Americans see it that way too.

(As an aside, I got into reading the New Yorker via their excellent podcast series, the full text of several columns, published online and impeccably well-read, before they appear in print. A great example of giving away online to reel in a wider audience. I'm sure I'll be buying it in print for the next few months.)