Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was caught with his foot in his mouth on Wednesday, stating passionately at a campaign event that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
According to Bloomberg, Biden’s eyebrow-raising comment came while speaking in front of a group of mostly Asian and Hispanic voters in Des Moines, Iowa, while on a four-day campaign trip.
Biden was apparently talking about education when he passionately went on his tangent.
“We should challenge students in these schools and have advanced placement programs in these schools,” Biden said. “We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids.”
There was a slight pause, and the audience started with a smattering of applause, before the former Vice President continued, “Wealthy kids, Black kids, Asian kids, no I really mean it, but think how we think about it.”
Of course, if your first counter adjective to “poor” is “white,” there are some deeply-rooted underlying problems.
And of course, this is not Biden’s first time saying micro-aggressive and not-so-microaggressive things.
Many other sites have pointed back to 2008, when Biden called his future-boss, Sen. Baack Obama (D-Ill.), “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” as the Washington Post reports.
Biden faced swift criticism, later issuing an apology noting, “I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent and I expressed that to Sen. Obama.”
As for his latest gaffe, Biden Deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield told the Post that the presidential candidate “misspoke and immediately corrected himself during a refrain he often uses to make the point that all children deserve a fair shot, and children born into lower-income circumstances are just as smart as those born to wealthy parents.”
