Cory Booker Responds to Biden’s ‘Insulting’ Comments: He ‘Shouldn’t Need This Lesson’
Cory Booker called on Joe Biden to apologize for the comments he made about segregationist senators he worked with years ago. Biden dismissively asked tonight what he needs to apologize for and even said Booker should apologize.
The New Jersey senator and fellow 2020 Democratic candidate joined Don Lemon on CNN tonight to respond.
Biden said Wednesday “there’s not a racist bone in my body” and that he clearly disagreed with the segregationist views of the senators he talked about, before suggesting Booker should be the one to apologize, adding, “he knows better.”
Booker brought up Biden’s use of the word “boy” in his anecdote and the “harmful and hurtful” way it’s been used against black men in America:
“I was raised to speak truth to power. And I will never apologize for doing that. And Vice President Biden shouldn’t need this lesson. And at a time when we have from the highest offices in the land, divisiveness, racial hatred, and bigotry being spewed, he should have the sensitivity to know that ‘this is a time I need to be an ally… a healer, and not engage in usage of words that will harm folks. This is deeply disappointing.”
“I don’t understand why he needs this lesson,” Booker said.
Booker said that despite Biden’s response, he wasn’t calling him a racist and what he said misses the point of what he was saying. He called Biden’s remarks “problematic” at one point.
When Lemon asked him to elaborate, Booker said the following:
“The fact he has said something that an African-American man can find very offensive and turn around and say ‘I’m not a racist. You should apologize to me.’ As opposed to––Angela Davis used to say, in a time of racism it’s not enough to say I’m not racist. You need to be antiracist. What we need from a former vice president, from a presidential candidate, from each other is to be allies. To be seeking understanding. To be seeking empathy. None of us are perfect. We’re all gonna say things that are wrong. But to recognize that and take the step that you need for healing and reconciliation to admit to that. So for his posture to be to me ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, you should apologize, I’m not a racist’ is so insulting and so missing the larger point that he should not have to have explained to him. This should not be a lesson that somebody running for the President of the United States should have to be given.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
