Please don't change the context of his words

[mainstreetonce]

Joe is gaffe prone sometimes ,but right now he is saying things that are perfectly fine if no one messes with his context.

He talks about a boy in a hoodie not being judged as a gang banger.
Well that is exactly what the people who caused all the mess about police shootings said.

It is not Joe's word. It is the word that was all over the news in situations like Ferguson.

So Joe says that is wrong and Corey Booker says Joe is insensitive.

No,he is not.

Corey did the same thing with the comment about segregationist Congress members .
"Boy"was not Joe's word. It was the word he heard people he clearly criticized using.

[tonedevil]

1. The problem with boy - son...

is that it makes what Senator Eastland called VP Biden a term of endearment. Where the senator - son construction Biden has used in the past makes it clear that Eastland was being disrespectful. The seeming endearment and the nostalgic feeling Biden uses when he tells the tale are giving the impression of praising Eastland to some.

[John Fante]

3. The mental gymnastics lol.

It's obvious that Biden wasn't praising Eastland. Feigning outrage is just an excuse to smear Joe.

[Voltaire2]

8. He praised Eastland's civility.

And the facts are that he was working with Eastland to ban federally mandated busing.

Biden opened this can of worms all by himself. Worse, if the reports are accurate, he has been told by his campaign advisers to stop telling this story.

There are no mental gymnastics required.

[True Blue American]

5. Biden said they called him son as a way to belittle him,

That he was too young to be in the Senate.

[tonedevil]

9. A reading that works...

when Biden said he never called me Senator he always called son. Saying he never called me boy he always called me son sounds more like Eastland using son as an endearment.

[True Blue American]

2. Booker

jumped right on the bandwagon. I wish he had not. Been much better to have left the subject alone. I despise this infighting.

[Cha]

4. Thank you for taking the

time and effort to ask for Context!

[mr_liberal]

6. He should not try to pander to the left though, that's what this sounds like.

I think that was his problem in the debate. He was afraid to say what he actually believes or to defend himself for fear he would lose Dem primary voters and the black vote. so he ended up almost not being able to speak.

I think he's getting bad advice from his campaign staff and he should clean house. They've got him pandering now and walking on eggshells and that's not working.

[Skittles]

7. why people always having to explain how he is and what he means

[Demit]

10. He said a kid in a hoodie might not be a gangbanger but the next poet laureate.

The gaffe was in making it an either/or thing, and in not choosing the most likely thing—that the kid is just a regular, law-abiding kid. Poet laureates are rare, there's only one each year, and they are all well along in adulthood. There are many many many regular, law-abiding kids, who are regular and law-abiding RIGHT NOW, the way gangbangers are gangbangers right now.

He had a chance to normalize black kids in hoodies. Instead he made you picture seeing a kid in a hoodie and having to decide whether he's a gangbanger right now or will he be a rare specially-chosen creative talent at some point in the future?

That's why there were so many face-palms about his remark: apparently, in Biden's mind, black kids in hoodies can't just be regular kids.