even in recent history, it's a stupid statement. you had the southern strategy underlying nixon, which carter tried to co-opt, and reagan eventually inherited. reagan was frequently openly racist; remember the welfare queen? the first bush, on race issues, was actually maybe the high point, here. or maybe he was just inconsequential, as president, all around. clinton was vicious in his policies, and obviously ridiculously racist in his pandering, which sadly often worked. dubya was frequently accused of racism in his response to disasters like katrina, and also in his foreign policy. and, like it or not, the wealth of the average black household actually went dramatically down under obama's presidency, indicating that many of his policies, in the end, had dramatic racial inequity consequences.

is trump particularly different? well, compare the rapist mexican trope to the inner city superpredator scare mongering and ask yourself if it's that different. trump campaigned on building a wall, but obama campaigned on being deporter-in-chief; that didn't come out of nowhere, that was a campaign promise from day one. it's degrees of the same messaging, and different more in terms of business interests. it's like construction v prison-industrial. really, it's that trivial, in terms of actual messaging.

and, biden will just carry through with the same legacy. the poverty rates will move sideways, at best; i guess it depends on what kind of control wall street gets, in the end.

see, and it's not like biden needs to have this debate, either. he's wining black voters by a comfortable margin. this, as usual, was an unforced error. they build up, in the end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-says-trump-is-americas-first-racist-president/2020/07/22/867017e8-cc4b-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html