President Joe Biden is a man of many controversies, and one that’s going around right now is his alleged “super predator” comment about Black people, but did he say this, and what does it mean?
First, here’s some quick background on the alleged comment. As stated by CNN.com, Donald Trump accused Biden of calling Black people super predators back in 1994 during the presidential debates. However, this is not exactly true. The term was said, but not by Biden himself. More so, it was Hillary Clinton who did. Both Biden and Clinton supported the 1994 crime bill, which was one of the worst pieces of legislation ever put out by the United States.
The bill introduced devastatingly awful policies like the three-strikes law, which puts someone in prison for life if they commit three federal crimes. This, along with other initiatives in the bill, put an untold amount of Black and Hispanic people in prison for extremely disproportionate sentences or life. Representative Jack Brooks introduced the bill, which then was signed and put into effect by Bill Clinton.
According to Reuters, Hilary Clinton first said the term during her 1996 speech on the crime bill in the following quote: “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.”
This absurdly racist quote had been brought up numerous times during Clinton’s 2016 presidential run, tarnishing a good deal of her legacy on race. To this day, the crime bill signed by Bill and approved of by Hillary Clinton and Biden left a deep wound in Black and Hispanic communities, which has yet to be healed.
The “super predator” allegation on Biden wasn’t the only lie uttered by Trump that night. As we wrote in another article, Trump told plenty of lies about immigrants, too, during the debate.
