President Joe Biden has said repeatedly that systemic racism is a real issue that the United States must address. Yet, if anyone has been promoting systemic racism, it’s Biden and his administration.
The most recent example is Biden’s unconstitutional extension of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium. Biden has all but admitted that he knows the extension is not constitutional and that the Supreme Court will end it when it bubbles back up to them. But the eviction moratorium has some inequitable side effects.
According to the Urban Institute, black and Hispanic landlords have lower incomes and own fewer properties than their white counterparts. They are also “more likely to have a mortgage than own their building outright” and make up a disproportionate number of the landlords who have at least one mortgage in forbearance.
Here’s a twist — the Biden eviction moratorium is disproportionately hurting black and hispanic small landlords, who are more likely to:
✅Rely on collecting rent for primary income
✅Only have 1 rental property
✅Owe mortgage payments for their rentalhttps://t.co/4z0FKunv4d pic.twitter.com/qWzz2FKJvJ— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 14, 2021
This isn’t the first time that Biden, who professes to care so much about equity, has pushed damaging policies that disproportionately harm minorities. Biden’s Title IX changes, which treat students accused of sexual misconduct as guilty until proven, also disproportionately harm black college students.
The systemic racism Biden has warned so much about is coming from inside the White House. In pursuing policies that make liberals feel good but are damaging when put in place, as both the eviction moratorium and Title IX changes are, Biden is perpetuating the very problem he claims to be so concerned about.
The narrative around systemic racism somehow does not apply to these Democratic policies, proving once again that it is a political narrative and nothing more. That will remain true the next time Biden takes the podium to denounce another GOP voting law as being a new version of Jim Crow.
