That was Joe Biden’s perfectly sensible comment, from 1975, to a question about responsibility for segregation. In last night’s debate, Biden was asked to explain his remarks, and the woke-ists are very, very upset about the answer he gave.
First, Biden uncontroversially pointed to the institutional oppression that had arisen in the centuries after slavery; redlining, banks, and education. Most of this had not come into existence during Biden’s lifetime. He also expressed support for increased funding for psychologists and social workers, to help close the racial gap that exists. This was the part of the answer that had the Left in an uproar and President Trump trolling with glee:
Needless to say, the “record player” bit had some convinced (at least the ones who wanted to be convinced) that Uncle Joe was finally losing it on prime-time television. But others were livid that the sidekick to our first black president is apparently a racist. Or something.
The record player moment may be what finally reveals Biden’s bankruptcy.
A staggering two minutes in our politics.
America’s gravest, most persistent injustice recast as parental ignorance.
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) September 13, 2019
So many problems with this. He didn’t answer the question. He repeated a racist stereotype (using a debunked study). He still has a record player… But the pettiest problem… Does Joe Biden think black parents don’t play their kids music?? Has he MET black people? https://t.co/2qMLU7EcP2
— Ashley Nicole Black (@ashleyn1cole) September 13, 2019
Most damaging two words of the Dem debate: “record player.”
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) September 13, 2019
On its face, Biden’s answer sounded strange, but there is a grain of truth to the notion that parental involvement, including the bit about the record player, improves the odds of children’s success in life.
To focus on the most noteworthy line, we have to translate septuagenarian speak into modernity. Seeing as Biden corrected “record player” from “television,” it seems likely that he was referring to making sure that children hear both music and spoken-word audio. Although the oft-cited 30 million figure is wrong, studies do indicate that by age 3, low-income children will have heard 4 million fewer words than high-income children. Given the institutional factors Biden cited, which have led to black Americans being disproportionately low-income, the “word gap” has become a big racial problem as well. Furthermore, studies suggest that the “Mozart effect” — the theory that the Viennese composer’s music makes children smart — actually applies to music and spoken word alike.
And while most Americans have retired their record players, playing audiobooks could still reduce racial inequality. Whereas nearly two-thirds of white children are read to at least three times a week, the same is true for just a over a third of black children. An economics study from Amherst found that black children live in substantially less cognitively stimulating environments than white ones.
So Biden is not wrong in what he’s trying to say. Neither was his accompanying point about increasing funding for social workers and child psychologists, which especially earned the ire of the Left. It is not only reasonable to say that the racial disparity in parenting could be ameliorated with help from social workers, but there is a whole body of social science literature supporting the idea. For example, the data also show black parents that corporal punishment, a practice that exacerbates aggressive behavior and potentially causes mental illness, is twice as common in black households. That’s likely in large part thanks to behaviors learned generations earlier from white slavers, but it is a still reality that creates both forms of negative emotionality and harms lifelong success.
Fortunately, the available research on black parenting gives ample cause for optimism. Meta-analyses indicate that home visits by social workers do markedly improve parenting behaviors.
You can see, or at least I hope you can see, what Biden was trying to say, and its basis within the available scientific literature. And he was also right to point out, as a preface, that one cannot understand the disparity in parenting styles without acknowledging the recent legal and corporate discrimination against black Americans that compounded the effects of slavery.
The bottom line is that Biden is correct that our persistent racial gap begins in the home. Proactive measures in the home can help close it, and he shouldn’t be ostracized or ridiculed for pointing this out.
