Tim Walz's and 'Aw Shucks Racism'

Working-class minstrel shows from politicians betray those voters

Politicians like Tim Walz and Joe Biden have helped revive an old style of political theater: the working-class minstrel show. They’re exaggerated forms of ordinary working and middle-class white guys who speak about the experience of the forgotten man. Despite playing the character of a “white dad with a heart,” they push and promote policies that purposefully harm other white men.

It hadn’t been a whole year into Joe Biden’s presidency when he was hit with a lawsuit from white farmers over racial discrimination. Biden, who won his ticket to the presidency by appealing to working-class whites, promoted a policy that openly discriminated against them in favor of black farmers.

The $4 billion debt relief program was part of his plan to put racial equity at the center of the federal government.

Biden’s debt relief program would cancel qualifying farm loan debts owed by farmers of color to the Farm Service Agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Less than two percent of American farmers are black, while about 95 percent are white. The fact that white farmers received more aid in the past was progressives’ proof of past racial discrimination, even though whites made up nearly every farmer in the country.

Before any debt forgiveness was doled out, white farmers sued the Biden Administration. Democrats quietly backpedaled, changing the policy to offer $2.2 billion for farmers who experienced discrimination in USDA lending, thus expanding the policy to include white women, gay farmers, and blacks. While this was no longer explicitly discriminatory towards white men, the government was still making sure minorities received more than half of the aid package despite being a fragment of the population.

Discriminating against whites has been the cornerstone of the Biden Administration.