Biden Decries Charlottesville Unite The Right Rally, Racism In Speech To Howard University Graduates
We're living through one of the most consequential moments in our history with fundamental questions at stake for our nation. Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we believe? Who will we be? You're gonna help answer those questions. Let me take you back to January 2009. I stood in Wilmington, Delaware on the train station of Amtrak carrying my folder waiting to be picked up by a guy named Barack Obama. The first black man elected President of the United States. I was there to join him as Vice President on the way to historic inauguration of Washington. A moment of extraordinary hope, but also as I stood there, and this is the God's truth, I couldn't help think about another day.
I stood there. It wasn't much more than your age. I just got out of law school. I was a public guy who had gone to work for a big firm. But my state, because of when Dr. King was assassinated, my city parts were burned to the ground. I'm a very conservative governor.
He's stationed in National Guard in every corner of the drawn bayonets for ten months. I quit and became a public defender. I used to have to introduce my clients. No, I was not so noble. I had to introduce my clients down at the Wilmington train station when they were arrested on each side. That's where they'd be taken. The aftermath of the riots that burned Wilmington following his assassination.
In 2009, while waiting for Barack, I was both living history at the same time I was reliving it. A vivid demonstration when it comes to race in America, hope doesn't travel alone. It's shadowed by fear, by violence, and by hate. But after the election and the reelection of the first black American president, I had hope that the fear of violence and hate was significantly losing ground. After no longer being vice president, I became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for four years. But in 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, crazed neo-nazis with angry faces came out of the fields with literally with torches, carrying Nazi banners from the woods in the fields, chanting the same anti-semitic bias the same anti-semitic bioherd across Europe in the 30s. Something I never thought I would ever see in America.
Accompanied by Klansmen and white supremacists, merging from dark rooms in remote fields and the anonymity of the internet, confronting decent Americans of all backgrounds standing in their way into the bright light of day. And a young woman objecting to their presence was killed. What did you hear? That famous quote when asked about what happened. That famous quote. There are very fine people on both sides. That's when I knew and I'm not joking. That's when I knew I had to stay engaged and get back into public life.
No, I. I don't say for that reason. I say for the journey. I don't have to tell you that fearless progress towards justice often meets ferocious pushback from the oldest and most sinister of forces. That's because hate never goes away. I thought when I graduated we could defeat hate. But it never goes away.
It only hides under the rocks. And when it's given oxygen, it comes out from under that rock. That's why we know this truth as well. Silence is complicity. It cannot remain silent. We have to lift through this battle for the soul of the nation. And it is still a battle for the soul of the nation.
What is the soul of the nation? Well, I believe the soul is the breath, the life, the essence of who we are. The soul makes us us. The soul of America is what makes us unique among all nations. We're the only country founded on an idea. Not geography, not religion, not ethnicity, but an idea. We're the only country founded on an idea. Not ethnicity, but an idea.
The sacred proposition rooted in Scripture and shrine in the Declaration of Independence that were all created equal in the image of God and deserved to be treated equally throughout our lives. While we've never fully lived up to that promise, we never before fully walked away from it. We know that American history has not always been a fairy tale. From the start, it's been a constant push and pull. For more than 240 years, between the best of us, the American idea that we're all created equal in the worst of us, a harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart.