Former President Joe Biden recalled seeing “colored kids” on a bus as a child after having “never seen hardly any black people in Scranton,” during his first major speech since leaving the White House.
Reminiscing about his childhood in the Pennsylvania city on Tuesday, Biden said, “I remember pulling in, pulling into the parking lot and I had never seen– I had never seen hardly any Black people in Scranton at the time, and I was only going on fourth grade, and I remember seeing the kids going by, at the time called colored kids, on a bus going by.”
He recalled, “They never turned right to go to the Claymont High School. I wondered why, asked my mom, ‘Why?’ She said in Delaware they’re not allowed to go to school, in public school, with white kids.”
Biden concluded, “That sparked my sense of outrage as a kid, just like it does– I mean, and these young kids right here can tell you things affect them when they learn about something that’s really just unfair and unjust.”
In 2019, Biden came under fire after he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” while in 2020, he apologized after telling African-American voters that they weren’t Black unless they voted for him.
“I should not have been so cavalier,” he said at the time. “I’ve never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted … I shouldn’t have been a wise guy.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
