Clemens: Healing our nation requires strong leadership

This writer took issue with Mr. Larry Koch’s Letter to the Editor in the Delaware State News  (“Writer says neither Biden nor Trump suitable for presidency,” July 23).

Mr. Koch, like many of us, realizes that Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president now facing multiple state and federal criminal indictments and whose major campaign theme in his reelection bid is exacting revenge on his tormentors — is characteristically unfit for any political office. However, Mr. Koch must be pulling our legs about Joe Biden.

The president has signed into law the most accomplishments benefiting the American people since Lyndon Johnson and, like presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, stood up courageously for democracy abroad, inspiring NATO to follow his lead in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression. Implying that President Biden had racist tendencies simply because he was always against forced-busing bills as a method of promoting integration is a misjudgment by Mr. Koch. Biden has always been a steadfast supporter of trying to pass affordable housing bills for all, with the goal of outlawing the racist policy of “redlining,” which purposely separates Black neighborhoods from White neighborhoods.

What Biden said in a 1977 Senate hearing on the topic of race in America was that, “unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high (between Black people and Whites) that it is going to explode at some point.” Biden was correct about tensions exploding, as all of us have been witness to continual racial tensions and violence in our beloved country, in no small part because of Mr. Trump’s inflammatory racial remarks. Discrimination in hiring in many states continues to be an ongoing problem. “Biden sought an ‘orderly integration of society,’ not just integration in schools (by forced busing), the records show. He feared busing would anger white people whose children would be sent to ‘inferior’ schools in urban neighborhoods and from black people, whose children would come to resent conditions in the ‘ghetto,’ the (New York) Times reported” (Source: Linda S. Johnson, July 6, 2020, WUSA9 “fact-checking” reporting).

Redlining still exists. Not surprisingly, a lack of affordable homes for America’s lowest-income families is a huge barrier to gaining economic prosperity. Research shows that affordable homes in law-abiding, potentially middle-class communities motivate people’s school performance, health and ability to climb the economic ladder by enabling them to gain the motivation to study and qualify for better-paying jobs (Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition advocates for affordable housing). Biden’s goal is to create an equal playing field for all, as his successful legislative bills to date illustrate.

Was Mr. Koch aware that President Biden worked as a teenage lifeguard in New Castle County at a public swimming pool that served underprivileged communities? Some of the gang members he met there have gone on to lead productive lives and reportedly have helped him with his campaigns. Increased affordable housing funds are part of the Build Back Better bill, passed by Congress to level the playing field for all Americans. However, White supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan continue to rail against social and economic equality in our country. Witness the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, followed up by the assault on the Capitol building in 2021. Their vision of making America great again promotes nothing less than keeping our country divided. Joe is simply attempting to “restore the soul of the nation.”

Bill Clemens

Magnolia