(UnitedVoice.com) – It’s graduation season, which means politicians and celebrities are speaking at commencement ceremonies across the country. President Joe Biden recently traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, to speak at Morehouse College. He’s now facing criticism for his divisive words.
On May 19, Biden was the keynote speaker at the historically black college’s graduation ceremony. Hundreds of black men were there to receive their diplomas, and none stood for him as he took the lectern to speak for 27 minutes.
Biden spoke to the students about his administration’s accomplishments and tried to touch on issues that he thought mattered to them. In an effort to appeal to the bloc of voters that he’s hemorrhaging as the campaign moves toward November, he painted a dark picture of the country. He told the graduates that they “started college just as George Floyd was murdered” and the country was reckoning with race relations.
The president said that it was “natural to wonder if democracy” is working for them. He rhetorically asked what democracy was if “black men are being killed in the street,” if the “trail of broken promises” is leaving their communities behind, or if they have to strive to be 10 times better than their peers to “get a fair shot.” Biden asked what democracy means if they are black men who love their country more than their country loves them.
Biden used the war in Gaza to try to appeal to the graduates, calling it “heartbreaking” and saying there’s a humanitarian crisis raging in there. The president also said he knows “black history is American history” and urged the students to check his record of selecting the first black woman to serve as vice president and putting the first black woman on the Supreme Court.
The graduation speech was as political as he could get it in an obvious attempt to try to win the voters back. But the students didn’t appear to buy what he was selling.
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