As With ‘Angry Obama,’ Biden’s Problem was Stereotype Confirmation

[Author’s Note: This was written before Biden released his delegates and withdrew from the race this morning and placed in the publication queue for early Monday morning. As I think it does explain why Biden had to do this, I’m going ahead and publishing it now — with thanks and respect to our President.]

One of the many highlights of the old Key & Peele show — before Key became an online musical parody star and Peele a star horror director — was the “Obama’s Anger Translator” sketches, of which you’ll find a quartet embedded in the YouTube video below. The idea is that while Obama may have internally harbored feelings and opinions that would earn him the status of an “Angry Black Man,” he could never safely express them publicly, and so he hired someone else to “translate” what he might secretly be feeling, in a way that would not evoke elements of a stereotype that he believed were viewed as widely negative among potential voters, the media, and thought leaders.

He could get away with embodying other stereotypes among especially the non-Black public — and yes, I did just now type and then quickly erase the name Bill Cosby! — such as love for and proficiency in basketball and love and familiarity (including in singing and creditably dancing to) soul music — but while those might be distinguishing stereotypes (marking him as different from many viewers) they were not negative ones. He could not afford — even once, really — to instill a sense that he was an “Angry Black Man” from which non-Blacks might feel an almost spinal response of fear for their safety, family, and property. Take a look of first-Term Obama, if you haven’t got them fully embedded in your memory.

This is a problem called “Stereotype Confirmation,” and back when I was in the field it was considered, among other things, to be a major cause of difficulties (and thus underperformance) by racial minorities in school. Part of white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, cis-privilege, majority-religion privilege, and — yep — privilege of pre-elderly are that one does not have to be continually aware of one’s desire not to invoke invidious stereotypes, especially in situations where one is likely to be judged. This does not simply apply to one’s words, but also to one’s actions and static appearance.

Joe Biden is also a victim of stereotype confirmation — and it is almost completely unfair. Trying to grasp for words — such as “invidious,” which I fortunately did not have to do while seeking a better term than “pejorative” a couple of minutes ago in real time before an international audience of tens of millions — simply has little to do with his ability to execute his responsibilities as President. Hell, Trump was able to do so four years ago, despite signs of much more drastic cognitive deterioration and psychological delusion, because most of what he needed to govern were deeply embedded subroutines instructing him how to be a con man and a bullying insult coming. It doesn’t take much. It wasn’t until last week that we discovered that, in a moment of crisis, he valued his shoes more than he did the lives of the Secret Service Agents piled on top of him and the audience members worshiping him during what he had no reason not to believe was no longer a potential active shooter situation. That’s a whole lot closer to dementia!

But Biden — who doesn’t show Trump’s overpowering (if crazed) vigor and confidence, and is “tragically” constrained by facts and common decency — gets no slack at all. Three times at three consecutive big public appearances, he has made relatively simply and inconsequential stumbles — the kinds that I and most readers here (and even at VOC) occasionally make when speaking in far less fraught venues — and each one has blown up in his face. The fact and the unfairness of it have got to be killing him.

To understand this better, we need to return to the Obama Anger Translator example.

Again, Obama, on the left, is at risk of invoking the invidious stereotype (not to all voters, but to enough of them for him to risk losing) of the “Angry Black Man.” He (1) can’t show words and behavior that can confirm the applicability of that stereotype him — but (2) that doesn’t mean that he can’t experience the emotions and recognize their complete validity in this situation and the unfairness of the prejudice that prevents him from expressing them personally. So, he externalizes them to Luther, his translator — who can express to the public what he can’t (even if Luther sometimes goes too far.

Well, can’t Biden just do the same sort of thing? No, he cannot — because he is both in the position of Obama (who cannot show stereotype-confirming behavior) and Luther (whose job it is to do so instead. YOU CAN’T BE OBAMA AND LUTHER AT THE SAME TIME! I’ll make this point graphically:

Remember, the one on the left is what Obama actually conveys, while the one on the right is (so goes the joke) what Obama would like to convey if it wouldn’t reinforce an electorally damaging stereotype, but it does do so — and so he can’t.

Now a dozen or so years later, Biden himself is actually the one conveying the electorally damaging stereotype — that of a mentally confused, physically diminished, old man! He can’t sublimate his “cogent and hearty” image into an outside figure because he’s the one acting like the equivalent of Luther the translator and expressing what in Biden’s case are stereotypes connected to being too old. Again, I truly because that this is unfair, but what Obama had to do was also unfair — but he managed it! Of course, that Trump does not have to do this — despite being a vicious raging old white male bullying bigoted and a delusional maniac — is most unfair of all. But these are the times we live in.

Joe Biden had three perfectly good chances — the debate, the Stephanopoulos interview, and post NATO meeting conference — to “finish his floor routine” without a stumble. But he did stumble, and by doing so, he turned into his own Luther, betraying his stereotype confirmation, but within his own body and persona. It’s not a good test of cognitive competency, but it is an intuitive one, and Biden apparently can’t overcome it, and more than if Obama had engaged it stereotypical “Angry Black Man” towards some white bigot on the Senate floor who no doubt would have deserved it.

Now Kamala, if she takes over at the top of the ticket, is going to be subjected to vile and hellish attacks for stereotype confirmation herself — that as an attractive she was a “whore” she slept her way to the top. We’ll hear a lot about Willie Brown, of course, who himself could never be elected to the Presidency because of stereotype confirmation (although the actual stereotype he confirms is being one of the most adept politicians and political calculators of his time.) It will be Republican women, and maybe gay male Republicans like Peter Thiel and his flying monkeys, who will do the work of accusing her on this. But that, I suspect would backfire: she was sincerely in love with Brown and wanted to marry him, and it was him who refused because he realized that it would likely kill off her promising career. (Want to bring out the women’s vote in full furious force, Republicans? That’s the way to do it!)

What Kamala is best suited to do, on the other hand, is to engage in some stereotype confirmation attacks on her own. She can attack Trump as a rapist and molester as a person with a “pussy” of the sort he bragged of grabbing, or someone who would have to put up with his bullying unwanted kisses, or someone capable of being raped in a secluded room by someone a foot taller and almost 200 pounds heavier, and as someone who has prosecuted people who did what Jeffrey Epstein did and the corrupt Ghislane Maxwell-types who helped him. (This was something, obviously, that Hillary could not do.) She can speak to voting rights and crank up the minority vote to 11. If anyone attacks her based on her Indian heritage, she can call on JD Vance to condemn them or else be unfaithful to his own Indian-American wife. The only stereotypes that she might be vulnerable on are mild — like “big-spending liberal — and will give her a great opportunity to challenge Trump’s own record and call him relentlessly on his lies.

It’s very unfair what is happening to Biden, but it is happening. He can’t save himself the way that Jordan Peele’s Obama could by externalizing the problem, and he can’t help continuing to confirming the stereotype of his age, because — despite his heroic attempts, he is not going to “recover” from aging. But he can follow and commission the polls and make a proper decision when the time comes — and before it’s too late.