The Democratic candidate for the November presidential election, former vice president Joe Biden, delivered his own speech on July 4 in a short video broadcast this Saturday on social networks, in which he recognized that the history of the United States “is not a fairy tale,” but a tug-of-war between two parties that have marked the character of the country: the idea of equality against racism. “Our country was founded on an idea: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ We have never lived up to it. the same [presidente Thomas] Jefferson did not: he had slaves, women were excluded. But once it was proposed, the idea could not be constrained, “he says in the recording.
In it, Biden remembers from the murder of Martin Luther King until recent death of African American George Lloyd, which triggered a great wave of demonstrations that started as a protest against police brutality against blacks and became a global movement against racism. The protests have also led to the revision of cultural works and national symbols – statues or monuments – that honor the colonial or slave past of the United States. Faced with this, Trump has reacted by agitating the nationalist discourse and attacking what he describes as “angry mobs” and “extreme left”, as he showed in his Friday speech at Mount Rushmore.