From the late ’80s to early ’90s, I was a militant activist who robbed white-owned banks and deposited that money into Black owned banks. I was funding an entertainment company that produced Black cultural events and plays designed to uplift the Black community. I saw myself as a Black Robin Hood.
Then I was caught and sentenced under Joe Biden’s 1994 crime bill. Sentenced as a first time offender, for conspiracy to rob banks, I was to serve 52 years. Fifty-two years for a crime where no shots were fired and no one was hurt.
And then I was released by former President Donald Trump’s 2019 criminal justice reform bill, the First Step Act.
So when people say Trump is racist and Biden is the one who cares for Black lives, I have to chuckle, as someone with a unique view on the subject. To me, the exact opposite seems to be true.
The Biden-sponosred Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement was a racist law. According to a 2008 Justice Policy Institute report, Biden’s crime law resulted in the largest increases in federal and state inmate populations in American history. As we all know by now, those populations were disproportionately Black. Maybe that’s not surprising; the legislation was the result of a long collaboration between Senate segregationists and Joe Biden.
On the other hand, former President Donald Trump is often smeared as a racist against African Americans because of words spoken during his presidency. He infamously called Haiti a “shithole country” and then there was “good people on both sides” remark from Charlottesville.
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And yet, Trump’s actions—his criminal justice reform legislation and work on the economy—lead to record breaking federal prison releases, which disproportionately benefited Black men, and historic lows in Black unemployment.
President Trump’s law First Step Act broke records with the release of over 5,000 inmates in its first year alone. I was just one of them.
So, to recap: The racist Trump releases Black Americans like myself from … the impact of Biden’s discriminatory law. Yet, Biden is considered the “lesser of two evils”?
It’s ridiculous, of course.
I remember watching, along with so many other federal inmates as Trump dragged both Republican and Democratic leaders alike kicking and screaming toward a crime bill that would reform and begin to repair the damage Biden’s law had done to the Black community. But Trump is the bigger racist? Does this make sense?
Of course, it makes sense when Biden and most of the Democratic Party’s white leadership has mastered the art of racist actions in place of racist words. Meaning, they understand that they can sell just about any racist legislation to the Black community as long as they do it while avoiding any verbiage that could be considered racially insensitive.
In my roguish, Robin Hood opinion, this not only makes Biden and leaders like him more racist than Trump, but it makes Biden and his allies more effective in carrying out acts and policies of racial discrimination. Biden is hardly the “lesser of two evils.” His insidious approach to the African American community makes him a great political threat to our community.
After all, it’s in Democratic-led cities where crime is skyrocketing, where homes are unaffordable to working-class Americans, where the cost of living has become prohibitive, and where schools are the most racially segregated. All of this has fueled a Reverse Great Migration of Black Americans moving to red states. We’re voting with our feet, as many have pointed out.
Many were surprised when President Trump secured the votes of 18 percent of Black men. I wasn’t. More and more are realizing that the Democrats may talk a good talk, but when it comes to policy and legislation, Trump ultimately had our backs.
If we in the Black community don’t commit ourselves to evaluating actual deeds and actions—actual legislation and actual policy—when comparing Biden to Trump, we will continue to suffer at the hands of this modern day Sheriff of Nottingham. Take it from a modern day Robin Hood.
Craig Scott of McKain Entertainment Network is a formerly incarcerated actor, militant activist and filmmaker.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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