Former Vice President Joe Biden has a lot to answer for with regard to race relations, a former staffer of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told “Fox & Friends” Sunday.
Tezlyn Figaro, who worked for Sanders during the 2016 presidential primary, argued that the 1994 Crime Bill — co-authored and touted by Biden before it was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton — was worse than Jim Crow, putting more black Americans in prison than were enslaved in the 1850s.
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Figaro was responding to Biden, who said during a campaign stop in South Carolina that Republicans were bringing Jim Crow back. (RELATED: ‘Come On, Man’: Biden Dismisses China Threat To US)
“The single-most important right you have have as American is the right to vote and folks, last year, 24 states introduced 70 bills to curtail the right to vote and guess what? Mostly, directed at ‘People of color.’ You see it,” Biden explained. “We got Jim Crow sneaking back in no, I mean it. Why? If everybody has an equal right to vote, guess what, they lose, they lose.”
Figaro argued that Biden’s message didn’t really resonate due to his support of the 1994 Crime Bill, saying, “For him to be talking about Jim Crow when he was the one that implemented the crime bill, which was worse than Jim Crow when it comes down to what it’s done to my community, particularly my generation, with locking up more black men in prison than were enslaved in 1850, so he has a lot of explaining to do and it’ll go a little bit deeper than just the right to vote so I’m looking forward to hearing what he will do to actually fix that plan.”
Figaro made no note of the fact that Sanders, her employer in 2016, also voted for the same crime bill and touted that support during his run for Senate in 2006.