ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: The Root Writer Blasts Joe Biden’s ‘Negro Summer Safari Adventure’ With ‘Corn Pop The Gansgta.’
The Root’s Michael Harriot called out a recently-surfaced video of former Vice President Joe Biden, referring to claims that he faced off with a gangster named Corn Pop as “Biden’s Negro Summer Safari Adventure.”
Biden’s story revolved around a summer he spent working as a life guard at a pool in a primarily black neighborhood and a confrontation with a group of guys carrying straight razors.
Biden claimed that he met Corn Pop and the others and threatened them with a length of chain, and that was how they came to respect him and ensure that others would leave him alone.
But Harriot wasn’t buying it.
“I’m always astounded by the imaginings of white people as it relates to race. Many of them have this fictionalized jigaboo version that is almost alien-like. And one of the greatest examples of this ever is Joe Biden’s story about Corn Pop the gangsta,” his thread began.
Harriot apparently didn’t check The Root’s archives before trashing Biden. In 2010, the left-wing African-American-themed Website ran a puff piece titled “Joe Biden’s Black Pass,” built around Biden and “Corn Pop:”
Shortly after he ousted a guy named Corn Pop for breaking the rules at the all-black pool, Joe Biden considered calling the police to escort him to his car once his shift ended.
Corn Pop belonged to a gang known as the Romans, and Biden, the lone white lifeguard at Prices Run—one of the few public pools in Wilmington, Del., open to non-whites during the 1960s—made fun of the man’s pomade-slathered hair before kicking him out.
Word from the black lifeguards was that Corn Pop, who took his coiffure pretty seriously, would be waiting outside with a straight razor, ready to fight. Calling the cops was a no-no, Biden was warned, unless he planned to never return to the pool.
Biden, then a 19-year-old college student, didn’t take long to deliberate. He made his way to one of the back rooms and emerged with a 6-foot-long piece of chain wrapped around his arm. He knew what he had to do.
Luckily, a little public posturing was enough to satisfy Corn Pop, and the two men made peace; Biden even apologized for the insult.
It was possibly the first in a long line of verbal slip-ups that would land the vice president in hot water, but to let Wilmington’s black residents tell it, that day at the pool was fateful. It was there that Delaware’s star politician earned the respect of the African-American community, which would see him through many elections.
“That’s where it all started,” says Joe Brumskill, a former Wilmington school board president who worked on several of Biden’s U.S. Senate campaigns. “He grew up working with black people, and we got to know him well.”
Of course, Biden’s interactions with “Corn Pop” are still up for debate; and I certainly understand Harriot’s skepticism, especially given Biden’s many other gaffes and mis-remembrances. The story also sounds far too similar to T-Bone, Corey Booker’s frequently mentioned imaginary friend.
The Root was one of the last Internet redoubts of the Graham Family, until they sold it to Univision in 2015. The Grahams previous sold the beleaguered Washington Post in 2013 to Jeff Bezos for $250 million — tip money to Bezos — after off-loading Newsweek for $1.00 three years prior.