Artur Davis, the former four-term Democratic congressman from Alabama, said Wednesday that Vice President Joe Biden was propagating “racial viciousness” when he said Mitt Romney’s regulatory policies would “put y’all back in chains.”

Biden made the comments Tuesday to a predominantly black crowd in Danville, Virginia, a city with a long history of racial tension. In May Davis announced he was switching to the GOP, leaving the door open to a future political bid as a Republican.

“[Romney] is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street,” Biden said. “He is going to put y’all back in chains.”

Davis, who is black, said the comment smacked of a type of divisiveness he said was all too common in the South.

“It brought back memories for me,” Davis told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “It brought back memories of these Democratic politicians in the South, who think they can go before crowds and say one thing and nobody else will hear it, and they’ll somehow get a cheer in the room and that they can blithely go on about their business.”

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