Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he was wrong in his belief that “you could defeat hate.”

Instead, the former vice president argued that hate “only hides,” and leaders can give hate “oxygen.”

During a town hall event in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Biden recalled riots that occurred in Wilmington, Delaware, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the damage that resulted from them.

Biden during the riots, he feared that “Blacks and whites would never be in my city talking to each other.”

He then spoke about how the city had rebuilt in the following years. He said, “I said, don’t tell me things can’t change.”

He continued, “But I made a mistake about something, I thought you could defeat hate. It only hides. And when someone in authority breathes oxygen under that rock, it legitimizes those folks to come on out from under the rocks.”

Biden continued to slam President Donald Trump’s response to white supremacists and claimed it “legitimized a dark side of human nature.”

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“It’s not all fault. But it legitimized a dark side of human nature. What it did, though, was also expose what had not been paid enough attention to. The underlying racism that is institutionalized in the United States that still exists and has for 400 years. So we end up with a circumstance like we have here in Kenosha.”

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Biden visited Kenosha on Thursday to meet with local leaders in a bid to bring people together and start the healing process, as IJR reported.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Biden said, “We’ve got to put things together. Bring people together. And so my purpose in going will be to do just that, to be a positive influence on what’s going on.”

Kenosha has experienced days of unrest after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, several times in the back last week.