Looking back on Joe Biden’s relationship with Black America

Ronald Mitchell

You could say Joe Biden’s relationship with Black America started out somewhat awkwardly. Amid civil rights marches and protests in the early 1960s, the used car salesman’s son wanted to find a way to personally cross the racial divide to get a better understanding of African American life. So the 19-year-old teenager applied for a job as a lifeguard at a public swimming pool in Wilmington’s Black community — literally, as a life-saver.

“I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma or anywhere else,” the future president would later say. “I was a suburbanite kid who got an exposure to Black America in my own city.”

Accounts of his summer at the pool, located near a housing project known as the Bucket, describe Biden getting pranked by the kids, his whistles falling on deaf ears as they mocked and distracted the earnest lifeguard. But he continued to show up and eventually earned the respect and friendship of families he remained close to for the rest of his life.

As President Biden prepares to yield the office he sought for close to four decades, a review of his political and personal biography shows that time and time again his heartfelt efforts to connect with people, no matter how mawkish or sentimental, often overcame missteps in policy choices or statements, winning him backers who might have abandoned other politicians.

Those early friendships shaped his first run for public office in which he won election to the New Castle County Council on a platform of supporting public housing in the suburbs.

For Black voters, his steadfast support of President Barack Obama during his eight years as vice president to the first Black commander-in-chief was perhaps his chief qualifier during his 2020 run for the White House. Obama chose Biden in part to balance the ticket, selecting an older white establishment politician with strong ties to labor and moderates unsure about elevating the young Illinois senator to the nation’s highest office.

Biden’s experience on Capitol Hill, going back to his 1972 election as the Senate’s youngest member at age 29, proved crucial in many legislative battles, especially the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to jumpstart the economy after the 2008 banking crisis and the landmark Affordable Care Act, which made health care more accessible to all.

After sitting out the 2016 race following the death of his son Beau and watching Hillary Clinton lose to Donald Trump, Biden said he was moved to challenge the disruptive incumbent after the president failed to fully denounce the white supremacists who marched with torches through downtown Charlottesville in 2017. But the 77-year-old candidate’s campaign to “restore the soul of America” got off to a faltering start early in the 2020 race. Biden’s candidacy seemed doomed after poor showings in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, but Black voters came to his rescue.

Biden’s support for the harshly punitive 1994 Crime Bill as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, his controversial handling of the Clarence Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court and his occasional praise for segregationist colleagues were less important than his stalwart defense of the Obama presidency and the friendships he had forged along the way.

Coming out of the early nomination contests, Biden turned to South Carolina, where he clung to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn like a life-saving ring in the run-up to the Feb. 29 primary. With the Congressional Black Caucus veteran by his side, Biden barnstormed through fish fries and gospel services to finish first in every county and set up a sweep of the southern-heavy Super Tuesday primaries three days later, effectively clinching the nomination.

Older Black voters, in particular, rallied to his side. His personal story of family financial setbacks as a youth, overcoming a stutter, and his recovery from losing his first wife and a daughter in a tragic car accident weeks after his election to the Senate stirred identification from those who had also experienced life’s sorrows. Going on Charlamagne tha God’s radio show during the fall campaign against President Donald Trump, Biden told listeners, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”

Biden made the reality-TV star a one-term wonder in the November elections, winning 90% of the Black vote with one-time rival Kamala Harris by his side. The first woman and the first woman of color elected to the vice presidency, she had criticized Biden’s opposition to court-ordered busing during her own truncated campaign for the Democratic nomination. But Harris was fully on board the Biden Express when the new administration took over Washington weeks after the Jan. 6 Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol.

During their four years in office, the Biden-Harris team brought the country back from the pandemic, oversaw record lows in Black unemployment, increased child nutrition support, tripled the numbers of Small Business Administration loans to Black firms, awarded a record $10 billion in federal contracts to Black-owned small businesses and invested more than $16 billion in historically Black colleges and universities. According to the White House, they also closed the Black-white homeowner misevaluation gap by 40%, cut costs for high-speed Internet to 5.5 million Black households and led a historically equitable economic recovery, as the Black wealth is up 60% relative to pre-pandemic levels — the largest increase in history.

Biden appointed 63 Black judges to the federal bench — the largest number ever in a single administration — including naming Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Other African American appointees included Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense, Marcia Fudge as secretary of health and human services, and other prominent Black Americans.

Though criticized for pardoning his son Hunter Biden for tax and weapons charges, President Biden last month issued over a thousand commutations and pardons, including commutations for the death sentences of 37 of 40 federal prisoners — the most decisive single-step action against the racist legacy of capital punishment in American history.

Biden’s decision to run for reelection only to abandon the race in the wake of withering criticism of his sagging energy and challenged cognition, undoubtedly hindered Vice President Harris’s own campaign, which fell short of winning the popular vote by only 1.6 million ballots.

Among the last acts of his presidency, Biden traveled to Africa to announce a multi-billion-dollar partnership with Angola and stronger ties throughout the continent. And in a poignant coda to his time in office, he will deliver a tribute to another one-term president, Jimmy Carter, when the late 39th president is honored at the National Cathedral later this week.

Biden was the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter when he launched his improbable run for the White House in 1976. Like his Georgian counterpart, Biden will be remembered for his policies and personal commitment to heal our nation’s racial divide and provide opportunities for all.

Ronald Mitchell

Publisher and editor, Bay State Banner