Is Black Lives Matter a slogan or reality for Biden"
The Democratic National Convention felt like a virtual protest march against racial injustice this week: The Obamas both mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement; Sen. Elizabeth Warren, from a shuttered Massachusetts day-care center, spoke with BLM cutely displayed in colorful letters on the shelves behind her; Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., the vice-presidential nominee, punctuated her speech with the sharpest sound bite of the convention. “There is no vaccine for racism,” she said. “We have got to do the work.”
At the end of the march there was Joe Biden.
“Will we be the generation that finally wipes out the stain of racism from our national character"” Biden asked Thursday night as he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge President Trump. “I believe we’re up to it. I believe we’re ready.”
But what’s the plan" The symbols and slogans amounted to little more than the NBA painting Black Lives Matter on the court. Nice gesture. But the game goes on.
“This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme,” Biden said. It sounded elegant. The lack of details made the phrasing so clean.
In truth, the solutions Biden and his team have proposed for addressing racism remain in draft form under the umbrella of the “Build Back Better” section of his campaign website. They are mostly loose thoughts and careful, idealistic aims rather than concrete policy proposals. These rough sketches are neither disruptive nor highly debatable, and perhaps that’s the point.
But for all of the Democrats’ efforts to portray Biden as a “decent” guy, he has ample work left to earn the trust of voters keenly concerned about social justice.
The motivation for Democrats’ warm embrace of Black Lives Matter can’t be simply that Black Votes Matter. The Democrats’ platform has been full of that sentiment for a long time. Biden still has to prove to many – Black and Latino voters, young folks, and those far to the left of him – that he can be trusted on these issues; that he is worth braving a pandemic and weaving through voter suppression tactics to cast a ballot for.
Perhaps Biden looks at it as “me or Trump.” But apathy is a dangerous opponent, too.
Lack of enthusiasm is enough of a concern that former president Barack Obama felt the need, in addition to detailing a brotherhood with his former vice president, to give America a stern lecture about our responsibility in maintaining a democracy. Even as he pursues undecided swing voters, which his campaign did during the DNC by working several anti-Trump Republicans into the program, Biden has plenty to prove to a diverse base. This, of course, includes Black voters.
It’s hard to forget that Biden went on “The Breakfast Club” five months ago and arrogantly told the radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” The former VP and his campaign comment back.
And Biden is just two weeks removed from apologizing for making an odd contrast of the African American and Latino communities during a journalism convention, which offended many Black people.
“We can build a new administration that reflects the full diversity of our nation. The full diversity of Latino communities,” he said. “And when I mean full diversity, unlike the African American community and many other communities, you’re from everywhere. From Europe, from the tip of South America, all the way to our border and Mexico and in the Caribbean. And different backgrounds, different ethnicities, but all Latinos, we’re gonna get a chance to do that if we win in November.”
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