In a speech soaring with lofty rhetoric promising to unite a badly fractured country, President-elect Joe Biden declared he would work tirelessly on behalf of all Americans, giving a special nod to African Americans and other people of color whose solid support helped him defeat an incumbent President for only the fourth time in U.S. History.
During a speech Saturday night in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., following his formally being declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election, Biden promised to bring back civility and a sense of common purpose to the nation.
“I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify, who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States, and works with all my heart, with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you. For that is what America, I believe, is about. It is about people. And that’s what our administration will be all about,” he said.
However, it was the soon-to-be 46th President of the United States’ explicit expression of gratitude to Black America, that stood out most starkly for many Americans seeking to break with the toxic racism and relentless assaults upon the citizenship and dignity of non-white Americans by the Trump Administration.
“All those who supported us, I’m proud of the campaign we built and ran. I’m proud of the coalition we put together; the broadest and most diverse coalition in history,” he said. “Democrats, Republicans, independents, progressives, moderates, conservatives, young, old, urban, suburban, rural, gay, straight, transgender, white, Latino, Asian, Native American. I mean it, especially in those moments, and especially for those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”
After nearly four consecutive years of the non-stop menacing of the health, safety and welfare of Black Americans by arguably the most viciously racist presidential administration since Woodrow Wilson more than 100 years ago, an administration led by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris means we can finally exhale again. If only for a moment.
Instead of spending nearly every waking moment expending energy on trying to hold on to the modest civil rights gains and social and economic progress we made over the past 75 years, Black Americans in general and Black leadership, in particular, will be able to focus on a specific policy agenda that will advance our communities.
During the Trump Administration, African Americans were frozen out of the Oval Office with only a handful – if that – of low-level policy aides in the White House reporting to sub-cabinet officials. The only Black cabinet member during the entire term was the disgraceful Ben Carson who Trump appointed as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And he spent his entire tenure undermining the Fair Housing Act, the enforcement of fair housing laws, gutting programs to help the poor, and mocking the sacrifices of Black Americans who fought for racial equality and to end housing segregation and redlining.
It was a bitter twist of fate for the Black community after enjoying eight consecutive years of having a Black President in Barak Obama. Although he faced staunch opposition from an obstinate and vehemently right-wing and racist Republican Party that controlled both houses of Congress during most of his two terms, Obama was a dignified, respectful, and moderately progressive, mainstream, Black politician who tried his best to protect African American interests. Even if he was not able to push through the kind of policies desired to make the kinds of structural changes needed to more rapidly advance the socio-economic interest of Black America.
However, besides having a progressive Black woman as his vice president and whom he has promised will play a critical role in the development and implementation of his policy agenda, President-elect Biden has promised to have an administration that “looks like America” and among other things, place a Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court if an opening should arise.
“I said at the outset I wanted this campaign to represent and look like America. We have done that. Now that is what I want the administration to look like and act like,” he said during a speech.
Indeed, during his campaign for the presidency, President-elect Biden issued a comprehensive plan for rebuilding America with a specific focus on helping urban communities and improving the socio-economic conditions of Black America.
Unlike President Trump who insultingly bragged about “doing more for da Blacks” than any president in history, Biden acknowledges that the Trump recession has hit Black and Brown communities especially hard, with Black unemployment at 15.4 percent, Latino unemployment at 14.5 percent, and businesses owned by Black, Latino and Asian American people closing down at alarming rates.
He promised to use the power of his office to combat poverty, unfair labor policies, job discrimination, and ruinous tax and budgetary policies that have been at the heart of Trump’s and the Republican Party’s economic agendas.
This includes bold investments in infrastructure, innovation, manufacturing, education, housing, clean energy, federal procurement and small businesses. And directing many of those investments to advance racial equity as part of our nation’s economic recovery.
According to his campaign’s “Build Back Better Plan for America” Biden will:
- Spur Public-Private Investment through a New Small Business Opportunity Plan
- Reform Opportunity Zones to Fulfill Their Promise
- Make a Historic Commitment to Equalizing Federal Procurement
- Ensure His Housing Plan Makes Bold Investments in Homeownership and Access to Affordable Housing for Black, Brown and Native Families
- Achieve Equity in Management, Training and Higher Education Opportunities Connected to the Jobs of the Future
- Boost Retirement Security and Financial Wealth for Black, Brown and Native Families
- Ensure Workers of Color Are Compensated Fairly and Treated with Dignity
- Ensure Equity in Biden’s Bold Infrastructure and Clean Energy Investments
- Support Second Chances for Economic Success
- Strengthen the Federal Reserve’s Focus on Racial Economic Gaps
- Promote Diversity and Accountability in Leadership Across Key Positions in All Federal Agencies
- Build a 21st Century Care Infrastructure
- Address Longstanding Inequities in Agriculture
Most urgently, however, he promised to take the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic seriously and not leave millions of Americans left to die on their own under Trump’s proposed cruel and inhumane policy of “herd immunity.”
More than 10 million Americans have been infected with Covid-19 as of Sunday and almost 250,000 have died from the deadly disease in less than a year. According to the APM Research Lab, Black Americans experience the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide—two or more times as high as the rate for Whites and Asians, who have the lowest actual rates.
With the disease having such a devastating impact on Black America, it has reverberated through the Black business community as well. The nation’s massive Covid-19-induced economic recession has seen the Black unemployment rate triple and 40 percent of small Black businesses close.
President-elect Biden has already begun to take action to combat the disease on all levels. This includes assembling a group of roughly two dozen health policy and technology experts to look at the development and delivery of a vaccine, improvement of health data and establishment of a Covid-19 task force that he will reveal this week.
According to the New York Times, he is expected to name three co-chairs of the 12-member panel: Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general, David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale University professor.
“The announcement of the task force would be part of a weeklong focus that Mr. Biden intends to place on health care and the pandemic, as he begins the process of building his administration,” according to the Times.
And, unlike Trump, he has also vowed to use the power of the presidency to invoke the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, more aggressively than Mr. Trump to order businesses to build up stocks of necessary supplies and move quickly to confront the pandemic by appointing a national supply chain commander and establishing a pandemic testing board, ramp up production of Covid-19 tests and PPE, creation of a U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps to mobilize at least 100,000 unemployed Americans to fight the virus and another $25 billion for vaccine research and distribution to make sure everyone has access to it.
President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris have a tough road ahead of them. As he has done all his life, Donald Trump has completely ruined the gift of a strong economy, a more advanced society and a more hopeful future he inherited from President Obama. And Americans of all races and ethnicities are far worse off for it.
So, it will take time for the Biden Administration to bring back stability to our nation and for Black America to heal from four horrific years under Trump. But as Harris so eloquently noted in her speech Saturday, at least the American people know there will be a president and vice president working hard on their behalf in the White House; who are committed to building up and healing our country and not just pander to one’s own selfish and malevolent interests.
“I will strive to be a vice president like Joe was to President Obama — loyal, honest and prepared — waking up every day thinking of you and your family because now is when the real work begins, the hard work, the necessary work, the good work, the essential work to save lives and beat this epidemic, to rebuild our economy so it works for working people, to root out systemic racism in our justice system and society, to combat the climate crisis, to unite our country and heal the soul of our nation. The road ahead will not be easy, but America is ready, and so are Joe and I.”
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