Biden’s Made a Subtle, Important Shift About How He Talks About Race
As the nation he seeks to lead has spiraled deeper into chaos, former Vice President Joe Biden this week has called for a whole-of-country effort to combat racism and police violence against black Americans.
“I ask all of America to join me—not in denying our pain or covering it over—but using it to compel our nation across this turbulent threshold into the next phase of progress, inclusion, and opportunity for our great democracy,” Biden said in a late-night post on Instagram on Saturday, as a fifth night of protests and riots spread to cities across the country in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25.
On Friday, in livestreamed remarks from his home in Delaware, Biden called the pain of racism “too immense for one community to bear alone,” adding that “it’s the duty of Americans to grapple with it, and to grapple with it now. With our complacency, our silence, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence.”