Al Sharpton: Joe Biden Has a Legacy in Black America. Kamala Harris Can Keep It Going.
Joe Biden is more than this moment.
The crisis the president has struggled with for the past month should not erase his some 50 years of near-continuous service to the American people. Among other things, he has delivered time and again for Black America. That will be Mr. Biden’s legacy.
It’s for that reason that Democrats must now support the woman who has stood alongside him throughout his presidency. In the 2020 election, more than 81 million Americans voted for her to lead in the event that the president could not. We should give her the support she deserves in this moment. The attacks on her, as the highest elected Black woman in American history, will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
I have been thinking in recent days about a conversation I had with Mr. Biden when he was running four years ago. He told me in private he decided to come out of a well-deserved retirement because of what he saw in Charlottesville in 2017. A violent parade of neo-Nazis and Klansmen taking over the streets, and a spineless president who could not muster the courage to denounce racism, disgusted him enough that in his late 70s, he decided to put himself and his family through the ringer to save the soul of our nation.
His fierce commitment to delivering on promises has made him an incredibly effective president in just one term. He made a pledge during the campaign to select the first female vice president. He did. He vowed to Representative Jim Clyburn that he would put a Black woman on the Supreme Court. He delivered us Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. He promised me executive action on police accountability. I stood alongside him and the family of George Floyd as he signed an executive order to strengthen accountability in federal law enforcement agencies.
History will remember what this former lion of the Senate accomplished from the West Wing to improve Black communities across the nation. Just look at the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. These are giant accomplishments for any president, all packed into less than a full term. America will feel the impact of these legislative actions for generations to come.
At the National Action Network’s M.L.K. Day Legislative Breakfast last year, President Biden translated what this means for Black America. Our children and grandchildren will no longer drink water from pipes riddled with lead. Many will not have to struggle with student loan payments thanks to the billions of dollars in debt canceled by the administration. Medicare recipients won’t have to sacrifice food over insulin payments, thanks to a cap on medicine costs. Black unemployment is very low because the White House created 2.6 million jobs for Black workers in President Biden’s first three years in office. Black wealth is on the rise as a result of these efforts, which will set us up to finally close the financial and employment equity gaps and control our own future.
