It has been over a year since President Joe Biden delivered his victory speech thanking black voters. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he said.
However, based on his continued decline in popularity with black voters, it appears Biden has fallen short of his promise.
For the past year, the Biden administration has been long on photo ops, embellished positive headlines, and so-called “woke” utterances. But it’s lacked genuine reforms to the federal government that would change the black community’s status as the nation’s permanent underclass.
Many black voters appreciate Biden’s appointment of notable black political figures to positions in his administration, his establishment of Juneteenth as a national holiday, and his acknowledgment of the centennial of the Tulsa Massacre.
But as a whole, black voters have considerable experience with exploitation via superfluous political gestures and superficial political appointments. They have seen such appointments before and have a name for it: Bureaucratic blackface, the practice of appointing blacks to positions with fancy titles with no real power, all to give the illusion of diversity and inclusion.
