Biden’s Sky-High Promises on Racial Justice

A president evolves on civil rights along with the country.

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your wrap-up of the week in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host. As a college student, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was more consumed with Corvettes than with civil rights. A little more than a decade later, he made common cause with Southern Republicans in the Senate to slow school desegregation. One of his most significant legislative achievements was a 1994 crime bill that helped lay the groundwork for the mass incarceration that has devastated America’s Black communities. And as vice president, he often ceded discussion of the complex dynamics of race to Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president. Yet through it all, Mr. Biden cast himself as staunch ally of racial justice, captivated and inspired at a young age by the battle for civil rights.