An underlying feeling that I have about the politicians that govern our country is how tone deaf they seem to be. It’s as if they care more about securing positions of power than actually enacting policies that would tangibly improve our lives. Of course, the reality is much more complicated than that, but the article “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Limits of Representation” does not do much to convince me otherwise. The article goes into how Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick seems to be at odds with the policies he has supported in the past. For example, Joe Biden played a nontrivial role in the creation of the 1994 Crime Bill, which created rhetoric around black communities being inherently prone to crime. Fast forward to the 2020 election, and Biden was giving speeches that quoted civil-rights anti-capitalist Ella Baker in an attempt to sway black voters. To me, this shows one of two things; either Joe Biden has sincerely changed his beliefs since the 90s (entirely plausible since he was the vice president for Obama), or he just wants more votes. Considering Biden has never (according to the article) given any clear apologies for his role in implementing these policies, I find the former to be somewhat unlikely. What also doesn’t help his case is, according to the article, “fifty-two per cent of African Americans said that Obama’s policies had not gone far enough to improve their situation,” which was a significant increase from his first year as president. Overall, our country still has a long way to go in terms of representation and equality, and right now I am uncertain if we are even heading in the right direction.
Spring 2022
