Was Biden’s Presidency Bad Or Good For Black America? Here’s the Tea

In less than two weeks, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will officially leave the White House. For decades, experts will argue about his presidency, debating on whether he was good for women, the economy and so on. But we wanted to know was he good for Black America?

So before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, The Root takes a look at how Biden’s tenure and whether how it was actually beneficial for Black people.

In 2022, Biden signed into law a bill that makes lynching a federal hate crime—and punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Acquiring this bill was a hard earned victory for his administration since it took more than a century and two hundred tries.

The Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act is named after the Chicago boy who was kidnapped and then brutally killed by a mob of white men in Mississippi in 1955 because he allegedly whistled at a white woman. It permits the act to be prosecuted—such as a lynching—when a person conspires to commit a hate crime that results in death, serious bodily injury, and other serious harms.

Considering that hate crimes increased against Black people during Trump’s first presidential term—this was considered a major victory.

Both Biden and Harris pledged to help Black business owners during their time in the Oval Office—and made good on their promise. Over the last four years, the administration expanded access to capital for small businesses—especially for women-owned and Black-owned businesses.

In fact, the Small Business Association boasted a record number of business applications under Biden—which was more than 20 million, which is the most in any single presidential term in U.S. history.

In the last weeks of his presidency, Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to make the federal judiciary more diverse. He has made history by appointing 40 Black women judges, according to data courtesy of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Many believed Biden’s nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court also reflected his determination to keep his word regarding diversity. In 2022, Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the country’s highest court.

Considering that Trump has made it a point to go after diversity initiatives and criminal justice reform, this couldn’t have come at a better time.

Back in 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act—which was the biggest investment in projects to combat climate change in the history of the U.S. As a result, more than 100,000 new jobs were created in clean energy manufacturing. Black communities suffer disproportionately from environmental racism, and Biden’s team worked diligently to deal with this crisis. However, Trump has explicitly stated he plans on rolling back these initiatives that have been set in place.