I Wanna Be Black–How Joe Biden Longed To Be Real

“I want to be black”, the President said to his wife one night before retiring.  “I wish there could be a race change operation just like there is for sex”.

For years, but especially since he was elected President, Joe Biden wished he could channel Bill Clinton, get down with the black community and be one of them. In fact he had always wanted to be blacker than Clinton, a tall order, for the former President had done everything except blacken his skin and curl his hair to become the first black president.   He loved fried chicken, collard greens, and the blues.  He loved hanging out with black men on the stoop, sharing stories about poontang and moonshine.  

He liked the Reverend Al Sharpton, and the aging coterie of Martin Luther King.  He said that he felt for the plight of black people – it was a personal, emotional thing with him, not just a political one.  Even more than LBJ who did more for the black community than any president since Lincoln, Bill Clinton’s empathy was heartfelt.  He was moved to tears over a poor black child, fist-clenching angry over reports of lingering Jim Crow and continuing denial of black rights. 

Black people loved him, apparently.  They loved his warmth and good-natured camaraderie, and felt that his friendship was above and beyond ‘the black vote’.  He was a friend to the black man, and they would never forget it at the polls. The fact that he drew the line at black women – his preferences were uniquely white – gave some blacks pause.  If he were really one of them, he would be courting their women.  

Ordinarily black men were angered at white sexual trolling – for that was what it was, sexual adventurism which never amounted to anything; and worse, white men never settled for anything less than the high-toned, sassy, and best black women, emptying the gene pool of the best.  Yet, they forgave Clinton for his white women.  He meant well, but how could an Arkansas cracker ever get above high-gloss nail polish, tight skirts, and cheap beauty parlor hair?  He was as black as a white man could get, but still as white as an Easter lily.

You could see the affection between Clinton and black people.  They hugged each other with real affection and truly enjoyed each other’s company.  Of course Clinton was not only Southern but a real, God-fearing, backcountry hillbilly Southern while Biden was as white as could be, Delaware born and bred.  Delaware was a border state during the Civil War, tolerating slavery but not joining the Confederacy; and Biden thought that that heritage if not his own lineage gave him some black creds. 

He knew some black folk whose ancestors had been slaves in Delaware, but he never got beyond academics – border politics, Jim Crow, Reconstruction theory, and Congressional legislation.  He wanted to sit and drink malt liquor with his constituents on the East side, talk black talk, street talk, real talk; but he never could manage, and his barmy, goofy hitched smile never worked there.  He would always be whitey in a serge suit, coming downtown for votes.

“But Joe, dear”, said his wife, “don’t be silly.  You’re just as good white”.

That was the problem, for over the past decade or so, he had become convinced by his progressive supporters that the time of whiteness was a befouling curse, and that white supremacy a thing of the past.  There was no point in looking back, only forward to The Age of the Black Man.  The black man was superior to whites in all ways.  His African tribal ancestry gave him a natural sensitivity to intimacy, family, and the natural world, expressed in dance and music.  The great kingdoms of Gao, Songhai, and Mali had given him cultural sophistication and social intelligence.  Slavery had given him fortitude and forbearance, and Jim Crow had riled his spirit and gave him courage.  

Bill Clinton said he was the first black president, and he indeed came as close as they come.  He loved fried chicken, collard greens, and the blues.  He loved hanging out with black men on the stoop, sharing stories about poontang and moonshine.  He liked the Reverend Al Sharpton, and the aging coterie of Martin Luther King.  He said that he felt for the plight of black people – it was a personal, emotional thing with him, not just a political one.  Even more than LBJ who did more for the black community than any president since Lincoln, Bill Clinton’s empathy was heartfelt.  He was moved to tears over a poor black child, fist-clenching angry over reports of lingering Jim Crow and continuing denial of black rights. 

Black people loved him, apparently.  They loved his warmth and good-natured camaraderie, and felt that his friendship was above and beyond ‘the black vote’.  He was a friend to the black man, and they would never forget it at the polls. The fact that he drew the line at black women – his preferences were uniquely white – gave some blacks pause.  If he were really one of them, he would be courting their women.  

Ordinarily black men were angered at white sexual trolling – for that was what it was, sexual adventurism which never amounted to anything; and worse, white men never settled for anything less than the high-toned, sassy, and best black women, emptying the gene pool of the best.  Yet, they forgave Clinton for his white women.  He meant well, but how could an Arkansas cracker ever get above high-gloss nail polish, tight skirts, and cheap beauty parlor hair?  He was as black as a white man could get, but still as white as an Easter lily.

Joe Biden in his private moments wanted to be even more black than Bill Clinton.

Sensing the President’s new, increased sensitivity to the black experience, his aides suggested that he go deep into the heart of the DC inner city to the ghetto of all ghettoes, the only completely black place in the capital where the expression of blackness was at its most visible, salient, and real.

As his limousine wound its way through Anacostia, past shambled row houses, trash, and burned out, abandoned vehicles, he said to his wife, “I didn’t know it would be like this”.  Nothing in his sheltered, insular, white life had prepared him for such a sight.  Ordinarily, he would have stepped out in a crowd to get votes, but this was different.  Even with the extra security added to be on the safe side, he would never leave the car.

When he thought about it, Clinton never came here to Anacostia.  His black experience had been filtered through the black bourgeoisie and Southern rural African Americans – a more deferential, complaisant black man, safer, but still with all the earmarks of Africa.  “I’ve started off wrong”, he said to Jill.  “Too ambitious, too black too soon.  Should have taken a lesson from Bill”.

So he contented himself with addressing black congregations, meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, having tea with flower-hatted elderly black matrons, and inviting sports champions (usually all black) to the White House.  “Still not black enough”, he said to himself, looking for a way to appeal, to belong.  “Watch Bulworth”, his wife suggested, a Warren Beatty movie about a white political candidate who becomes as black as can be.  He raps his campaign speeches, uses black idioms, and shucks and jives with the best of them.

Yet when he gave it a whirl, tried to adjust his longstanding, instinctive white prose, make it at least poetic and symbolic, he failed miserably.  He stumbled, smiled in the wrong places, misread the teleprompter, and sounded like a fool.

He was no better at the Divine Light of the Cross storefront church in Greenwood, Mississippi where one of his aides had learned the Bible.  The singing, chanting, dancing, and speaking in tongues were simply not for him, too foreign, too removed from the simple Catholic parish of his childhood. 

“It’s going slowly”, he said to Jill many nights after his first confession., “Too many bumps in the road”.

He never gave up, however, stuck to his guns, but rode only on smooth roads.  He got Brittny Griner out of a stinking Russian prison, talked racial justice and the evils of systemic racism and white supremacy, even ventured a photo op with a leader of Black Lives Matter, a mistake as it turned out for she soon afterwards got arrested for fraud.

He got the black vote next time out, but then again he always did.  There has never been a more solid Democratic voting bloc than black Americans, so winning it didn't feel that good.  “I should have married a black woman”, he thought, but to this day the idea, hidden from everyone, was distasteful.  Sex is always behind everything.  You can’t hide it.