Rainbow coalition

Joe Biden’s proposed cabinet looks truly representative of a multicultural America

- MILAN SIME MARTINIC

Joe Biden is aiming to be the first American president to constitute a cabinet that truly “looks like America”. He is not the first president to attempt the lofty goal. But he might just be the first to succeed. And if he does, it will also mark the evolution and redemption of Biden himself.

Biden carved a niche for himself in the moderate-to-conservative small state of Delaware by appealing to its pro-business white majority. He once called black children “predators on our streets… a cadre of young people, tens of thousands of them, born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing, because they literally... have not been socialised. The end result is they’re about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.”

Biden said all of that. It did not matter how it happened, not the circumstances, not even the history; it mattered how it made white, conservative voters from his state feel.

But that was then.

After eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and after a long campaign where he benefited from the goodwill of the blacks and the minorities, the seasoned politician is about to realise his dream of nearly half a century. He is concerned about the circumstances, about the history and about how the minority feels. It is a remarkable evolution in the man who, some would say, has always held the most decent beliefs, but was forced by political expediency into a different mould. And his recent actions are redemptive. He is attempting to save the country from the evils of injustice by being inclusionary. His outreach is personally profound and is fundamental to the future of the nation.