Black Votes Matter
By: Ross Anderson
Tags: Politics, Grief, Religion, Race, 2020 Presidential Race

On May 30th 2015, Joe Biden’s adult son, Beau, succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 46. The pain of those dying is matched by those watching their loved ones slowly fading away. It’s a pain that brought the Vice President and the daughter of his friend John McCain closer together, as she similarly suffered through her father’s decline. And it’s a suffering with which the Vice President has a painfully ironic familiarity. In 1988, with plagiarism accusations having ended his first run for President, the young Senator had a nearly fatal brain aneurysm. Three months later he went under the knife for his second aneurysm; this time, on the other side of his head. He was 45 at the time; just a year younger than his son was when he died.

A few months after Beau’s death, Biden spoke with Stephen Colbert on his new show, in the first few weeks from taking over from David Letterman at The Tonight Show.

“You know, my dad had an expression. He used to say, you know your success as a parent when you turn and look at your child and realize they turned out better than you. I was a hell of a success; my son was better than me. And he was better than me in almost every way.”

In their children, a parent invests part of their soul; dedicating time, energy, and emotion out of pure devotion to the being you have borne, so that they may blossom into their own person. It is a love and commitment that could render you the boldest of heroes or most savage of men; anything to protect them. It is an unfathomable violation of our primal, emotional norms for a parent to outlive their child.

And it was a pain Biden was all too familiar with. On December 18th, 1972, his wife Neilia was doing Christmas shopping with their three children, Hunter, Beau, and Naomi. Crossing an intersection, a truck slammed into their station wagon. Beau and Hunter were badly injured, breaking many bones in their young bodies. But they survived. His wife, and one-year-old daughter, were not so fortunate.

These are wounds that never fully heal, and trying to manage the second occurrence of a tragedy no parent should ever have to experience, the Vice President writes in his memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad’ that he tried to compartmentalize his work, and stay busy. It’s not a form of ‘processing grief’, but trying to hold it at bay. The book’s title comes from a quote from Beau, in the months before his death, asking his father:

“Promise me, you’ll be alright”

But on June 17th, just over two weeks after Beau’s passing, a white supremacist walked into the majority-black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charlson, South Carolina. It was an evening Bible study. Unloading his rifle into the congregants, he murdered 9.

For nothing but their race and faith, their place of peace was invaded, and they were butchered in a kind of violence once frequently perpetrated against black Americans even just a hundred years but seemingly gone from modern, liberal America. And with a single shocking act, it was all too real, all too here. The soul of South Carolina had been torn open. The black population generally goes to church more than their white counterparts, and black southerners even more, so all spared knew that only random chance, that he chose that church and not another, saved them.

And in the days that followed, President Barack Obama, the First Lady Michelle, and the Vice President visited the town. But accompanied by his lone surviving son, Biden would return to the church that Sunday to attend their regular service. This was not a politician visiting the site of a tragedy for optics, and nor were his words the generic handiwork of a speechwriter. He bore an unbearable pain and went to look in the eyes of those also assailed by it, try to help them get through it, and in his words “find hope” in their perseverance.

The state grieved, and Biden spoke to their pain, knew how it felt. With solemn delivery, he told the congregates:

“I wish I could say something that would ease the pain of the families and of the church. But I know from experience, and I was reminded of it again 29 days ago, that no words can mend a broken heart. No music can fill the gaping void. At least in my experience, only faith; only faith. And sometimes, as all the preachers here know, sometimes even leaves, just for a second. Sometimes you doubt.”

And to them, he told them the oft-quoted words from Kierkegaard — a saying that has defined the Vice President’ relationship with his Catholicism:

“Faith sees best in the dark”

In the years since, this small moment has connected with many; particularly the black community in South Carolina, against whom these horrors were committed. One of the most moving moments on the campaign trail occurred at a CNN town hall where a pastor whose wife was murdered during the shooting asked the Vice President about how his faith moves him and helps him with the grief.

And when talking about grief, there is a profound empathy to Biden, and humility in his suffering. Answering this question, he briefly stops himself: “And I’m sorry to go on, I apologise”. When Colbert asked the Vice President about this looks down, pained through his words: