Biden's Plan for Black Americans Seeks to Address Discrimination, Affordable Housing and HBCU's

With all of the issues at stake in reference to the 2020 Presidential Elections, a lot of Black Americans are wondering where they stand.

The state of Black America became a highly discussed topic in 2020 due to several deaths that were the result of racial discrimination and police brutality. These issues were not only raised but recognized internationally with protests.

While many Black Americans see President Donald Trump as a threat, they don’t necessarily see Joe Biden as an ally. And while Trump’s actions, especially during his last four years in office, give them a clear statement on what he’ll do, Biden is still somewhat of a mystery.

In Biden’s campaign, he promises to “rooting out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, our institutions, and our hearts.”

Not too long ago, he released "a comprehensive agenda for African Americans” that includes:

• Advance the economic mobility of African Americans and close the racial wealth and income gaps.

• Expand access to high-quality education and tackle racial inequity in our education system.

• Make far-reaching investments in ending health disparities by race.

• Strengthen America’s commitment to justice.

• Make the right to vote and the right to equal protection real for African Americans.

• Address environmental justice.

For Black-owned businesses, Biden plans to start with the Small Business Administration to improve and expand programs that support Black business owners and increase funding for the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), which helps the development and growth of minority-owned businesses around the country.

He also plans to address Black homeownership and affordable housing with a $640 billion investment over 10 years, helping families to buy their first homes and build wealth by creating a new refundable, advanceable tax credit of up to $15,000.

$100 billion of that will go towards an Affordable Housing Fund to construct and upgrade affordable housing.

Additionally, Biden plans to amend the Equal Credit Opportunity Act because he says that credit reports are racially biased and often contain errors, leave many “credit invisible” due to the sources used to generate a credit score, and they contribute to racial disparities, widening the Black homeownership gap.

He wants to create a new public credit reporting agency through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to provide consumers with a government option that seeks to minimize racial disparities.

And he's proposed a White House StrikeForce consisting of agency leaders who will partner with community-building organizations in persistent poverty rural communities and help them unlock federal resources.

Biden's plan also calls for an $18 billion investment in grants to four-year Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), equivalent to up to two years of tuition per low-income and middle-class student. He will invest additional funds in private, non-profit HBCUs and under-resourced MSIs.

As for the justice system, he promises for the immediate passage of Congressman Bobby Scott’s SAFE Justice Act, an evidence-based, comprehensive bill to reform our criminal justice system “from front-end sentencing reform to back-end release policies.”

And Biden hopes to create a new task force, placed outside of the U.S. Department of Justice, to make recommendations for tackling discrimination and other problems in our justice system that results from arrest and charging decisions.

In addition to working with Congress to reform federal sentencing and provide incentives to state and local systems to do the same.

More importantly, Biden wants to ensure that political appointees, including the President’s Cabinet, look like the country they serve, and ensure that our federal workforce is representative of the demographics in our country.

He plans to reissue and mandate strict compliance with the Obama-Biden executive order to promote diversity and inclusion and rebuild the pipeline of workers into the federal government and incentivize more qualified workers to choose public service by forgiving $10,000 a year in student debt for up to five years of public service. This includes tapping into developing career pipelines from HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions into federal agencies.