PolitiFact | The president touted achievements for Black Americans during graduation remarks at Morehouse College.
President Joe Biden, from right, poses with valedictorian DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher and salutatorian Dwayne Allen Terrell II at the Morehouse College commencement Sunday, May 19, 2024, in Atlanta.President Joe Biden has sought to bolster his outreach to Black voters as polls show him with lower-than-usual support within that demographic.
In graduation remarks May 19 at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, a historically Black institution, Biden touted achievements for Black Americans that he said were reached during his presidency.have prioritized outreach to Black voters as the presidential race continues to be close and as some polling shows the votes of Black votersthe number of Black Americans employed
. This number peaked at just less than 21 million in March 2023, during Biden’s presidency, although it has decreased since then. In May 2024, the most recent month with available data, Black employment stood at 20.6 million.But Biden’s referring to “record numbers” of Black Amerians with jobs is not the most instructive metric, because population increases over time, potentially bolstering employment numbers even absent economic growth.for people 20 and older reached 63% during Biden’s term.
Both ways of measuring the racial wealth gap are legitimate, Jonathan Welburn, a senior researcher specializing in economics at the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan research organization,in a May 2023 article that it would take trillions of dollars to eliminate the wealth gap between white and Black Americans.net housing wealth, investment income and businesses or self-employment were the top Black income growth drivers from 2019 to 2022.