Black voters see Trump as a 'threat' -- and that's partly why Biden isn't hurt by gaffes: political scientist

Former Vice President Joe Biden made yet another of his trademark gaffes this week when he said that, "unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly diverse attitudes about different things."

Biden quickly apologized for his remarks, although that didn't stop President Donald Trump from pouncing to declare that Black voters would feel so insulted by the former vice president that they wouldn't vote for him in November.

Christina Greer, a professor of political at Fordham University, writes in The Daily Beast that Trump is assuredly wrong about this prediction, although she says that doesn't let Biden off the hook entirely.

"Biden is one of those white Democrats that Black people know quite well: sometimes who is at times a bit too familiar, who has made missteps in the past and occasionally says inappropriate things, but who at the end of the day is learning from his mistakes and whose intent is largely not to do harm," explains Greer, who notes that Biden earned a large amount of goodwill in the Black community for his enduring partnership with former President Barack Obama.

Greer says that this contrasts strongly with how many Black voters see Trump.

"Unlike the current president who traffics in blatant white supremacy and uses Black people as a prop to boast about himself and his accomplishments for 'the blacks' (when he actually has none), Biden’s beliefs about Black Americans are sometimes still problematic, but they are not dangerous," she writes. "Trump is an existential threat to Black people and our overall democracy."

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