Remarks by Joe Biden on George Floyd and the Unfolding Situation in Minnesota

Once again — the words “I can’t breathe.”

An act of brutality so elemental, it did more than deny one more black man in America his civil rights and his human rights. It denied his very humanity. It denied him of his life.

Depriving George Floyd — as it deprived Eric Garner — of the one thing every human being must be able to do: Breathe.

So simple. So basic. So brutal.

The same thing happened with Ahmaud Arbery. The same with Breonna Taylor. The same thing with George Floyd.

We’ve spoken their names aloud. Cried them out in pain and horror. Chiseled them into long suffering hearts.

They are the latest additions to an endless list of lives stolen — potential wiped out unnecessarily.

It’s a list that dates back more than 400 years: black men, black women, black children.

The original sin of this country still stains our nation today.

Sometimes we manage to overlook it, and just push forward with the thousand other tasks of daily life. But it’s always there.

And weeks like this, we see it plainly.

We are a country with an open wound.

None of us can turn away.

None of us can be silent.

None of us any longer can hear those words — “I can’t breathe” — and do nothing.

We cannot fall victim to what Martin Luther King called the “appalling silence of the good people.”

Every day, African Americans go about their lives with constant anxiety and trauma, wondering — who will be next?

Imagine if every time your husband or son, wife or daughter, left the house, you feared for their safety from bad actors and bad police.

Imagine if you had to have that talk with your child about not asserting their rights — and taking the abuse handed out to them — just so they could make it home.

Imagine having the police called on you — for just sitting in Starbucks or renting an Airbnb or watching birds.

That is the norm for black people in this nation — they don’t have to imagine it.

The anger and the frustration and the exhaustion — it’s undeniable.

But that is not the promise of America.

And it is long past time we made the promise of this nation real for all people.

This is no time for incendiary tweets. This is no time to encourage violence.

This is a national crisis, and we need real leadership right now.

Leadership that will bring everyone to the table so we can take measures to root out systemic racism.

It’s time for us to take a hard look at uncomfortable truths.

It’s time for us to face the deep, open wound we have in this nation.

We need justice for George Floyd.

We need real police reform that holds all cops up to the high standards that so many of them actually meet — that holds bad cops accountable, and that repairs the relationship between law enforcement and the community they are sworn to protect.

And we need to stand up as a nation — with the black community, and with all minority communities — and come together as one America.

That’s the challenge we face.

And it will require those of us who sit in positions of influence to finally deal with the abuse of power.

The pain is too immense for one community to bear alone.

It is the duty of every American to grapple with it — and grapple with it now.

With our complacency, our silence — we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence.

Nothing about this will be easy or comfortable. But if we simply allow this wound to scab over once more, without treating the underlying injury — we will never truly heal.

The very soul of America is at stake.

We must commit, as a nation, to pursue justice with every ounce of our being. We have to pursue it with real urgency. We have to make real the American promise, which we have never fully grasped: That all men and women are not only equal at creation, but throughout their lives.