Joe Biden faces first 2020 test: his record on race

For months, Joe Biden has signaled his third run for president will be rooted in wooing back the white working-class voters who swung away from Democrats in 2016 and helped propel Donald Trump to the White House.

But first, Biden faces a more imminent test: can he appeal to the changing demographics of the Democratic electorate, which is poised to be the party’s most diverse in history?

Related: 'Battle for America's soul': Biden comes out swinging at first 2020 event

The former vice-president may get his answer as he touches down Saturday in South Carolina, the early state battleground where black voters play an outsize role in determining who gets the Democratic party’s nod for the 2020 presidential nomination.

Biden formally joined the historically diverse and crowded Democratic field last month, swiftly positioning himself as the most experienced and well-known contender. He has since kept his focus squarely on Trump, in what he says is “a battle for America’s soul”.

Biden’s record on race and inequality has nonetheless drawn renewed scrutiny, ranging from past comments on school desegregation to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings in the early 1990s.

In South Carolina, Biden will for the first time since launching his campaign show whether he can appeal to black voters, who make up 60% of the state’s primary electorate and 20% of the Democratic base overall.

In Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday, he criticized Republican efforts to restrict voting rights, recalling racial segregation laws of the past.

“You’ve got Jim Crow sneaking back in,” he said, referring to the era before the civil rights movement.

He said at a fund-raising dinner later that he expects a “nasty” election campaign from Donald Trump.

“As the Democratic party has moved and evolved, I think he’s going to have to explain where he was at on certain issues and what’s the framework he would use to make decisions in the future,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of Color Of Change, a progressive civil rights organization.

“He will have to help the voting public, and black people in particular, understand what he will do in really clear ways to deal with racial inequality in our country in all the ways that it manifests itself,” Robinson added.

“That’s going to be the test.”

Biden’s previous presidential campaigns – in the 1988 and 2008 election cycles – ended before he even reached the South Carolina primary.

This time, he is an early frontrunner buoyed by two terms as Barack Obama’s vice-president. With the exception of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Biden is perhaps the only candidate in the Democratic field who needs no introduction.

Early polls put Biden firmly in the top tier of candidates, both nationally and across key swing states.

Biden hasn’t shied away from leaning into his close rapport with the former president.

In his first major campaign swing across the country, Biden has touted the Obama administration’s record on the economy and healthcare and dubbed himself a “proud Obama-Biden Democrat”.

His campaign even released a video featuring Obama praising Biden from the White House podium in 2017.

“Joe’s candid counsel has made me a better president,” Obama said. “He could not have been a more effective partner in the progress that we’ve made.”

“The best part is he’s nowhere close to finished,” Obama concluded.

Barack Obama awards Joe Biden the presidential medal of freedom at the White House in Washington DC on 12 January 2017.Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Obama awarded Biden the presidential medal of freedom just before leaving office. Biden has said he told Obama not to endorse him in the 2020 primary.

Tiffany Cross, co-founder and managing editor of the Beat DC, said the video could nevertheless easily be interpreted as an endorsement.

“It’s a huge advantage. There’s a healthy sense of Obama nostalgia that I think Biden can capitalize on,” said Cross, whose website spotlights the intersection of politics, policy and people of color.

Cross still cautioned that Obama’s popularity alone would not be enough.

“At the same time, in South Carolina and beyond, there are some younger voters who will judge Joe Biden for things he said or did in years past through the lens of 2019,” she said.

“There are some people who may be a little more ‘woke’ than they are nostalgic, and they may hold him to a different standard.”

Biden has already been forced to contend with his role in overseeing sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during the confirmation battle for the US supreme court in 1991.

Biden chaired the all-male, all-white Senate judiciary panel that interrogated the claims brought by Thomas’ accuser, Anita Hill.

Although Biden voted against Thomas’ confirmation, he did not give full consideration at the time to other witnesses whose testimony appeared to corroborate Hill’s allegations. He also did not allow affidavits from experts in sexual harassment.

Biden, who reached out to Hill after 28 years to try to make amends in a phone call last month, now says he takes “full responsibility” for his role in the hearings.

Other issues have similarly come back to haunt him, such as his fight against busing to desegregate schools 40-plus years ago.

Related: Joe Biden's non-apology to Anita Hill casts long shadow over 2020 run

Letters published by CNN last month revealed Biden, who was 34 at the time, sought support from some of the Senate’s most ardent segregationists.

Biden, serving his first term in the Senate, said he favored desegregation but did not believe busing would achieve racial equality.

“I do not buy the concept, popular in the 60s, which said: ‘We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead,’” Biden told a local newspaper in his home state of Delaware at the time. “In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back. I don’t buy that.”

Despite Biden’s mixed record on the issues, polling shows goodwill toward the former vice-president extends to voters of color.

A survey following Biden’s announcement showed he enjoys support from 50% of non-white Democratic primary voters. His ties to South Carolina, where he also leads in the polls, go back decades.

“He’s not the only candidate with a legislative record to defend and at the end of the day,” said Cross.

“The black voting base is one of the most reliable voting bases in the Democratic party. So I think even if people don’t fall in love, given what we’re seeing now, they’ll fall in line.”