Today, Joe Biden told a primarily Black audience, if you don’t vote for him #YouAintBlack , ironically, it is his own campaign staff that “ain’t Black”.

Although Biden’s campaign is propelled by Black voters and Black voters make up around 21 percent of the Democratic Party, approximately only 14 percent of Joe Biden’s senior staff is Black.

Furthermore, Biden’s inner circle of campaign staff is notoriously exclusively White. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/12/19/biden-2020-campaign-president-advisers-087410.

The lack of racial representation here is appalling.

The underrepresentation of racially diverse perspectives in Biden’s inner sanctum signal a campaign that does not think critically about race and how to appropriately include marginalized voices into policymaking.

To be sure, calculating the seniority and influence of staffers is not clear-cut. Biden does have a number of people of color working on his campaign, however, they also often work in racialized and gendered roles i.e. minority outreach.

Racial representation among political staffers is important. Political staffers are critical backstage actors who develop and enact policy agendas.

In my scholarly work, I demonstrate how Black staffers facilitate inclusive policymaking- helping White political officials to think about race when they think race does not matter.

Biden has proposed “Lift Every Voice” as his plan for Black America, however, before Black voters cast their ballot for him they should really be asking which voices he regularly listens to (and they should not be chastised for doing so).