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Biden: Latinos Have Diverse Attitudes, 'Unlike the African-American Community'

August 6, 2020

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said Tuesday there is no political diversity in the African-American community.

"What you all know but most people don't know, unlike the African-American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things," Biden told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro in an interview that aired Thursday.

"You go to Florida, you find a very different attitude about immigration in certain places than you do in Arizona. So it's a very diverse community," he added as he explained his desire to engage with Cuba.

His answer was reminiscent of one he gave in a May interview when he remarked that any black voter who does not support him isn't actually black.

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black," Biden said during an appearance on the radio show The Breakfast ClubHe later walked the comment back and said he would never take black votes for granted.

Biden made his latest comments in an interview at the 2020 National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists Joint Virtual Convention. Those comments come in the midst of speculation about his running mate selection, which he has promised will be a woman and which many prominent Democrats have said should be a woman of color.

One of the leading possibilities to be his running mate, Rep. Karen Bass (D., Calif.), apologized for her past praise of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Her past sympathies for Castro raised concerns about alienating Cuban-American voters in the key swing state of Florida were she on the Democratic ticket.