Joe Biden made history twice when he was interviewed by Breakfast Club cohost Charlamagne tha God in late May. He likely became the first white man since the end of Jim Crow to challenge a black man’s blackness without losing his teeth. He also set the record for the most uses of “man” in one conversation, with the previous record being set in 1977 by a leisure-suited pimp on the corner of 42nd and Broadway.

Biden would have been real cool on that corner in the ’70s, but this performance reeked of pandering. Sadly, in the national electoral politics of 2020, pandering has become “the new black.”

With Vermont senator Bernie Sanders exiting the race weeks before that interview, Biden was the assured Democratic Party nominee. Charlamagne was not in the mood for celebration, however, and he pressed the former vice president about what he would do specifically to address black voters’ concerns. Biden, for his part, wasn’t in the mood for defending his commitments to blacks. “You’ve got more questions?” Biden quipped. “Well, I’ll tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black . . . take a look at my record, man!”