(Reuters) – Former Vice President Joe Biden is facing fresh calls to choose a black woman as his running mate amid rising racial tensions after this week’s videotaped death of an unarmed black man as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election, has promised to pick a woman. Several black candidates are on the short list, including Senator Kamala Harris, former Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams and Representative Val Demings.
The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which has led to raging protests there and elsewhere, is the latest in a string of U.S. incidents involving unarmed black men, including the shooting of a jogger in Georgia in February and numerous high-profile police killings that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some African-American leaders and activists said a black woman on the ticket would help demonstrate to black voters, a crucial component of the Democratic base, that Biden is committed to addressing issues like criminal justice reform and police misconduct.
Several said choosing Senator Amy Klobuchar, a former White House rival also being vetted by Biden’s team, would have the opposite effect.
Klobuchar, a white moderate like Biden, previously served as the top prosecutor for the Minnesota county that includes Minneapolis, where Floyd died on Monday after a white officer knelt on his neck for s