Monday and Tuesday marked 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, which killed more than 300 people and left nearly 10,000 homeless. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden traveled to Tulsa to mark the occasion, saying: “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence. While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing.”

Biden was there in part to use the presidency to keep wiping away that silence. “We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened,” he said. “We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s what great nations do: They come to terms with their dark sides.”

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Biden also used the occasion to address what his administration is doing to promote racial equity and close the yawning racial wealth gap: White households had average wealth of $189,100 in 2019, while Black households averaged $24,100. During the flight to Tulsa, White House Principle Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed reporters to American Rescue Plan funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In his remarks, Biden focused on newly announced efforts to expand Black people’s access to homeownership and small business ownership, including a planned 50% growth in federal contracting with small disadvantaged businesses and steps to crack down on housing discrimination. The White House’s plans on housing discrimination include an effort aimed at fighting discrimination in home appraisals after several stories of cases where Black homeowners increased their home appraisals by having white friends take their place during the appraisal process.

But the steps Biden announced on reducing the racial wealth gap fall short of what’s needed, in particular by leaving out the critical issue of student loan debt. Despite White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain saying in early April that Biden had requested a memo on his options for student loan forgiveness, which might come “in the next few weeks,” there’s no word on that as of early June. And student debt disproportionately burdens Black students.

“Components of the plan are encouraging, but it fails to address the student loan debt crisis that disproportionately affects African Americans,” Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, said in a statement on Biden’s latest announcements. “You cannot begin to address the racial wealth gap without addressing the student loan debt crisis.”

In his speech, Biden also addressed the importance of voting rights, calling it a “sacred right” that is “under assault with incredible intensity like I’ve never seen,” and saying he had put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of promoting that push. But he noted the difficulty of getting congressional action on voting rights, thanks to “a tie in the Senate with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.” Fact checkers will doubtless note that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema do not technically vote more often with Republicans than with Democrats—but by their refusal to take action to end or amend Republican filibuster power, they hand Republicans the ability to block basically anything they choose. In that Manchin and Sinema effectively if not technically side with Republicans again and again, even as they lament the results of their own actions.

Biden’s visit to Tulsa therefore effectively highlighted the nation’s horrifying history of racist violence, taking steps forward in the history of white presidents addressing racism head on—but also reminding us of how far short current efforts continue to fall, and how Democrats, including Biden himself, are not fully going to the mat to fight for racial equity.