There was quite a bit of talk about the black vote and the black community at Wednesday night’s presidential debate.

Maybe that’s because they were in Atlanta, the majority-black capital of the South. But it is also, I am sure, because black voters have played and continue to play a crucial role in who gets the Democratic nomination.

Joe Biden’s front-runner status — and very likely his entire candidacy — is being kept aloft by black voters. Pete Buttigieg, who has surged in the first two states — Iowa and New Hampshire — is hitting a wall in the third state, South Carolina, where a majority of Democratic primary voters are black.

Furthermore, the three African-American candidates — Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, and former Gov. Deval Patrick — aren’t the favorite candidates of African-American voters. At the same time, the more progressive Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have failed to lure significant black support with their views of structural change.