Black Men and Biden: What’s Going On?
Black men are declaring allegiance to Trump and/or stating they won’t be voting for Biden.
I’m not writing this to blame Black men for the election results if Biden loses the election this year. Young voters, Black voters in general, Hispanic voters, and people of color are all groups saying they won’t be supporting Biden in November’s election for various reasons despite voting for him in 2020. These include young people of all races who don’t see him as progressive enough, Black people who don’t believe he has improved the lives of Black Americans, Hispanic voters who don’t like the way he handled the pandemic, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who don’t like the way he handled the Maui wildfires, and the MENA population who don’t like his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
It’s widely believed that Black people are easily influenced — particularly by celebrities. While this isn’t necessarily true, there has been a concerted effort by the Republican Party lately to woo Black male voters, and in some ways, it’s been successful. Black men, in general, are more likely to lean conservative than Black women. The Republican Party is well aware they won’t be able to convince too many Black women to turn to the Republican Party, so they have set their sights on Black men.
One of their avenues has been to use Black male celebrities — particularly rappers. Donald Trump, for instance, has gotten the endorsement or approval of Snoop Dogg, Killer Mike, Kodak Black, Kanye West, 50 Cent, YG, Sexyy Red, and Ice Cube.
There are two groups of Black men who are willing to not vote for Biden: those who will vote for Trump and those who won’t vote at all. Those who won’t vote at all will be the most likely to keep Biden out of the White House for a second term.
As the Washington Post reports,
Trump won the support of just 8 percent of Black voters in the 2020 election and 6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center’s validated voter study.
Black men have stated many grievances with President Biden and the Democratic Party that many Black people can agree with. There’s inflation that’s making it difficult to purchase anything. There’s the fact that the party centers Black communities (showing up at churches, front doors, and cookouts) during the campaign trail, only to not show up again until about four years later looking for votes. There’s also the belief that the party literally gets saved by the Black vote but focuses its best efforts on other groups like Asians and Hispanics and ignores problems at home while sending billions of dollars overseas to countries like Ukraine and Israel.
There’s also Biden’s legacy before his time as Vice President to President Obama.
Joe Biden sponsored The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which was signed into law by President Clinton. Commonly known as Joe Biden’s Crime Bill, it set the stage for over-policing (and the police brutality that accompanies it), something that has been proven not to reduce crime, and the mass incarceration of Black people. Also, there’s the fact that Kamala Harris, his Vice President, was also a prosecutor at one point.
As The Guardian reported, when Biden was asked during a town hall meeting in 2020 if he thought his crime bill was a mistake he responded yes, it was.
He went on to say —
“But here’s where the mistake came,” he said. “The mistake came in terms of what the states did locally.”
In an eight-minute response, Biden said the bill passed with the support of the Congressional Black Caucus and Black mayors around the country. He noted that it contained the landmark Violence Against Women Act and an assault weapons ban.
Conditions were different now, he said, as activists demand an overhaul of policing and incarceration policies in response to police killings of Black Americans.
“Things have changed drastically,” Biden said.
Listen to what rapper Killer Mike had to say about Biden’s Crime Bill during an interview with Bill Maher. When asked by Maher, “but you can’t get yourself to say vote for Biden over Trump?”
“Can he get himself to apologize for the Crime Bill, can he get his head out his a**, and say Black people, you are Black regardless; I need you to tell me what I need to do, can he pick a coalition of former people affected by drug laws, street games, recidivism, and crime and say I need you as a board to advise me how to fix federal prisons?”
“If he can do that, absolutely I can, so my challenge is out.”
In a feature for the Washington Post on why Black men are not supporting Biden, Bryan Killian-Bey, of Michigan said —
“I’m torn between voting and not voting at all. A lot of us are,” Killian-Bey said. “I don’t think Biden is it, but I don’t see what else is out there.” He wants Democrats to “give me substance. You can’t dangle carrots and assume we’ll vote for you just because we don’t like the other platform.”
The facts do not support the idea that Trump is the better option to improve the lives of Black Americans. For instance, “Biden has made more significant gains in reducing unemployment and creating jobs in his first three years than Trump did, including for Black Americans.”
The administration says Biden has delivered for Black voters in numerous ways. The Black unemployment rate hit an all-time low of 4.7 percent last spring. The administration has created programs to boost historically Black colleges and Black-owned small businesses. The Justice Department has launched investigations into law enforcement agencies for systemic misconduct. Biden has diversified the courts in unprecedented ways.
The Biden campaign is spending millions of dollars and pulling out all the stops to remind the Black community what Biden has accomplished because Joe Biden needs the Black vote to win. Unequivocally. Biden initially made the mistake of spending his energy trying to woo the white working-class, who in return, pulled further and further away from him. Instead, he should have focused the majority of his efforts on keeping the demographic satisfied who ensured his win — and that’s Black Americans. As Politico reports, not only is the Democratic Party (including Biden) losing the white-working class, they’re losing the working-class of all races.
Ever since 2016, we’ve wondered whether the working-class voter coalition that elected Trump was a one-off that came together just by force of his personality, or whether it would prove more durable. And evidence is now mounting — through survey data of Americans, precinct results and voter registration records — that this coalition will not only endure but will expand and lend its support to Republicans other than Trump, like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
During election year, as USA Today reports, “in a Pew Research Center survey released in mid-January, nearly half of Black voters approved of Biden’s job performance and about the same number disapproved.”
On another note, some Black men are drawn to Trump because of his wealth and the white male privilege he enjoys because of the patriarchy. There was a time when Trump was regularly shouted out in rap songs and in hip-hop culture. Trump is also a s*it-talker, and that resonates with the culture.
There is a demographic of Black men who want money and power, and they care more about that than who was appointed to the Supreme Court.
In any case, civil rights measures often resonate less with Black men, who may view economic prosperity as a more realistic way to get ahead, said Theodore Johnson, a scholar on race and electoral politics at the think tank New America.
Charles Blow from the New York Times calls it aspirational patriarchy. He uses an answer Trymaine Lee from MSNBC got when talking to Black male voters in South Carolina as an example.
A Black man said about Trump —
“A lot of people admire the persona and they want to be him, you know, they want to enjoy the perks that he has. He seems to always be able to circumvent the rules.”
While I understand all of this, aside from the aspirational patriarchy nonsense, none of it is as important as making sure Trump isn’t elected for a second term.
Let me repeat — none of it is as important as making sure Trump isn’t elected for a second term.
Why?
If Trump is elected, American democracy has failed. None of this will matter because the majority of us will have no other choice than to go into survival mode.
Trump is a white supremacist who caters to other white supremacists, but he cares about no one but himself.
He’s a dictator in waiting.
The lives of Black people will be unbelievably worse under Trump, and this is not fear-mongering.
Look at what’s going on around us…
The Black community needs Black men to vote in favor of themselves and the Black community.
Call it voting for the lesser of the two evils — it doesn’t matter.
This is the most important election of our lifetimes…
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