Black men voting: Here’s what they say influences their votes in 2024 – Essence

If you’ve got opened your news feed or turned on almost any news program on TV currently, you’ve got probably seen headlines about how poorly Kamala Harris is doing with Black male voters. But is Kamala Harris’s position towards Black people really dire?

Khalil Thompson, executive director of Win With Black Men, says no. “We know that the biggest voting bloc supporting progressives and Democrats is black women. Right behind them are black men. In 2020, 95% Black women voted for Joe Bidenwhile 87% of black men did. Research by the Black Voter Project, which examines the political preferences and behaviors of the black community, also supports Thompson’s position. The study found that when Harris entered the presidential raceFavorable view of Black men Harris’s rose to 61% compared with 63% for black women.

Thompson says black men are motivated by the prospect of filling the position with essentially the most qualified person, and he hasn’t seen misogyny play a significant role in whether black men support Harris or not. “The turnaround after President Biden decided to take a step back and Vice President Kamala Harris decided to run was obvious to many of us. How could we not support the most qualified candidate in the room and truly strengthen our communities?” This support for Harris was record-breaking: The first “Win with Black Men” call after she entered the presidential race raised $1.3 million from roughly 17,000 Black donors in just a number of hours.

But polls also show that younger black men are watching Donald Trump more closely. Recent research shows that about one in 4 black men under 50 plan to vote for Donald Trump NAACP study. 28-yr-old Diante Johnson, president Federation of Black Conservativesthat is one example. As a lifelong Republican, Johnson has all the time felt more in line with traditional Republican values ​​akin to limited government, free speech and the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and he gave several the reason why he thinks Trump appeals to another Black men.

“Donald Trump is a humbug. He’s the kind of person who says it like it is, and I think that’s what attracted them to him. Johnson said Black men are also attracted to Trump because they feel alienated by progressive positions on issues such as LGBT identity. “Black men don’t like it when their young boys are told they don’t have to conform to their gender.”

Moreover, Johnson believes that Trump’s keeping his guarantees earned him the respect of some black voters: “I feel he was the very best president for black people, purely because he did the whole lot he promised. What we have seen with criminal justice reform, my generation…we’ve not seen anything on this scale before. Black Americans were thriving. We didn’t must work three jobs…the economy was good in our communities.” He also cites increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and greater school selection as tangible ways Trump has helped Black people.

These actions stand in stark contrast to what he says is generational inaction by the Democratic Party. “As a Black community, we have been voting for the Democratic Party for years and we have seen no change in our communities,” Johnson said.

However, several of the achievements he mentioned have been surpassed by the Biden administration. For example, while Trump did provide $255 million annually for HBCUs under the FUTURE Act, Biden’s American Rescue Plan provided $2.7 billion to an HBCU. While Black unemployment under Trump fell to five.3% for 2 months in 2019, in April 2023 under Biden, Black unemployment fell to an all-time low of 4.8%. Biden also oversaw the longest stint Black unemployment at 6% or lower (17 months).

Although Trump’s bipartisan criminal justice reform, First Step Actreducing federal prison sentences by eliminating sentencing disparities for crack and powder crimes. He lowered mandatory minimums and allowed early release for good behavior through “good time credits”. Biden A blueprint for a safer America went further by eliminating crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparities and investing $5 billion in community violence intervention (CVI) programs over ten years. These programs, which use social messaging to scale back gun violence, have shown success rates of as much as 60%. Biden American Rescue Plan also allocated $1.6 billion for workforce development and job training for people in prison.

When ESSENCE pointed to the Biden administration’s accomplishments, akin to increased funding for HBCUs, Johnson acknowledged that but credited the Republican Party for the progress. “I guarantee you that if the Republican Party hadn’t given them the space to do it, they wouldn’t have done it.”

Christopher Towler, director of the Black Voter Project, co-founding father of Black Insights Research and associate professor of political science at Sacramento State University, says that while the core demographic of black GOP-affiliated voters all the time looks favorably on Republicans is 9-10%. in administrations, one other seven to eight percent of Black men are eligible to vote, but they typically don’t achieve this attributable to an absence of political awareness and are subsequently more vulnerable to “right-wing talking points.”

He explained: “When you ask people what the parties have done for them or what they think the parties will do for them, low-propensity voters are not very optimistic… They don’t have political knowledge, so they don’t have the kind of deep understanding of political nuances to understand how way the Affordable Care Act can help the black community. But when you ask them about Trump, they make that connection much more easily.”

This is people’s way of claiming they will vote for Trump due to pandemic stimulus checks, Thompson said. “People talk about the check he signed, the check, great, but what’s missing from the equation is that Congress, which means Kamala Harris, had to pass the money in order for the check to be signed.”

This is crucial because recent research shows that the economy ranks high on the problems that concern black men, just because it does for black women Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll But surprisingly, this shouldn’t be a determining factor in who people vote for, and even whether they will vote in any respect. “Tests what we’ve been doing over the last three to four years has specifically shown that calling attention to the threat posed by Trump, or MAGA, or even the Supreme Court, other political institutions, organizations, policies, particularly highlighting the way that they threaten the Black community, actually encourages people to vote and is particularly effective for low-propensity black voters,” Towler said. Exit polls z ABC and NY Times support this survey: 68% of people that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 said they voted against Donald Trump.

Although problems akin to abortion rightsthat rank high for each black men and girls are necessary to black people, a voter with a low propensity to vote is more more likely to vote when the difficulty is presented as a social problem or a right vulnerable to loss, she found Towler. “It is much easier for people to understand how the rights that they have worked for, that their group has worked for generations, can be taken away than it is to understand the process of rebuilding or changing institutions towards new rights… it is very easy to understand this to understand that abortion it will simply disappear over time unless we take federal action to protect it.”

Thompson agrees that abortion is significant for men, too. “I believe there are some serious problems with our healthcare system and why I think more brothers are concerned about this.” Citing men’s concerns about their partners and youngsters, Thompson continued: “Reproductive care and a woman’s right to choose is not just a woman’s issue.”

Although Thompson and Johnson are on opposite sides of the political aisle, they each agree that what Black men want is to be heard. “Black men are at the underside in the case of educational attainment, you recognize, college degrees, even whenever you keep in mind reading and math proficiency and job wages. They are at the highest of the list of individuals in prison there… As a Black man, it hurts me to even give it some thought. And we’ve not had that conversation,” Johnson said.

Kamala Harris said she was listening Black, masculine concerns and in response introduced a targeted “Black Men Opportunity Program.” She lists five ways she would address issues that black men in particular face.

The plan would offer moral loans of as much as $20,000 to Black entrepreneurs, create training programs that may help Black men secure well-paying jobs, and support a regulatory framework for Black cryptocurrency investors. It would also launch a National Health Equity Initiative to deal with health issues that disproportionately affect black men, akin to prostate cancer, diabetes and sickle cell disease, and would seek to legalize recreational marijuana, giving black men opportunities in the industry.

Trump has yet to release any plans for Black people, or Black men in particular.

On November 5, when Thompson supports Harris, he’ll encourage black men to vote for their preferred candidate: “If you’re going to vote, that’s a win for me. Of course, I would love it if you voted for the candidate I believe in and who has the best chance of changing our community for the better, but I want you to participate in the voting process.”

He also wants black men to be well-informed when making that selection. “We need to make sure that Black men who are informed get the right information, share it with their family members, share it with barbershops and continue to do so,” Thompson said.