There’s a reason why Black women have been so enthusiastically highlighting our own contributions in the presidential race netting President-elect Joe Biden the election, and it’s not only that his running mate, Kamala Harris, is slated to make history as the first Black and South Asian American woman to serve as vice president. Granted, the new historical precedence is a large part of the reason why, but that’s hardly the whole story. And if you’re thinking along the lines of any kind of collective arrogance, just stop.
During what should have been our moment in the sun, considering 91% of Black women voted for Biden to help solidify his lead over soon-to-be-former President Donald Trump, the media narratives that instead took shape circled in on a minority of Black men who voted for Trump. The unfair focus on that minority again left Black activists and political commentators in a position they are too frequently forced into: having to defend the few Black men who have never represented the whole.
Exit polls show 80% of Black men supported Biden, a drop from the 82% who supported Hilary Clinton in her 2016 run for the presidency, NBC News reported. That’s a drop of two percentage points. The article, however, made no mention of the 55% of white women or 58% of white men who supported Trump, according to the organization’s own exit poll data. Just maybe the close margins in places like Georgia, where Biden leads by just more than 10,350 votes, were less about the 18% of Black men or the 36% of Latino men who voted for Trump and more about the over half of white voters who supported him.
HuffPost writer Torraine Walker tweeted on Nov. 2: “The #BlameBlackMen hashtag parodied America's ritual of making Black men the scapegoat for its social ills. What's disturbing about this in election year 2020 is seeing members of the so-called ‘talented tenth’ volunteer to hold the rope.” Walker wrote for Context Media Group that “a psychological hierarchy among Black people” can silence those who didn’t go to “the right schools” or join “the right fraternity or sorority.”
“If you’re not part of that group, you are not qualified to speak,” he wrote. “The other element in this mix,” Walker added, “is the white liberal who-in their mind-is so sympathetic to the suffering of Black people that they go out of their way to show Black people how much they sympathize.
“The problem is many white people with liberal leanings have patronizing attitudes towards Black people and cast themselves in the role of white saviour, taking on the burden of uplifting the ignorant black masses without bothering to consult them about what they need.”
Author and political analyst Tiffany Cross told MSNBC we’re not even at a point as a society where we have time to dissect how a minority of Black men voted. She said we have to first acknowledge that a majority of white voters cast ballots affirming they were “at least OK with some form of white supremacy.” “So until that side of the divide gets their you know what together,” she said, “I’m not really interested in leading a conversation about what Black voters didn’t do, about what Latino men didn’t do.”
She went on to admit that there are Black men who feel ignored by the Democratic Party and that not enough media outlets are highlighting their perspectives. “Immediately after Black voters saved this country from itself, the conversation went to ‘but guys wait, we need to try to understand the other side, or guys I hope this is a lesson for the Democrats, that they can’t go too far left,’” Cross said. “Yet again what a slap in the face to us after everything Black people did in this country.”
Political activist Cornel West told the political podcast The Dig that everyone who voted for Trump isn’t a racist. Some are looking for an alternative to “a rotten neoliberal status quo.” The Democratic establishment has "very very little interest in speaking to the needs of poor people and working people," West said. West also said “toxic masculinity” cuts across racial and social classes. “John Wayne didn’t just have white fans,” he said.
RELATED: John Wayne Airport could get new name that doesn't celebrate a homophobic white supremacist
Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke University professor on race and culture, told ABC-affiliated WTVD the Trump campaign targeted Black men specifically with similar promises of investment in Black capitalism as ones Richard Nixon’s campaign made to Black people in the 1960s. “And given the way that Trump has circulated, you know, in culture even prior to his presidency as this kind of emblem of power, and independent wealth, and patriarchy, it's not surprising that so many hip-hop artists like a Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, and other figures were drawn to him," Neal said.
CNN political commentator Angela Rye named Democratic strategists some of the biggest Election Day losers for their advice that the Democratic Party should be chasing white women who voted for Trump in 2016. “So it turns out that, you know, there’s another pandemic, and that is our abiding trust in a majority of white women to do the right thing when that is against the interest of their white sons, their white brothers, their white fathers, their white husbands,” she said.
Activist Tamika Mallory shared this statement on Instagram: "For the record: While I'm disappointed by the percentage of Black men who voted for Trump, the majority of those who voted DID NOT. Yes, Black women always carry the bag. However, we should not ignore those men who chose to stand with their wives, daughters, mothers and sisters. Salute to Black men who chose the whole community!”