Every election cycle, I hear (and voice) complaints about Democratic leadership's utter failure to connect with Black voters. They often don't spend the time building relationship with us before they need our votes. It feels like they parachute into our churches, cultural events, and doorsteps full of ideas about what we need and how they are the answer. When they still fail to ignite a fire in our bellies, they resort to scare tactics ("Would you want THEM in power??") or shaming ("How can you be so complacent? Your ancestors didn't die for you to not care. If we lose by a narrow margin, it will be YOUR fault!).
Often the answer thrust in our faces is some great white hope we should be thankful for, impressed at the mildest acknowledgement of the racism we face each day despite having no actual plans to mitigate it.
This Election Day, I thought a lot about Randall Pearson, my favorite character on NBC’s weekly family tearjerker This Is Us. Randall is a trans-racially adopted black man, with a sometimes crippling anxiety disorder and a strong drive to be the solution-finder and peacemaker. Despite his own anxiety, he is often the calming presence amidst explosive family dynamics with his siblings. Maybe this is why Randall makes the odd decision to run for city council this season—because he’s pissed at the current council member in a Philadelphia community he is not from, familiar with, or invited to. This bravado is challenging my love for him, and despite the fact that he’s a Black man, Randall’s campaign perfectly parallels my frustrations with Democrats and their approach to voters of color.
Randall is a wealthy man from a wealthy suburb, with only the tiniest connection to the low-income, under-resourced community he wants to save from themselves. Despite all his best intentions, Randall cannot connect to this Black community because he sees only them as a sum total of problems, pathologies, and potential votes. When he can’t earn their favor—not even with free barbecue—he tries to shame them into supporting him. It’s no shock that, like in real life, this isn’t a winning strategy.
Randall visits a community center in the neighborhood that his birth father called home. He can’t see past the building’s blemishes while he’s there. He cannot sit in the relationships people have formed as their children play in the center. Later, when addressing residents about why he’s chosen to run, Randall has nothing positive to say about their hometown. He sees blight, disinvestment, and calls them complacent right to their faces. They angrily leave him blustering to himself, and he’s confused about why they don’t want to do anything to “fix” their community.
Check out the first 10 seconds of the video to see Randall blow it . Click Continue Reading to see how Stacey Abrams gets it so right.
It’s no wonder Randall, like so many Dems, can’t succeed in connecting with communities of color. But there’s a better way.
I was in Georgia this week with my Daily Kos colleagues Kelly Macias and Jen Hayden. We were lucky to share space and energy with staff and volunteers of the historic Stacey Abrams campaign. Stacey Abrams is poised to become Georgia’s first black governor and the country’s first black woman governor. Despite early concerns about whether a Black woman with very progressive politics could be electable in the state of Georgia, Stacey has mounted a campaign that’s energizing Georgia Democrats and inspired young people and new voters to not only vote for her, but dedicate countless hours to making sure everyone else voted for her, too.
That effort did not end on Tuesday night. Stacey Abrams' opponent, Republican vote stealer Brian Kemp, is ahead in the vote count and has already claimed victory. But as the votes continue to be counted--despite Herculean voter suppression from Kemp's Secretary of State office—Abrams is closing the gap. Paid staffers and volunteers are STILL giving it their all. And it's not just because they're afraid of turning the state over to Kemp. Instead, they are DETERMINED to be led by Abrams.
Like Randall, they may have things in common with us, but they don't share our formative life experiences, so the attempts at relating fall flat. And it's now a part of the Democratic narrative that Black women, loyal Democratic voters, are the backbone of the party. But more often than not, people mean that we can be trusted to vote for a Democrat, any Democrat, and save us from yet another Republican wingnut. They rarely mean it's our turn to lead.
Stacey Abrams' gubernatorial campaign is a shining example of the kind of candidate that excites and inspires young voters, new voters, women voters, voters of color. During our time in Georgia covering the campaign, not a single person we spoke to talked about voting for Stacey out of obligation or to keep Kemp out. Instead:
Abrams doesn't have to imagine what it's like to be in loads of personal debt. She's lived it. She doesn't have to read up on the impacts of unjust criminal justice and mass incarceration on families and communities. That's part of her story. But it's not her whole story, nor does it fully define her. She also has joy and talent and hobbies (hello, romance novelist!). She also has history and decades of skin in the game.
Where Randall Pearson misstepped is where Democrats have misstepped for years. He looked at the disinvestment in his father's community and thought he had the mind, determination, and resources to save the people. When they didn't want to be saved by him, he got angry and confused. He also stopped trying in the Black community and moved on to Koreatown. Thankfully, a brave young man there confronted him on how shallow and tokenizing his outreach efforts had been, and asked for a leadership position in the campaign. Randall was smart enough to give it to him.
That's what Stacey Abrams has done. She has worked for years to build the political power of marginalized people in Georgia. One way was by founding the New Georgia Project with a goal of getting 800,000 Georgians registered to vote and feeling empowered to be civic actors and leaders in their own communities. And because she saw their untapped power, they recognized her strength.
Another way her campaign recognized the power of historically marginalized communities was through art and culture. We attended the Politi-Art Show hosted by the New Georgia Project, now led by Executive Director Nse Ufot. What we witnessed there was a room full of provocative, beautiful art created and curated by young women of color, and dozens of young people engaging with them. The pieces spoke to many of the concerns that motivate us to vote: immigration, mass incarceration, police violence, the surveillance state, and again and again, Black love and power. It was such a joyous cultural celebration AND political education space, that I couldn't help myself and walked away with an arresting photo collage.
Once again, this campaign looked to the culture of Black and brown people as an abundant resource. It uplifted their voices, and remembered their beauty.
No matter what the final vote count yields, we should all be taking copious notes on the Abrams campaign. This is how you build power, connection, leaders, and voters. This is how you engage a community that feels, year after year, like an afterthought. This is how you abandon lip service about trusting Black women, and actually trust Black women to lead our movements. This is us, and this is how you do right by us.