I’ve seen a spate of news articles recently about “the black vote” and why such and such a white candidate is working hard to garner it: Polls are being parsed, and we’re getting a running count of exactly how many black people could be seen at such and such a rally, which the “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” thing has morphed into these days. When there is clearly blinding whiteness at a candidate’s event, in an area with very significant black populations, or at a black church or historically black college or university (HBCU), we then get a head count of how many black speakers took the podium, or, if there weren’t enough, we are reminded forcefully that “two people of color spoke and endorsed X.”
After having had to stomach ad nauseam an endless stream of punditry about and journalistic obsession with economic-anxiety-driven (my read: racist) white Trump voters, whom we are told daily that Democrats need to “win back” and appeal to to win in 2020, I suppose I should welcome a shift in focus— but I don’t.
Prognosticators of all races abound. “Parachuting politicians” syndrome is in full swing, with hard-working campaign staffs figuring out which newly hatched plan, or speech, or walkabout shaking hands with black people will ensure our casting a ballot their way.
Hello, white candidates ...
Why you working hard now? Where have some of you been over the last few decades? We don’t know you. Your face on a poster with somebody black we know, or somebody black we respect, ain’t an automatic ticket to winning the black-voter lottery.
You need our votes. But we wonder, do you really care about us?
I wonder whether many of you who are on Twitter follow some of the regular black folks and sub-thread interactions with white allies. I’m not talking about the big-time black pundits and personalities with mass followings. Just regular Democratic voters who talk with each other and offer much shade on events of the day. We talk about and “see” white crowds. We see white candidate ventures into black spaces. We look for diversity. We don’t always find it.
Here are some examples, from the Sanders, Warren, Biden, and Buttigieg campaigns:
Philly is my second hometown. My mom’s family has lived there since before I was born. I was just there, for Netroots Nation, this last summer, after which I wrote about Black Philadelphia. Frankly, I would have never guessed that this Buttigieg event was being held there.
Elizabeth Warren’s awkward foray into a black barbershop, right on the heels of Kamala Harris’ barbershop convo, drew raised eyebrows—and hilarity.
I have to admit, the Queensbridge image below really bothered me, simply because I have friends who live there, and friends who grew up there. For you non-New Yorkers, Queensbridge Houses are the largest public housing project in the Western Hemisphere since the Cabrini-Green Homes in Chicago were demolished.
Queensbridge, or “The Bridge,” as it is often dubbed, or just “QB,” has specific cultural meaning to the rap generation, with a long list of artists who call it home.
In recent years candidates have added HBCUs to their campaign calendars in efforts to garner younger black voters. The results have in some cases been visually jarring, if you are looking for black students.
The Sanders campaign did better at Bennett College, an all-female HBCU.
Not so well at She the People:
Here’s Biden:
And a different view:
While my focus here has been on Democratic candidates, don’t forget that Republicans will attempt to peel off a few more black voters. Donald Trump has now inserted himself into an HBCU event by accepting an invitation from Benedict College.
Benedict College will play host to a criminal-justice forum this weekend, and Donald Trump is slated to be one of the speakers at the HBCU.
Located in election 2020 battleground South Carolina, Benedict is hosting the 2019 Second Step Presidential Justice Forum from Friday to Sunday, and Trump is set to headline Friday’s one-day symposium, “The Conservative Case for Criminal Justice Reform,” according to the college.
On Saturday and Sunday, Democrats vying to win the Oval Office in next year’s presidential elections are set to appear on the campus for a “Democratic Candidates Forum.”
I’m filing this story prior to this event—will update in today’s comments. I will be curious to see how many candidates respond to this appeal to boycott from the state’s Democratic Black Caucus.
The Democratic Black Caucus of South Carolina stands vehemently and unalterably opposed to the appearance of President Donald Trump as the keynote speaker at the Criminal Justice Forum to be held at Benedict College, a historically black institution, on Friday, October 25, 2019.
After careful consideration, we have concluded that this event is yet another attempt by the Republican party to manipulate black voters and is a manifest insult to our collective intelligence. President Trump is perhaps the most corrupt, racist person to ever hold the highest office in America. He has continually demeaned our people and used every divisive tactic to give support and comfort to those whose intention it is to turn the clock back to the days of segregation and Jim Crow.
For this president to now be heralded as the champion of criminal justice reform on the strength of the passage of the First Step Act is laughable at best. The Act made no significant change in the rate of mass incarceration and the vast majority of those released had already served decades many for nonviolent drug offenses.
We also call for presidential candidates to boycott the event for the following reason. The 20/20 Bipartisan Criminal Justice Center is a Republican-led organization despite its claim to be bipartisan. Most of the presidential candidates declined to appear on Fox News for similar reasons. We encourage presidential candidates who are truly desirous of securing support from African American voters in South Carolina to reconsider.
The schedule:
As the race for the nomination begins to tighten in the next few months, I expect to see increased jockeying for key Democratic black votes. Kamala Harris, fighting media erasure and misogynoir, continues pursuing her ground game.
My critique today is not about Harris, or Booker, or Castro—since none of the three major candidates of color are viewed as uncomfortable in black spaces. How that translates into votes is a different story.
I side-eye and eye-roll some black pundits and blue-checkmark Twitterers with large followings who get automatic promotion to the ranks of “speaking for us,” as if we are simply a bloc of deliverable goods for whichever candidate is currently parachuting into the hood briefly and leaving as soon as they feel they are garnering a portion of our votes. The black middleman or middlewoman, who has sanctioned and lauded the white candidate on safari into black spaces and places, will then be assured of a continued job or a TV panel talk spot and white approval.
Ironically, black folks have already, in past practice, no matter income levels and education and zip code, figured out who is least damaging to our survival and voted accordingly, knowing all too well the results of white power unleashed on our heads. We’ll turn out, yet again, as a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, just as in the past we did for Republicans.
I read one brother’s assessment that we who vote regularly and reliably are older and are “conservative,” and only pick “Establishment” candidates. “Establishment” with a capital E is a dismissal, a put-down. We’ve fought long and hard to re-elect fighters for us. Fighters like Rep. Elijah Cummings. RIP.
Actually, I think we pick candidates who have established relationships with us over time. This is what some young folks call earning “cred.”
Those of us who are older know the mostly erased history of the Tulsa massacre and other crimes against us just like it. Those of us who lived through Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are still acutely aware of ongoing segregation in housing, schools, and even our places of worship. The younger folks know the litany of names of black folks murdered by white cops and civilians, and recite them like a rosary of death.
Just because a white candidate all of a sudden shows up to woo us, with promises of future goodies that will benefit us, doesn’t mean we’re gonna take the bait. We see you when you are not talking at us. We hear you talk to white people. As Janet Jackson sang, “What have you done for me lately?”
When dealing with white competition in the Democratic primary, we mostly have to figure out which white candidate passes our “comfortability” test.
We have other potential options these days through the door opened by Barack Hussein Obama, whether or not the media is pushing black and Latino candidates to the bottom of their electability predictions list. We are watching them too. However, we know the harsh punishment that will fall upon our shoulders should we pick wrong. We hedge our bets picking from among the white possibles because we live our lives without a white-privilege mantle. We don’t trust that, even though Barack won two terms, the third time can happen any time soon.
As open hate ramps up in America, we know who will be among the first victims. We know who is hazardous to our health—and lives.
Case in point: Hillary Clinton (whom the majority of us voted for in 2016) won the popular vote, and yet we still have Trump in office, destroying us, spitting on us, denigrating us, and taking a lotta other important things down into the sewer with him. We know there was election interference, and we know the Supreme Court can no longer be depended upon as our last bastion (another nasty blow we received).
So we examine the white menu.
I have yet to see a pollster ask anyone black if they think white candidate X is comfortable in black spaces and with black people. Not a question about their surrogates, but about them. I have seen the “Who would you like to have a beer with?” thing, but perhaps it would be a good idea to ask us who we’d welcome at the family BBQ.
I’m not surprised when I see Joe Biden doing well in polls with black voters. Many black folks have learned to deal with the white folks they feel they know rather than ones they don’t. We also keep a sharp eye on who we think will win. We are experts on white-people-watching. Our survival has depended upon it.
Some recent polling:
Biden's not my choice, since I’m a Harris advocate, and really like Julián Castro as well. No matter what, in the end I’ll vote for the winning Democrat, because I have to. No matter what, I think black voter turnout will be strong in 2020 because of Trump.
We have learned over the years that we have to accept the power of white people, and of white candidates. White candidates who will have the power of life and death over our black lives, whichever one wins. That’s changing slowly as more black and POC candidates run and get elected to office; however, as it stands now, we see three older white people being put on the top of our menu to choose between. We are still exhilarated by the memory of Our POTUS and Our FLOTUS, and we look hard to see if any of our white options even have a black friend.
What hasn’t changed in this country is the fact that to get ahead, we have to negotiate and function in white-controlled spaces, whereas white folks rarely bother to participate in ours.
I learned how to participate in the white world as a child. It helped having a white grandmother who could serve as interpreter, guide, and early-warning system. I talked about her and her influence in “White allies: Thoughts and conversations for today's movement,” in which four white women I consider to be friends and allies who read and/or post here at Daily Kos talk about their own development and experience negotiating the crossover into black spaces and comfortability with black folks. Their stories are different—they are from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and regions. Give it a read if you missed it two years ago.
I can code switch into whatever white dialect space I’m currently inhabiting with ease, including using “academese jarguage,” though always aware I’m never ever going to really be a part of it. If I had a dollar for every time I’m told, “You are articulate” or “You are so well-spoken” or ”You write so well” by people who are not even aware how I hear that, I’d be rich. They truly mean to compliment me for mastering whiteness. Since whiteness = literacy on so many levels here in the U.S. (even though there are a shit-ton of undereducated “ignant” white people), this is a “normal” response when they encounter me—who is not one of them.
I wonder how the next middle- or upper-middle-class white person I encounter will react if I look at them, smile and say, “Wow, you are so articulate … your English is excellent and you can write too? My, aren’t you proud of yourself?”
(Why shouldn’t I be able to be articulate and write, with a dad who had a Ph.D. in English lit and drama?)
Many black folks still don’t spend any significant amount of time in white spaces. Some of us rarely have interactions with white folks at all, unless it’s a city official, a cop, or a store owner. Y’all don’t go to our churches, come to our weddings and funerals, go to our barbershops and beauty salons, dance with us in clubs, or just hang out.
Such is the nature of a still-segregated society.
Most white folks know us only second-hand. We are on their TV. They love our music. We are sports figures and criminals. We are not their best friend, or godparents to their children.
We are also clear that education and social class don’t inoculate white folks from being racists. We see those folks with Ph.D.s in oppression, who target us daily and all those upper-middle-class “well-spoken” white folks who gladly voted for Trump and sewer-scum like McConnell. There’s a whole magazine of intellectuals on the right dedicated to eliminating us—see the National Review.
We also see the racism of many white liberals and of members of the white left. We shrug and go on about our bizness. Same shit. Different day.
We hear the appeals to the working class from white politicians on the left, who prioritize class over race, and we hear the silent “white” in their speechifying. The myth of the solidarity of white workers with our struggles sounds good on paper, or in a speech. The historical and present-day reality tells a different tale.
We know that class mobility, a seat at the table of power, and money in the bank won’t stop a bullet to the head from a racist cop, or, more mundanely, allow you to hail a cab going uptown.
For us, mastering whiteness is a skill-set for survival and “movin’ on up.” Maintaining pride in our blackness at the same time is an anchor to sanity.
I have seen quite a few of my lost brethren and sistren who have confused mastering it with embracing it. White approval syndrome is clearly in play when we see black Trump lovers and Stein adherents. They are two sides of the same tarnished coin.
A warning:
Trashing Barack Obama wins our current crop of candidates no love from the majority of black voters, which should be heeded by those who now jockeying for our votes. That doesn’t mean we don’t have any of our own critiques; however, we tend to keep our criticisms within the family.
Approaching the primaries in just a few months, we are acutely aware our votes are needed to determine the Democratic winner. We have read and heard the white grumbles, asking why we, only 14% of the population of the United States, many of us still living in red states, should play such a critical role in selecting the next candidate.
Hello. Why shouldn’t we? We are solid Democrats. We didn’t plunge this country into Trump insanity.
We didn’t make the mess this country is now in—white folks did. A majority of us are still willing to help fix it.
When you come for our votes, be prepared to deliver on those promises you are making to us on the stump, should you get the chance to sit in the Oval Office.
Us older folks are dying off.
There is no future guarantee that our younger generation will continue to be a sure thing for Democrats. I’ve heard voices, some right here, suggesting Democrats should soft-pedal addressing racism and white supremacy.
Your choice. Alienate young black voters in pursuit of white bigots, or have our backs.
It shouldn’t be a difficult decision.