You Owe us for Obama

By greatbritton


If Black barbershops and hair salons across this country were bugged, this is some of what you’d be hearing:

There’s a debt owed to sisters, but some Black men are avoiding the ballot box like it’s a repo man. Black women have long had the backs of Black men, but now, as a Black woman stands on the cusp of the presidency, many Black men are demonstrating that the reverse often isn’t true. At least, not in politics. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is within an eyelash of claiming the presidency. But some Black men are hanging back, imperiling her prospects, but there was no Black man hesitancy to support Barack Obama when he ran in 2008.

For example, exit polling data cited by the Pew Research Center showed that nearly all Black voters – 95 percent of them – cast their ballots for Obama that year. However, new polling data compiled for the NAACP shows that one in five younger Black men plan to vote for former President Donald Trump.

Support for Trump is down in recent months, the polling shows, but that’s still 20 percent of young Black men who plan to vote for Harris’ opponent.

They might not want to share those plans with their mothers, sisters and aunts.

Every slice of the electorate deserves to be asked for its support, no matter the race or gender of the candidate. Black men are no different. And if Harris does not defeat former President Donald Trump, it won’t be fair to put all of the blame on Black men, who don’t make up as big a chunk of the overall electorate as, say, white men, who are expected to vote in large numbers for Trump.

There is an opportunity in this election for Black men to show a Black woman the type of solidarity and support they’ve long expected and received from Black women. That brothers need to be asked twice is a head scratcher, given Trump’s behavior and comments.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Trump, his father and their real estate company in 1973 after finding that it set up an elaborate system to avoid renting apartments to Black people. The Trumps settled the case by signing a pledge not to discriminate in the future.

A few years later, Trump took out a full page ad calling for the restoration of the death penalty so Black teens he thought were guilty of a crime could be executed. The teens were, in fact, innocent. Trump has not apologized.

Trump questioned whether Obama was born in the U.S., a tactic widely seen as a bid to discredit the nation’s first Black president as illegitimate.

As president, Trump’s Justice Department ended the practice of issuing consent decrees to curb systemic abuses by police departments. Much of that abuse was directed at Black men.

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden this past weekend was an orgy of hate. One of Trump’s backers, addressing the audience, used the occasion to make a joke about Black people and watermelons.

Trump has shown antipathy to people and policies Black men support. That’s not conjecture or speculation but fact.

So is the reality that the race between Harris and Trump is so close that any time, effort and money spent trying to get one group’s support is time, effort and money not spent trying to get backing from another group.

Black men can save Harris’ bacon. Or they could be part of the reason why it gets fried.

 



Source link

&description=" data-pin-do="buttonPin" data-pin-save="true">

Leave a Reply