One of the favorite assertions of Candace Owens, Kanye West and black people who will happily let white people touch their hair, is that negroes have been bamboozled by the Democratic Party. They often ask why the Democratic Party tends to get the black vote by default.
With a false sense of superiority bestowed upon them by conservative negro-whisperers, they will say that black voters are stuck on the “Democratic plantation. ” They argue that Democrats started the KKK and supported segregation while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, self-determination and — most of all, “bootstraps.”
They conveniently omit the fact that the vast majority of both parties supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. The faction that wanted to preserve Jim Crow was made up of the same people who support children in cages, hate affirmative action and believe in all things Republican — Southern whites.
The reality is that as America’s electorate becomes more diverse, the Republican party is getting whiter. According to the Pew Research Center, the vast majority of Asian American voters (65 percent), Hispanic voters (63 percent) and black voters (84 percent) identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. Although no more than one-third of the voters in each non-white group leans toward the GOP, a majority of white voters identifies or leans toward the Republican party.
In 2017, 83 percent of registered Republican voters were non-Hispanic whites. As the number of people with four-year and postgraduate college degrees increases, educated voters are increasingly voting Democratic; so are millennials, Gen Xers and even Baby Boomers. In fact, the only group where the GOP is increasing its share of members is white people who don’t graduate from high school.
Aside from poor, uneducated white voters, there is no ethnic, racial or socioeconomic bloc that sides with the Grand Ole Party. So, instead of asking why black voters cast their ballots for Democrats by default, we should ask why nearly every single demographic of voters in America is moving toward the Democratic Party. The real question becomes:
Why is the Republican Party so white?
Perhaps the reason the GOP is so white is that the Republican Party does not care about black voters.
According to a recent poll from the Advancement Project and the NAACP, in the months before the 2018 midterms, only 57% of black voters were contacted by a political campaign; 75% of those black voters were contacted by Democrats while Republicans reached out to half as many African American voters (35%).
The same poll notes that the top three issues for black voters are:
- Health care: Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, not only have Republicans tried to repeal the health care law that gave millions of Americans health care for the first time, but they haven’t put forward any proposals that would expand coverage or cost less.
- The economy and jobs: The biggest recession since the Great Depression happened under the watch of the previous Republican presidential administration (George W. Bush) and Barack Obama began digging the country out with the help of a Democratic House and Senate. While the economy continues to gain steam under Donald Trump, his administration has also imposed unnecessary tariffs and started trade wars that cost the U.S. economy billions.
- Income inequality and low wages: Rank-and-file Republicans stand firmly against affirmative action, as does their party’s official platform. They have also opposed raising the minimum wage while, in January, Democrats introduced legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
On the issues that Latino voters care about (education, jobs and health care), Latino voters say the Democratic Party performs better in these areas while white voters like the GOP’s stance on these subjects, Pew Research reports. And most white Republicans don’t consider the treatment of minorities as a priority, while, in 2016, 82% of black voters and 72% of Hispanic voters said it was “very important”
The perceptions that the Republican Party is racially biased aren’t due to political rhetoric or brainwashing, it is because black and Latino voters see what Republicans do.
Republican judges sentence black suspects to longer prison terms than white suspects accused of the same crimes. Every single one of the states with the top 10 highest incarceration rates is led by Republican governors and Republican legislatures. A BlackPac poll found that 77% of black voters say that voter suppression impacted elections in their state, and studies show that it’s harder to vote in Republican-controlled states.
But also, Republicans don’t care about black people.
Seventy-five percent of white Republicans say America pays too much attention to race; 55% of white Republicans believe black people lag behind economically because African Americans lack “the motivation or willpower to pull themselves up out of poverty.” Seventy-seven percent of white Republicans think America’s problem is that we see racism where it doesn’t exist, and 59% don’t believe the legacy of slavery affects black people today.
Why would anyone black vote for those guys?
And none of this is to say that the Democratic Party is a pro-black party that inherently cares about black people. It is still controlled and funded by white people, and most black people are aware of this. But for black voters, it is still better than the Republican Party.
So when your favorite black conservative insists that you are being brainwashed by the Democratic Party, look past their all lives matter haircuts, their split ends and their Sunken Place memberships and know that they are advocating for a party that isn’t concerned about black people.
And, to be fair, the Republican Party probably wants to be more inclusive. It would increase their political power and their voting bloc. But the fact that they have demonized the word “diversity” is reflective of their priority to keep their party white...
Like America.