Do We Owe Black Men an Apology?

Nov 8, 2024

pexels-edmond-dantes-7103169 — PHOTO: Pexels / Edmond Dantes

After Kamala Harris’s stinging loss to Donald Trump in the election on Tuesday, the social media Blackisphere chopped up why an accomplished Black woman — the sitting vice president, a former senator and prosecutor — lost. How, they wondered, could Harris have crashed out to a scandal-plagued, insurrectionist convicted felon, an old white man who was one of the least popular presidents in recent history?

To some, the villains are obvious: the roughly 20% of Black men who, according to exit polls, voted for Trump.

“I just seen a black man say ‘i didn’t vote for Trump…. I voted against Trans rights and LGBTQ people rights, High inflation and a Broken Economy,’” television personality Ts Madison wrote on X. “Trying to Hurt a small group of people as a BLACK person definitely shows me that you don’t want rights…. You want privilege!”

Not so fast, said Joy-Ann Reid, host of MSNBC’s “The Reid Report.”

“Every four years, I go through this ritual,” she said Tuesday night, noting 8 in 10 brothers chose Harris, not Trump, at the ballot box. “The world just wants to say that Black men are realigning, and they’re all gonna run to Donald Trump,” even though the Latino vote shifted far more dramatically to the former president than in 2020.

“It is not Black men. They are not shifting,” she said. “You are not seeing Black men shift. Please stop.”

Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, thinks the debate over whether Black men turned their backs on Harris when she most needed them is misguided because “it really does not reckon with why people vote, or the rationale for people’s votes.”

Misogynoir — resentment and anger towards Black women — may have motivated some Black men to choose Trump, Perry says. But it overlooks more complex socioeconomic issues, and the GOP’s continuing outreach to Black men.

“I think there’s sexism among men, but the truth is economic shifts, like overseas trade agreements, hit Black men just as hard as whites,” Perry says. That, he says, makes both groups more receptive to Trump’s message.

Unfairly Scapegoated?

Not since Willie Horton became a household name in the 1988 presidential election have Black men been at the center of such intense political debate. Unlike Horton, who became the face of violent crime in America for Republicans, there’s no consensus on whether Black men are the avatars of Harris’s 2024 defeat.

What is clear, however, is that narrative has taken hold among many Black Harris supporters.

The exit poll numbers tell a conflicting, nuanced story.

At nearly 80%, Black men were Harris’s second-largest voting demographic; only Black women voted for her at a higher percentage. Meanwhile, Trump’s highest demographic — white men — clocked in at 57%, more than 20 percentage points lower.

But Brittany Packnett, an educator, organizer, and activist, argues good wasn’t good enough in an election in which the outcome could mean the difference between life or death for some Black women.

“Black men, I should be able to lovingly say to you that 78% was strong but it’s still a C+—and there’s room for improvement to fix your attachment to patriarchy,” she wrote on Threads.

It wasn’t like the Democrats couldn’t see it coming.

If Harris had received a higher percentage of the Black male vote, it could have been enough to win a swing state or two — especially since Trump’s margin of victory in some states was a few hundred thousand votes or less. And it wasn’t like the Democrats couldn’t see it coming.

In August, Harris rolled out her “Opportunity Agenda,” a blueprint aimed at helping Black men get ahead. Black men, the agenda said, “have long felt that too often their voice in our political process has gone unheard.”

But in October, at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, former President Barack Obama said he’d heard reports of low energy for Harris in some neighborhoods that supported him in 2008. The problem, he said, “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”

“Part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president,” he said.

Tapping Into Resentment

Unlike in 2020, however, Trump didn’t roll out specific policies intended specifically for Black men. Instead, he tapped into their lingering resentment of the Democratic Party, arguing that liberals always prioritize other groups, like women and the LGBTQ community, instead of them.

“Any African American or Hispanic — and you know how well I’m doing there — that votes for Kamala, you gotta have your head examined,” he said during a rally in Atlanta last month. “Because they are really screwing you.”

Perry says the GOP has spent years quietly crafting a message that blue-collar Black men, and other voters who didn’t go to college, can easily relate to. Elites, it goes, look down on you; Trump is one of you.

Black male defections to the GOP may continue, albeit incrementally.

That simple message “resonates with people without a college degree, and there’s many more Black [male] and Latino voters” in that class, Perry says. It was a mistake, he says, for Democrats to expect party loyalty, or Harris’s race, to supersede Trump convincing Black men they are seen and understood, even if it isn’t necessarily so.

Until the Democrats can course-correct, Perry says, Black male defections to the GOP may continue, albeit incrementally.

That includes an X user with the handle @TonyXTwo.

Sporting a MAGA ballcap over his dreadlocks, he posted a video of himself talking about how he rebuffed an electioneer who assumed he was a Democrat; then narrated a video of himself in the ballot booth, voting Republicans all the way down the ticket.

The caption reads, “I’m showing you I’m done with the Democrat Party! Absolutely done! TRUMP 2024!”

By contrast, @Pinko69420 used percentages to make his point: white women, not Black men, are the real scapegoats.

“53% in 2016, 55% in 2020, 56% in 2024,” he wrote. “Because society insists on bestowing them with the Disney Princess/Damsel In Distress/Inherently Virtuous treatment, [white women] will never receive the level of castigation Black Men and other demographics receive.”

For her part, Packnett isn’t scapegoating. She just expects more.

“I know Black men voted like they always do. I’m saying I’ve always wanted them to do better,” she wrote on Threads. “If your mom was always good w you bringing home a C, we got raised differently. I can hold high standards for my brothers like they hold them for me.”