Black Community Vote | Beyond Electoral Seduction

(Durham, North Carolina) In a room at Hillside High School, three students and their teacher laugh as they try to wrap their heads around a short play they will perform at a block party in late September for Durham, North Carolina’s large black community.

It discusses the Black Panthers, the American black liberation movement that disappeared in the 1980s, the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the famous phrase of the Republican candidate who accused immigrants of “taking all the black jobs” (“Black jobs”), and the need for African-Americans to choose elected officials who will help them rise collectively.

“I like it,” said Adam Douglas, 17, as he finished reading aloud. “I’m turning 18 right before the election. A lot of kids my age think they’re not ready to vote, but I already know who I’m voting for,” he added, not wanting to reveal his choice.

The play’s author, Kristen Hopkins-Vincent, nods. Her organization, which runs social-emotional learning workshops specifically for Black youth and their realities, asks its students to be nonpartisan. “We teach them how to manage their emotions and build healthy relationships. Then it leads to civic engagement,” she explains.

The idea is not to prepare followers of a candidate, but informed citizens who vote according to their needs, their interests. And who believe in the strength of their voice.

A courted electorate

Initiatives like this are rife these days in North Carolina, a former slave state where the black community now represents 21 percent of the population. It is a significant political force.

While the state has voted mostly for Republican candidates for the White House for five decades, in 2008 Barack Obama reversed that trend thanks to the support of the state’s black population.

Joe Biden was less fortunate. Although 68% of black voters in North Carolina voted in 2020, overwhelmingly supporting him, he was defeated by Donald Trump by 1.3%. When he withdrew from the race, the Democratic president had 77% of the vote among African-American voters.

Kamala Harris has picked up the ball and made North Carolina her first stop after the debate with Donald Trump. The most recent polls indicate that the vice president is more popular than her current boss with black voters, but that she has a harder time convincing men than women.

Between glamour and disillusionment

North Carolina Democratic candidate LeVon Barnes believes there are several factors behind this phenomenon.

“Trump is a celebrity and he speaks frankly. That’s attractive to some black men. On the other hand, there are also some who are tired of the Democratic Party that courts them but has done little to improve their lives, particularly on the issue of the overrepresentation of black men in prison,” he says.

“We always see politicians when they need our vote, but we don’t see them again between elections,” adds the man who has been involved in politics since 2000, in addition to being a physical education teacher and basketball coach at a Durham school.

And ” coach Barnes,” as his students call him, wants to change things.

If he is running now, it is in particular to defend public schools, he explains.

The current Republican legislature has cut $500 million from the public education budget to provide scholarships to students who want to attend private or religious schools, regardless of their parents’ income.

“Our schools have been stripped of significant resources so that wealthy children can go to private schools for free!” he says, noting that black children, who are overrepresented in public schools, are directly affected by the policy. “It’s like the Jim Crow era. There are those who have and those who don’t,” he says, sitting in his small office filled with medals, certificates and team photos.

It’s the kind of issue, he says, that can drive the black community to the polls.

The importance of the messenger

It’s not just the message that matters, Barnes adds; it’s also the messenger. Victims of racism since the state’s creation, black North Carolinians want to talk to people who understand their reality, who look like them.

“It is then possible to call a spade a spade. You have to be able to say: look at how Donald Trump is attacking women, a black woman who is running against him! Would you accept that someone speaks to your mother like that?” says the father of a 2-year-old girl who, in addition to campaigning and working, is preparing her wedding.

Mondale Robinson, mayor of the small community of Enloe in rural North Carolina, makes the same observation. Initiator of the Black Male Voter Project, he organizes political rap battles to speak to a segment of the black male population who no longer see the point in voting.

But this political involvement is not without danger.

The day I was supposed to meet Mondale Robinson in Raleigh, a Black Voter Project activist who was canvassing in Georgia was robbed. By white people. It was just one of many events, says the elected official, who was there to support his team. “That’s unfortunately the nature of politics in our country since Donald Trump came to power. Since he made political violence part of his rhetoric.”

From ‘Martin Luther King on Steroids’ to ‘Black Nazi’

For the first time, a black man is running for governor in the state of North Carolina. What was supposed to be a good move by the Republican Party in this key state is, however, starting to backfire. Called “Martin Luther King on steroids” by Donald Trump at one time, Mark Robinson has been racking up scandals. In 2019, on Facebook, the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina, who opposes abortion rights from “day zero,” wrote that abortion is “killing a child because [qu’une femme] wasn’t responsible enough to keep her skirt down.” Ironically, he admitted to paying for his girlfriend’s abortion in the 1980s. Last week, CNN ran a story about him, claiming he had called himself a “black Nazi” on a porn site. He has also attacked the LGBTQ community and justified the use of violence in some of his speeches. Despite pressure from North Carolina Republicans to drop out of the race, Mark Robinson is sticking with it.