Rich black men, politics and ‘hostage’ votes
Will famous black men speaking out against presidential candidate Joe Biden help Trump win?
‘We Need to Talk’ podcast: Medium writers Solomon Hillfleet and Shamontiel L. Vaughn chat about men, women, race, relationships, politics and entertainment
This podcast and transcription was originally published on Medium on September 26, 2020.
For the first time ever, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson will be voting. Due to a prior felony conviction, he could never do so before. In 2015, he’d backed Donald Trump. Unfortunately, this time he can put his opinion into action in the 2020 Election polls.
Everyone has a right to their opinion, and all black people unanimously liking and voting for presidential candidate Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris may be unrealistic. However, a curious amount of well-to-do African-American men are either supporting Trump, anti-Biden or dismissing voting altogether.
The bad
Kanye West has already publicly stated that Donald Trump is a “father figure” and nicknamed himself “Baby Putin.” Watching “Love Jones” is bittersweet, considering Black Democrats lost Isaiah Washington years ago. Sean “Diddy” Combs, who invited Trump to his 30th birthday party and claims he used to be “different,” wants black people to hold the vote hostage. Chance the Rapper challenged voters who wouldn’t support Kanye West as president, pointing out how much he supports the G.O.O.D. Music artist. Charlamagne tha God, who loves telling colorism jokes, conveniently decided race was off the table during Biden’s “you ain’t black” quip. Ice Cube dismissed the weight of the 15th Amendment altogether while declaring “voting for nothing makes no sense.” Chris Rock, who had to have Jerry Seinfield explain to him why Louis C.K. saying “nigga” wasn’t OK, is somehow blaming Democrats for pursuing Trump’s impeachment. And Lil Wayne is about as clueless when it comes to presidents as he is about disrespecting Emmett Till.
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The good
But it’s not all a loss. Samuel L. Jackson is doing fundraisers for the Biden/Harris campaign. Don Cheadle has plenty of questions for Biden, but his Twitter timeline clearly confirms Trump will never get his vote. The late Chadwick Boseman made his glowing comments about Harris unquestionable. LeBron James is pleading with people to vote, rocking a “More Than a Vote” sweatshirt and recruiting poll workers. Taye Diggs is checking in on Kamala Harris and Joe Biden supporters like he’s a high school homeroom instructor. And even though Killer Mike is clearly a Bernie Bro, that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to urge black folks to vote in elections — specifically overlooked midterm elections — or making it known that he thinks Trump is a “dumbass.”
The mixed opinions (and a podcast)
Shamontiel, a two-time Election Judge in Chicago and a canvasser for the Affordable Care Act, is concerned about the weight of black men speaking out against voting altogether and pro-Trump. But Solomon Hillfleet is here to explain why some black men are not as easily persuaded by the Democratic Party and what he believes will really happen on Election Night 2020. Read snippets below from the “We Need to Talk” podcast, or click play (above) to listen to the full 15-minute audio.
Will black men vote in favor of the Democratic party again?
Shamontiel: In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been beyond frustrated listening to African-American men talk about holding their vote hostage. Black men held their ground in the last election. Even with the hesitation to vote for Hillary Clinton, 82% of black men voted for Hillary Clinton and 94% of black women voted for Hillary Clinton. It fell off with Latino men and Asian men, but still black men voted for her in large numbers. And I don’t understand how we have a blatant, unapologetically racist president right now in the White House who has done everything absolutely horrendously for the past four years, and there’s hesitation to not vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Solomon: It’s important to remember that, like you said, black men have always voted — regardless of how the narrative has been painted — in the interest of black people. And we know that black women have strong thoughts on voting, especially for the Democratic Party. So we always voted [largely] with the interest of black women. But we don’t need to mistake us saying that we need to have a black agenda put on the table right now with us not wanting to vote.
A demand is only as good as the leverage you have. Black people don’t have any political leverage to force anybody to do anything, per se. It’s doomsday thinking to think that black men are not going to vote just because we say we’re going to hold the vote. Because if you remember, when they said that, they then said, “We want a black woman as your running mate.” And that was offered.
I think it’s more so about us saying, “Look, you’re not going to just be able to get our vote without putting some legit thought toward a directly Black Agenda.” Because what happens is, other people’s agendas get wrapped up in it. And black people’s lack of political capital is exploited: “We know that you’re going to vote for us. So we got y’all built in. So we don’t have to cater to y’all.”
Ice Cube and his black agenda is more so saying, “Even though you’re the best of the two, that doesn’t mean that you’re just going to get our vote.” It’s important to use the time now to force their hand because when you get in office, he owes us absolutely nothing.
How influential will famous black men’s opinions be at the polls?
Shamontiel: It is concerning to me because there are certain black men who have such a large following. It’s almost dangerous for them to say out loud that they’re questioning the vote. These are black men who are well off. Tax wise, they’re going to be okay. Economically they’re going to be okay. Something major would have to happen for them to be broke. But you have a bunch of broke black men — or economically unstable men — who will say, “Yeah, Kanye West is right. Yeah, Diddy is right. Yeah, Ice Cube is right. Yeah, Chance the Rapper’s right.” They’ll backpack on this, but they don’t have as much to lose.
Solomon: I agree with that, but what I also would offer to black women is y’all are gonna have to give us more credit. As much as y’all think that we listen to men like Diddy and Charlamagne, we listen more to our moms and our aunties berating us about how we’re not voting. Everything that’s happened in our community in regard to voting has been because black women have forcefully advocated for us to vote for whoever. And I say that with love. Between Stacey Abrams, Keisha Bottoms and every other black woman in power, all they’ve advocated for is “voting, voting, voting, voting, voting, voting.”
I will say that more black men are endorsing the idea of not voting because it’s not really a good option. But until I see numbers that correlate to that, I think it’s just some good titles because I look at the voting trends. Black men have always in large voted with the interest of black women, even when it was people like Reagan running, even when there’s people like Bush running.
How do we encourage older black men to get younger black men to vote?
Shamontiel: The reason I’m so concerned about that particular group as a whole is because I remember being an election judge. There was an African-American guy who came in [with his] son. And I was so excited to see a black man and black son get ready to vote. So they’re standing in line, and I’m expecting both of them to vote. I see this white girl and her mom behind her, and the white girl’s whining and she’s talking about, “It’s not fair. I can’t wait to be 18. I’m going to vote.”
Then the black father got ready to vote, and I gave him the form to fill out. His son just stood there with his headphones on. And I was confused. He said, “No, I’m not gonna do it.” And I paused for a second. I didn’t say anything at first because rule wise, we’re not supposed to state our opinions on anything. And then the son just said, “Black people just vote for Democrats anyway. I’m not about to vote! We just be voting for Democrats no matter what. We don’t care what they have to say.”
I asked him, “Do you actually know anything about the candidates?” He’s like, “No, I’m not even prepared to vote. I don’t know who these candidates are. So what I look like voting? I would just be marking Democrats straight down the page.” He walked away, and I shook my head. But I watched him, as he walked away, mouth all of the words to whatever song he was listening to word-for-word-for-word. And all I kept thinking was, “You just told me you don’t have time to find out about these candidates that are gonna affect you socially, personally, locally, financially, in every other way. But you had time to dedicate to memorize every single lyric on whatever song you were listening to.”
I don’t believe you are a father, but what would you say to black fathers, or just as a grown man, to convince young black men to vote?
Solomon: First, we need to acknowledge that we do not have a real viable political education system that really informs people on what the roles and jobs of our elected officials are. That needs to be done. And it can’t be done by the school level because the school has different motives for not educating kids properly on the political system.
I would tell them, “You have to look at where we are and where we want to go. We’re in an election with someone who’s clearly a bigot and someone who’s trying to take the country in a worse direction. So sometimes you have to sacrifice principles and vote for something that you don’t agree with. I’ve done it before, and I’ll probably do it again.”
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I think I would also tell my son, “I respect that you don’t want to just vote without knowing who to vote for. And you don’t want to be told who to vote for.” But we have to do a better job as opposed to berating people to educate people. Tell people what these positions are. What does my alderman do? What does the Attorney General do? What is the difference in parties? Those are the things we need to have conversations about.
Shamontiel: And definitely understand that presidents are not supposed to be superheroes. When you vote for the president, you also need to vote for your mayor, your governor, your senators, your House reps, and then those judges. You need to vote for a little bit of everybody. Make sure to vote in those midterm elections, too.
Solomon: But also — this is my pessimism — I think to tell people that their vote matters when we’ve seen instances where the electoral college has gone around that is also the disingenuous side. Black men showed up and voted like we were supposed to. Hillary had a popular vote, and did not win because of an institution that was set up for slavery.
Shamontiel: If [that] young man would have came up to me and talked about the electoral college, I would have probably just stood there speechless. But I will say I hope everybody registers to vote in 2020. You have so many things that you do. They don’t help you in the long run. They could take you five minutes, 10 minutes, one hour, three hours. Make one of those things voting.
Did you enjoy this post? You’re also welcome to check out my Substack columns “Black Girl In a Doggone World,” “BlackTechLogy,” “Homegrown Tales,” “I Do See Color,” “One Black Woman’s Vote” and “Window Shopping” too. Subscribe to this newsletter for the weekly posts every Wednesday.
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