Black Males Will Vote for Harris—White Males Are the Downside

Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a platform of insurance policies to courtroom Black male voters this week, which she referred to as the “Alternative Agenda for Black Males.” The platform contains enterprise loans for Black entrepreneurs, legalization of marijuana, and higher regulation of the cryptocurrency market, which disproportionately predates on Black males. 

I’ve learn her plan, as a result of studying such issues is a part of my job, however talking as only a common Black male voter, I actually and deeply don’t give a shit. We’re 4 weeks out from a presidential election in opposition to a deranged fascist named Donald Trump. I don’t want nor require a personalised agenda addressing my specific points at this late date—and if I did want one this might not be it, not the least as a result of it doesn’t comprise any significant option to stop the cops from harassing or murdering me and my Black kids as we attempt to reside out our lives on this racist nation. The time for a Black male agenda was three years in the past when Democrats briefly managed the White Home and each chambers of Congress. As a result of I perceive primary civics, I’ll proceed to handle my inquiries to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema about why such an agenda by no means materialized.  

However I’m not right here to speak in regards to the previous. I don’t want extra dependable crypto and an NFT in my lunchbox telling me I’m a giant robust man as a way to select accurately between a reasonable Black girl and the plain white supremacist who believes in eugenics. I might be voting for Harris on November 5, after which spend the 1,500 days between that date and the following presidential election in 2028 advocating for my model of a Black agenda. Happening TikTok to advocate for Black folks in October means nothing should you don’t present up with the identical power and concepts in January. 

It is perhaps tempting to jot down me off as a bougie negro who has misplaced contact together with his neighborhood, however I’d prefer to level out that the overwhelming majority of Black male voters are going to do precisely what I do: vote for Harris. Harris will obtain between 85 and 90 % of the Black male vote. I acknowledge that the distinction between 85 % and 90 % may very well be the distinction in Harris successful or dropping a vital state or two, however I merely refuse to interact in a dialog that paints Black male assist because the “downside” for Harris on this election. Over 60 % of white males are going to vote for a convicted felon. Someplace round 50 % of white girls are going to vote for an adjudicated rapist and religious misogynist. Black males aren’t your downside, Democrats. 

The “downside” on this nation is how the bulk of white folks vote. The drive holding this nation again is almost all of white folks. The individuals who have turned in opposition to democracy are nearly all of white folks. The worldwide drive destroying the surroundings of this earth is almost all of white folks. If you’re within the white liberal minority and also you wish to freak out about one thing, freak out about your cousins and grandmothers and colleagues who’re about to forged a poll for an unhinged authoritarian. Go cope with the white folks in your life as an alternative of inserting the burden on Black of us to avoid wasting this nation from nearly all of white of us but once more. 

After all, asking white of us to look within the mirror and deal with their very own bullshit has been the plea of each Black thinker and mental from Frederick Douglass to Chris Rock. This nation has grow to be comfy with the concept that white assist for white supremacy is inevitable. The white voters who will assist this fascism are constantly handled by the media as if they’re merely doing the perfect they will given the financial and social forces they consider exist, despite the fact that most of what these white voters consider is factually, demonstrably mistaken.  

This fallacious concept that white individuals are at all times doing their greatest—and that it’s as much as everybody else to cease them in the event that they disagree—is such a standard characteristic of American political discourse that you simply’ll nonetheless see a majority of white of us defend the enslavers and rapists who wrote the Structure. They’ll name these founders “males of their occasions,” despite the fact that there have been different, higher males (and girls!) who knew in actual time that slavery was mistaken and girls ought to have political equality. The enslaved folks, as an example, had been “males of their occasions” and knew slavery was mistaken. However most whites, even the “progressive” ones on the time, went together with the unforgivable evil of human bondage. The one time progressive white of us truly stood as much as their racist brothers and cousins was within the 1860s, and the racist whites had been so pissed in regards to the regular operation of democratic governance that elected Abraham Lincoln that they seceded from the Union and began a civil battle. Normally, as an alternative of coping with retrograde white of us, liberal whites search for anyone else accountable. 

On this election, the powers that be have determined that Black males are the suitable scapegoat. Sure, the overwhelming majority of Black male voters will vote for Harris, however what about those that don’t vote? What in regards to the dudes who will keep on the sofa? Absolutely, if each Black man would simply crawl over damaged glass to vote for Harris, our democracy may very well be saved. Since not each single sentient brother will carry out their assigned civic responsibility of saving white of us just like the magic negroes we’re speculated to be, clearly Harris should have an issue with Black males—or so the story goes. 

Harris doesn’t have a “downside” with Black males. That mentioned, she does seem, primarily based on the polls, to be barely underperforming Joe Biden in 2020 with… males. All males. White males, Black males, Latino males, AAPI males, males with no school diploma, males with a school diploma, working males, enterprise males, and just about each different taste of males, besides maybe Black queer males who seem like all in for the VP. 

Gosh, I can’t think about why. Is the truth that America is the one main democracy to by no means have elected a girl as its chief one thing greater than mere coincidence? May or not it’s that too many cis-hetero American males are pathetic little rump creatures who’ve been taught by their fathers and flicks to view girls as prizes to be gained as an alternative of equals to be revered? I suppose there are some issues we’ll by no means know for certain.