What Politicians Don’t Seem to Know about Black Voters

Black people can be very socially conservative and are not monolithic.

Last week in class, I had my all-Black class read an essay by a Latino author, Judith Ortiz Cofer. It is a heavily-anthologized essay, “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria.” While some people call it a waste of time to have Black students read literature outside of Black authors, since many of them haven’t heard of any African American authors outside of Langston Hughes, I make it mandatory in my class.

There is a certain joy in watching students find common humanity in literature written by those who do not look like themselves. As the students discover the meaning of the word, “machismo,” and discuss the very conservative nature of the Catholic system of morals and values, they never fail to launch into discussions about their own grandmothers. Just look at the memes Black people launch every holiday season, and you will discover that most of them are about grandmothers, mothers, and mean aunts!

This is one of the more popular memes that floated around the Internet last Thanksgiving. There seemed to be a proliferation of these things and every last one of them was more HILARIOUS than the last one.

And for some reason, young Black people have really latched onto Shirley Ceasar’s famous introduction to her song, “Hold My Mule.”

Needless to say, the class days that focus on grandma are fun. There is plenty of discussion and relaxed, familial joking. During the course of the discussion, quite few of the men in the class confess that they are the overprotective brothers, uncles, and cousin that Cofer discusses in her essay.

What we discover during the course of discussion is that most Black people are socially conservative. They remain socially conservative on things such as abortion and marriage while caring passionately about the economy, school costs, healthcare, criminal justice reform, STEM ethics, fair housing, prescription drug prices, and even healthcare. Students also learn that they do not all share the same level of concern about every issue. Whereas my students from Northern, urban areas are passionate about fair and equal access to housing, students who are from Southern, rural places remain luke warm on housing, but fiery abut school costs, loss of jobs due to NAFTA and other trade agreements, and prescription drug prices. Many of them have experienced their grandparents cutting pills in half, because they could not afford the drugs. Many of these students know about the exorbitant costs of insulin. On the other hand, students from Northern, urban areas understand housing discrimination and being kept from better neighborhoods and schools due to some unwritten, invisible agreement between banks and real estate agents. Last week, a student from Chicago confessed that many parents send their children down South to college simply because it’s cheaper. He asked, “Why pay $14,000/semester to attend school in Chicago when my mom can send me here with my grandma and we pay $7,000 with out-of-state fees.” Once the student announced that whopping tuition, the whole class let out an audible gasp.

Now, in my class, I don’t know how we get from Point A to Point B. Honestly. I don’t know how we go from Cofer to housing an tuition. There are those days when students want to talk, so I let them. Once I let them discuss for a while and discover one another’s similarities and differences, I bring the class back down (we can get very loud). They discover that Black people really do care about issues of importance and are not all the same. Using a text produced by a Latina writer, we discover that my black ain’t your black and that’s okay. In other words, Black folk are not all the same.

If a group of 18-year-olds at an HBCU in Mississippi can understand that Black people are socially conservative and are not monolithic, why can’t seasoned politicians?

This election season, we will see our share of politician — Democratic and Republican — making the rounds to Black churches. They will make pitches to Black audiences who will sit patiently and listen. Occasionally, they will be encouraged with an “Amen,” or “Take your time.” Let’s just face it, Black church can be addictive because the audience will validate the speaker.

But I have grown tired of politicians who do not know how to talk to Black people. I have a list of the things about Black people that adolescents know, but middle-aged politicians don’t.

1. Black people are not all the same. The concerns of Black people in Chicago may not be the same as those in Philadelphia. Make an effort to learn the audience and make adjustments accordingly.
2. Black people are not overwhelmingly homophobic. Yes, there are homophobic Black people, but there are homophobic Americans. Everybody knows the joke about the choir director being gay. Well, most Black people know that inside joke. But that homophobic picture of Black folk has been painted and perpetuated by a media class who has probably never asked a Black LGBTQ member anything.
3. Black people care about substantive issues. In the spirit of this Thanksgiving season, let me try to do this in writing. Black people care about: housing, schools, jobs, medicine, healthcare, STEM, environment, crime, drugs….YOU NAME IT! Okay, that didn’t rhyme, but I’d like to see you try! We don’t need to be entertained: we need to be told the truth!
4. Black people love our children. We love our children. We want to see them have a brighter future. Every time I see a school shooting or I see the police kill an innocent child, my heart just drops. Don’t come to us talking about abortion, when we cannot get honest answer about better policing, crime in our neighborhoods, and gun control that will result in a lowering of crime in our neighborhoods. And stop-and-frisk policies do nothing to address the crime our children face every day. I am trying to figure out why anti-abortionists are so passionate about unborn children, but are also so passionate about policies such as Stand-Your-Ground. Is my unborn child more valuable than the child who is already here and who I pray over every day to keep him here?
5. Ultimately, Black people want the same thing as every other American. Black people want the same fair opportunities as everyone else in America. Period. We believe in democracy and the American Dream sometimes more than white folk do. We are collectively watching a bunch of white men gather around another white man, and he is DEAD wrong. We know it and they know, but they would defy the rules and principles of America’s democracy to protect a member of the good old white boys’ club. One of the chief complaints by Black people about Black people is that we don’t stick together. Well, I don’t think we uphold one another when we are wrong. And most of us don’t want a handout. We just want a fair chance at success. We’ve only been saying this since Reconstruction. Seriously, please read “What the Black Man Wants” by Frederick Douglass. Here’s a pretty good copy of it here: http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/africam/afspfdat.html

This post is coming directly from my Composition 101 class. We had a DYNAMIC discussion centered around Cofer. As always, if you like this article, press the hands. Or, you could enroll in class.