African-American and minority voters who support and oppose Donald Trump
There is perhaps no other issue which has so persistently defined President Trump’s tearing down of American political norms and divided the country than race - an issue described as on open wound on America’s conscience and society with its legacy of slavery, segregation and civil rights protests.
President Trump’s language and policies on race; whether it be his description of Mexican immigrants to the United States as rapists and drug dealers, his refusal to condemn white supremacist groups and much more set a background to this most inflammatory of issues, but it was the killing of George Floyd which was the defining turning point and convulsed America in racial tension and and confrontation in a way it hadn’t been since the civil rights era.
Daria Jackson, Candace Mills and Gequan Peoples are community activists in Hickory, North Carolina which is a key battleground state who began an outreach programme in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
It is perhaps for exactly these reasons that many outside America cannot understand how any African-American or US citizen from other minority ethnic communities could vote for Donald Trump.
And yet they do.
Not only that, but the Republican Party has made the political targeting especially of African American men such a key political pitch in the last weeks of the election.
Why? Because the issue of race and political voting intentions is not as one dimensional as it is often seen from outside the USA.
It is also far more complex to be addressed in one article but here are some general pointers.
Firstly there is a sense amongst some African Americans that the Democratic Party has taken them and their concerns for granted for many years – and have an entitled sense that all Americans from minority communities will vote automatically for them.
This was encapsulated by Joe Biden’s comments that you cannot be black if you vote for Donald Trump.
There are also socio-economic and financial issues that some minority voters prioritise above race and which has been the main focus of the political television adverts run by the Trump campaign focussing on African American male voters in particular.
But with well over 90 million voters having already cast their ballots, with African American voters who didn’t vote in 2016 in particular making up a significant part of that polls suggesting that the majority of them have chosen Biden – it seems to suggest that this message and appeal by the Republicans is not getting through significantly enough to appeal to large sections of the African American community.