Source: Tom Williams / Getty
Somehow, we find ourselves in a national conversation about Black men and our reluctance to support Vice President Kamala Harris over ex-President Donald Trump. Over the weekend, the New York Times released a poll that shows Vice President Harris at 78% among likely Black voters, which puts her nine points behind where President Joe Biden was with Black voters in 2020. Other polls show Trump hasn’t gained nearly as much support among Black voters as the Times poll indicates, but with Election Day right around the corner, and the race being a tie right down the middle, Harris supporters are clearly concerned.
One Democrat who doesn’t appear to be as worried as some is Sen. Raphael Warnock, who made an appearance on CNN Tuesday to assure folks that Black men are going to turn out for Harris and remind us that Trump’s history with Black men includes full-page ads in multiple publications calling for the execution of the Central Park Five (now the Exonerated Five).
Raphael Warnock: Black men are not going to vote for Donald Trump in any significant numbers. We’re not a monolith, but we remember how he treated us, including the Exonerated Five teenagers whose lives he ruined. pic.twitter.com/IWKiUo1xGS
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 14, 2024
“Listen, let me tell you something this morning. Black men are not going to vote for Donald Trump in any significant numbers. There’ll be some. We’re not a monolith,” Warnock told CNN’s Dana Bash, who asked him about the Times poll. “But as Black folk in general, and Black men in particular, consider who Donald Trump is, as they consider the fact that this is the man who literally took out a full-page ad in the New York Times saying that these young teenagers back in the 1980s who were accused of a horrific crime should receive the death penalty.
“And then when it was proven that the Exonerated Five, the Central Park Five, were actually innocent, Donald Trump has shown no deal of concern about what they went through, no deal – no bit of contrition about it,” Warnock continued. “He’s doubled down on his position. This is who he is. And black men know that as they watch him deal with his own criminal problems and concerns, that the criminal justice system certainly doesn’t handle them the way it handles him.”
Not that we needed to go that far back in history to find instances where Trump was being brazenly racist, but Warnock told no lies. Even after they were exonerated after they were wrongly accused as teenagers of attacking and raping a white woman in Central Park in 1989, Trump made it clear he still had it in for the five Black and Latino men, one of whom, Yusef Salaam, has been outspoken about his disdain for Trump as well as his support for Harris.
Anyway, all of this comes not long after former President Barack Obama made a stop in Pittsburg and addressed the topic of Black men who are reluctant or unwilling to vote for Harris, saying, “Part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.” His remarks sparked controversy with some accusing the ex-president of setting Black men up to be scapegoated should Harris lose in November.
Warnock didn’t address the controversy, but he did emphasize that the distinction between Harris and Trump is clear and that Black men, while not a “monolith,” can see that Trump is not our orangey-white savior.
“On the other hand, you’ve got Kamala Harris, who in her work as a prosecutor found ways to give people a path towards a better life, who has spent her whole life as a lawyer, as a senator, and now as vice president, centering the concerns of ordinary people,” Warnock said. “Again, we’re not a monolith, but this idea that large numbers of Black men are going to vote for Donald Trump, it’s not going to happen.”
I guess we’ll see in a few short weeks.
