Editor’s Note: Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan chair in ethics and political values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of several books, most recently, “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” The views expressed here are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
Headlines touting “Biden Beats Trump” only hint at the larger significance of this presidential election, one where an anti-racist majority of Americans defeated an incumbent president whose popularity, charisma and purported policy victories rested primarily on expertly stoking racial division.
Black voters in key cities and states led this diverse, victorious electoral coalition who repudiated a president who tapped into the nation’s worst impulses.
The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris now offers America a once-in-a-generation opportunity to jump-start the process of confronting systemic racism and renewing democracy. Kamala Harris’s election as the first woman, African American, and South Asian vice president in our nation’s history offered a particularly profound example of the power of representation and the importance of Black women organizers, activists, thought leaders and citizens.
At the same time, though the election results represent the defeat of Donald Trump and a victory for the soul of America, Trumpism – a racially intolerant fear-driven populism weaponizing White fear of Blacks, immigrants, LGBTQ people and Muslims – remains alive and well and the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party continues.
The four days between Tuesday’s election and Saturday’s declaration of victory gave the world a panoramic view of the grandeur and travails of America’s racial history. Black voters in Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee were instrumental in saving Biden’s presidential campaign, reminding the nation how pivotal voting rights have always been to civil rights struggles for dignity and citizenship in African American communities.
A few groups of mostly White demonstrators, apparently inspired by loyalty to the President and unfounded conspiracies of voter fraud, descended on Detroit and threatened to come to Philadelphia in a futile effort to prevent their candidate from losing by stopping the count of mail-in ballots that surged in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Though their numbers were small, this kind of racially motivated anti-democratic behavior and assault on the sanctity of Black citizenship recalled the era of Reconstruction when Black voting power threatened to upend White supremacy in the South and was beaten back through violence, intimidation, and “Black Codes” and poll taxes that disenfranchised millions of citizens.
In this year of George Floyd protests, a global pandemic that disproportionately impacted Black Americans, and an election that pivoted on the nation’s long history of racial oppression, it is worth asking what America can do for Black folk moving forward.
The question turns received wisdom on its head by centering Black voters and not the White working class, suburban soccer moms or any other groups who typically become the focus of media and policy attention after elections.
This bait-and-switch has already started, with centrist Democrats complaining that calls to reimagine public safety by “defunding the police” thwarted the party’s efforts to reclaim the Senate (which will be decided after two Georgia runoffs on January 5) and cost them several congressional seats.
Rep. Jim Clyburn, the Black House majority whip, went further, likening “defund the police” to the “burn, baby, burn” chants of the 1960s that he blamed for stoking White backlash against the civil rights movement.
Clyburn, a moderate Democrat who helped secure Joe Biden’s presidency by ensuring his overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primary, is a pragmatic politician who, in this instance, is applying selective memory. Over the course of the civil rights era, chants of “Freedom now!” and “We shall overcome!” also inspired fear, loathing, and outrage from segregationist citizens and politicians who interpreted these calls as an assault on their racial privilege.
Calls to “defund the police” were interpreted along our nation’s stark and growing racial divide. The harder issue, one that Clyburn and Democratic centrists ignore to the party’s long term peril, is the way in which this discussion is rooted in longstanding racial resentments.
President Trump’s efforts to stoke backlash by claiming that Biden (who does not support defund the police) would allow the suburbs to be overrun by criminals (Black), tapped into historically divisive rhetoric that criminalizes Black communities. Moreover, despite hand-wringing from Democrats, movements for racial justice have provided the party with a net gain of voters.
If not for this year of Black Lives Matter protests, the Black, young and people of color vote that fueled the Democratic presidential victory most surely would have never occurred. Black women, led by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, organized millions of new voters nationally on a scale that turned Georgia from red to blue for the first time since 1992.
According to one poll, among voters who said that the protests were important in shaping their decision, 53% voted for Mr. Biden and 46% for Mr. Trump.
Trump’s increase, based on still-forming exit poll data, in Black male (and slightly female) votes illustrates both the ideological diversity of the African American community and the fact that some feel they have too often been taken for granted.
Some of these votes are also rooted in deeply patriarchal conceptions of Black freedom that found a measure of comfort and familiarity in the President’s macho personal posturing and took seriously his last-ditch promise to promote wealth building in the Black community.
Rising rates of Black gun ownership amid national racial tension speaks to the way in which this moment has defied preconceived notions of Black political behavior in unprecedented and extraordinary ways.
America is long past excuses regarding our national inability to confront systemic racism. So, too, the Democratic Party, which has become more important than ever since Republican have shown themselves to be the party of voter suppression, racial and religious intolerance, and anti-democracy.
November 7, 2020, may one day be regarded by future historians as the day America started a long road toward a better future, but it’s far from guaranteed. The Democratic Party, more often than not, loves Black votes without loving Black people.
Harris, who came out in suffragette white to a soundtrack provided by Mary J. Blige, spoke first in the ticket’s first post-victory address on Saturday evening in Biden’s home state of Delaware, acknowledging with radiance and resolve the historic nature of her victory and the role Black women have played, once again, in helping to save democracy. Biden promised to heal national divisions, extending his hand to those who voted for President Trump.
Biden’s reaching out to those who oppose him is what many took away from his remarks; the image of president-elect Joe Biden and vice president elect Kamala Harris, both wearing masks, bumping fists is what will remain etched in my mind. That image would not exist without the organizing of Black political and grassroots radicals, led by Black women such as Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors.
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We best acknowledge the profound organizational and moral work these women have accomplished by putting forth aggressive anti-facist policies promoting intersectional justice. This means not only ending systems of punishment, segregation, voter suppression and poverty that marginalize Black communities. It requires erecting new structures, transforming old institutions and reimagining what democracy looks like when Black people are not purposefully left behind.
Black folk, in the face of sophisticated voter suppression and intimidation went to the polls with grit, determination, and grace.
They deserve to be rewarded for their efforts – with a healthier, more vibrant and deeply empathetic democracy for all. Black voters have led us down this path. Now the nation and the Biden-Harris administration need to listen, learn and take action.
