Republicans: Why They Find It Difficult to Attract Black Voters

The Durham County Republican Party fails
in their attempt to attract Black American voters.
Photo Credit: Blogging Blue: Blogging Liberally in the Badger State

It would seem to be the worst of all situations for a population is to be taken for granted by one political party while being written off by another one, yet this is the situation that we, as Black Americans have found ourselves in over the past 40 years.

The Democrats seem to think that they have a lock on the Black vote, offering little of substance to break down the barriers that have pushed Blacks to the margins of American society. At the same time, the Republicans think that nothing they do will win them a significant amount of Black votes, so they don't even seem to try.

Neither Black Americans nor Republicans would seem to benefit from this situation, as conditions in Black communities continue to deteriorate, following the Great Recession of 2007-2010, and as the Republican Party increasingly relies on a shrinking pool of aging white male voters to keep afloat.

Why is this? How did this situation come about? What can be done about it?

A Brief History of the Republican Party and Black Americans

The Republican Party was founded in the middle of 19th century. One of its strongest passions, at that time, was to abolish slavery, which was based on the ideology of White supremacy and exploitation of cheap labor. During most of that century people who were involved in movements for labor rights and an end to racial oppression tended to support the Republican Party, but all of that changed by the middle of the 20th century, when their competitors, the Democrats, began to support legislation to end racial discrimination and promote the right of workers to organize.

At that time many Democrats were White Southerners who were deeply committed to White supremacy. As Northern liberals in the Democratic Party began to win victories in changing the party’s official position on racial equality, those who supported White supremacy migrated to the Republican Party and the Republicans, hungry for more voters, gladly took them in.

In 1964 the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, a candidate who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ended racial segregation in public accommodations, to become president of the United States. Goldwater lost in a landslide, but the Goldwater campaign sent a clear message to both Black Americans and White supremacists about where the Republicans were headed.

In 1968 the Republicans stepped up their attempts to attract White voters in both the North and the South who opposed racial desegregation of schools, employment and neighborhoods. This trend continued, and expanded to include fear and hostility toward undocumented non-White immigrants during the 1990s, and Muslims in the 21st century.

As a result, the single most notable characteristic of the Republican Party today is its lack of racial and religious diversity.

A study conducted by Gallup Polling service, in 2013, verified by other studies on political affiliation in America, illustrates the situation clearly:

89% of the Republican Party is composed of non-Hispanic Whites, 6% of Republicans are Hispanics, and only 2% of Republicans are Non-Hispanic Blacks.

The Democrats are far more inclusive, in contrast, with 60% of Democrats being Non-Hispanic Whites, 22% of Democrats are Non-Hispanic Blacks and 13% of Democrats are Hispanics.

Moreover, in the past few presidential elections the Republican Party lost every single minority category, including Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, and Jews.

The Republican Party has increasingly become insular and self-segregated over the years. This is happening as the United States is becoming more and more diverse. Some see in this a pattern of reaction within the Republican Party against the changing demographics of America.

What Issues Are Most Important to Black Americans Today? 

While most Black Americans would agree that the election of 2008 was a watershed moment in the struggle for an end to the ideology of White supremacy, they are more reluctant than whites to believe that racism is no longer a significant factor in everyday American life.

They point to criminal justice statistics that suggest that Black Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and nearly four times as likely to experience force during encounters with the police as white Americans for the same offenses and under similar circumstances.

Moreover, they point to a militarized police force patrolling African American neighborhoods and arrests of Blacks for minor offenses that would merely generate a warning in other communities.

They also point to increased measures to make it more difficult for Black Americans to vote, which have escalated since the Supreme Court weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Above all, they point to continuing racial disparities in both schooling and employment in the United States.

In schooling they point out that Black students attend schools with high concentrations of inexperienced teachers in contrast to their White counterparts.

In terms of employment, they note that Black unemployment is roughly twice as high as the rate of white unemployment no matter what level of educational attainment an African American has achieved. They also point out that African American youth unemployment, in real terms, is over 50%.

Why Black Americans Vote for Democrats

Black Americans, as a group, are far from being a monolithic population. We have many different perspectives within our population and many different interests. Rather than being a single, coherent community, Black Americans may more accurately be described as being a community of communities. There isn’t even an approximation of a single agenda for Black Americans, as a bloc, to rally around and support. There is also no reason to assume that the interests and concerns of Black Americans are significantly different from those of white Americans of similar socio-economic backgrounds.

The fact that Black American voters are overwhelmingly Democrats has more to do with the Republican Party’s post-Second World War history of courting former Dixiecrats, and cultivating white suburban fear of an increasingly non-white inner-city, than it has to do with any coordinated strategy on the part of Black Americans.

The fear and racial resentment that seems to fuel much of the discourse in the Republican presidential debates in 2016 — conflating Islam with terrorism, and African-Americans and Latinos with crime, reflects the self-segregation and insularity of that political Party. The Republicans have become a party of racial and social insularity whose composition does not remotely resemble that of the nation as a whole. This is a problem which they must address if they ever expect to attract more Black Americans.

Related Posts on this topic:

Sections of this blog post were excerpted and revised from my posts on this topic that appeared in Africa on the Blog: "Ben Carson, African Americans and the Republican Party." and "Obama and Trump: What Black Nationalists and White Supremacists Get Wrong."

Related blog posts:

Africa on the Blog: "The Marginalization of Black Americans"

Transcendence Journal: "Black Capitalism and the Future of African American Communities,"

Africa on the Blog: "New African American Voters Determined Not to be Taken for Granted"

Africa on the Blog: Decoding African American Support for Hillary Clinton