Webinar: 2020 US Elections – Race and Inequality

Emily Harding

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining this important conversation on Race and Inequality in the US Elections. My name is Emily Harding. I’m a Senior Manager here at Chatham House. My colleague, Champa Patel, was due to join us, but was unable to in the end, but I am honoured to be here with you and our esteemed panel. We have with us today some very accomplished academics. We have Professor Kimberley Johnson, who’s a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, Dr Keneshia Grant, who’s an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Howard University, and Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur, who’s an Assistant – an Associate Professor of American History at Brandeis. So, thank you all for being here.

We are having this discussion now because race and inequality are a centrepiece of the US election that is going to be taking place just shy of three weeks from now. Of course, since May 2020 and the killing of George Floyd kicked off protests globally, and the renewed emphasis that it brought on the lack of progress for improving race relations in the US. This was also compounded by the disproportionate impact that COVID has been having on minority communities as well.

In a poll in August of this year, Pew Research found that 52% of voters were deeming race as very important in this election. So, in this conversation, we can really pick apart how that is manifesting, what that might mean for this election, and what those dynamics look like on the ground. So, I have a lot of questions for our panellists, and I know that you do too, so please use that ‘Q&A’ box to post your questions there. We will get to them just as soon as we can.

The – but please don’t use the ‘hand raised’ function or the ‘Chat’ box because those are disabled for this event. But the ‘Q&A’ box is where we’re going to be looking for what’s on your mind. This event is on the record. It is not under the Chatham House Rule, just as a flag for everyone. So, we’re going to get started. We’ll have, as I said, a few questions for our panellists to start. We’ll have a bit of a conversation that we get going, and we’ll be bringing in your questions, as they come along.

So, thank you again to all of you for being with us. We’re really honoured to have you here and, again, you know, this is an absolutely huge issue that has been a, you know, put its signature all across 2020. And I think what we’d like to start with is just having a look at how have the Presidential candidates engaged with the conversation on racism and inequality in the US? What have you seen about how they’ve positioned themselves, in relation to these issues? And I’ll start with you, Dr Grant, please.

Dr Keneshia N. Grant

Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to have this conversation with you, I think for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons I’m happy to be having the conversation is that I think it’s necessary to remind people of what has happened. 2020’s the year of a lot, and so, I think that it might be possible for some people to have forgotten that George Floyd was murdered, and that we were globally protesting his death. And so, I’m happy to be able to talk about that kind of stuff in this space.

In terms of the candidates, I think we have one who’s dealing with race more directly than another. I think that Donald Trump is kind of doing race. He went to Sanford, Florida. I’m a Floridian, and so I remember Trayvon Martin when I think about a person showing up in Sanford, Florida, to do a political rally. And I, as a Black person, it seems like he wants to remember trauma that I have experienced, and maybe some of his followers want to celebrate that trauma. And so, in that way, it’s like he’s doing race but not doing it directly and I think that’s a thing that’s happening, in the various parts of his campaign so far.

I think that the Biden camp seems to be doing race a bit more directly. There was a period that we might take for granted at this moment where Black women across the nation were rooting very hard for a Black woman to be placed on this ticket as a function of a support for Black women, and so I think that is happening. I think that he is acknowledging some of the things that are happening with the disproportionate response to coronavirus, and a number of other things that are just more direct than I see from the Trump side.

Emily Harding

Brilliant, thank you. So, the direct and indirect nature of their relationship to the issue. Professor Johnson, what thoughts do you have to add to that?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

I mean, I think the direct and indirect aspect of it’s really interesting. I think what I would add is at least for Trump, and I think just by detention, the Republicans, I think for the last couple of decades, there’s been this way of addressing race that cloaks inequality within sort of free market kind of rhetoric. So, we believe in equal opportunity, and that would sort of be the – or free markets, and that would kind of be the way in which race is addressed. I think that kind of rhetoric is just gone, and so I think it’s much more – I think the language is much more directly appealing to certain kinds of racial coding.

I think, on the other hand, what is interesting about Biden is that, in many ways, he’s continued to be sort of a traditional Democrat, in the sense that race is sort of fair, and sort of indirectly acknowledged, it’s symbolically perhaps in the case of Senator Harris, but also, in sort of this nodding kind of silent, “Well, you know, we’ve got you.” And so, it’s interesting that in the case of 2020 when race, especially during the summer, was front and central, both candidates are talking about race, without really talking about racial inequality and trauma, racial violence.

Emily Harding

Right, so, the talking around the issue rather than dealing with it head-on. And, Dr Wright-Rigueur, what are your thoughts?

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

So, I want to echo what, you know, Keneshia and Kim have said already in this conversation. But I think I also want to add in maybe a provocative point of view, which is that I actually think that Donald Trump is the race candidate. I think that he’s been quite explicit about not just dabbling, but really engaging in White identity politics, and that has been one of the signatures of his Presidential, not just campaigns since 2015, but really his Presidential administration, and the promise of a second Trump administration.

Now, there are lots of ways that I think Donald Trump tries to – you know, the President tries to neutralise any attacks that he might be, say, a racist or a bigot or a xenophobe or something like that, and he’s doing it right now with his, you know, superficial outreach efforts to African-Americans that we’ve seen in a lot of commercials, that we saw at the Republican National Convention, that we’ve seen in the unveiling of the so-called Platinum Plan into Black America. But I think the fact remains, and this picks up a bit on what Keneshia and Kim mentioned earlier, is that, you know, this is not the dog-whistle politics of old. This is a megaphone. These are, you know, in a lot of ways, the closest candidate I would call – say it’s to is Ronald Reagan, but even Ronald Reagan was much more polished on his racial politics than Donald Trump is.

So I think that puts us in a really interesting – and puts Democrats in a particularly provocative place because you’re battling a candidate, you’re fighting with a candidate that addresses race, but not in the way – in identity politics, but not in the way that we would imagine Presidential candidates or historically Presidential candidates have done. And so, I do think we’ve seen these moments, some have been clumsy, some have been really explicit, where the Trump campaign has addressed race head-on. We saw this with the Executive Order on diversity training and race most recently, right? The comments from Mike Pence in the debate about systemic racism not existing, not being a real thing. So, we’ve seen a lot of this over and over again.

And then I do want to echo what I think the other panellists have said about Joe Biden, which is that he’s running a traditional Democratic campaign around – centralised around race. We may say that it’s different because there is a Black woman on a ticket, and that does matter. It matters profoundly. But even in, I think, her performance of race politics, and I want to use ‘performance’ here very deliberately, her performance of race politics is really not that different from Barack Obama in 2008 and 2016. So, I think we should really investigate what that means, particularly in the midst of not just a, you know, a racial pandemic, but also a health pandemic as well, and the two are interconnected.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, so, you kind of have the traditional approach from the Biden team, and sort of, you know, a race narrative on the Trump side that is kind of missing the point and – but maybe not missing the point at the same time, depending on what his goals might be. So I’m curious, I mean, how would you say that the Black Lives Matter movement is changing the narrative, and how has that – you know, ‘cause there was a lot of activity, particularly over the summer, you know, after the George Floyd killing, and there’s also now kind of this thought about protest fatigue. So, let’s start with you, Professor Johnson. How would you approach the Black Lives Matter movement now, and how would you characterise its influence on the election?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

I think what’s really interesting and I think probably not surprising to Historians is the way in which the protests elicited a lot of attention and a lot of concern, particularly among White Americans, and then, a couple of months later, we see this sort of decrease in concern. And that’s certainly something that we saw in the 1960s, where civil rights sort of emerges as a topic, an issue that is of importance, and then, six months, eight or so later, it’s not so important.

But I think what is interesting to note, both back then and now, is that it doesn’t – when the interest dies down, it doesn’t necessarily go back to the previous moment, that there is a greater attention to issues of racial inequality or, in the case of George Floyd, issues of policing, and whether or not policing is, and to use the words of Joe Biden, “law, order and justice,” right? So, I think that that’s one thing to keep in mind is that even though interests may have gone down, it doesn’t go back to indifference or that it rested on before.

And I think the second part of what I would say is that even his ability, Trump’s ability to use law, the trope of law and order, and to rail against the ideal – idea of defunding the police, again, I think is a sign that in fact, Black Lives Matter did change the agenda in a way, that you can’t talk about defunding the police or even law and order, without acknowledging that you want to do certain things, and how you’re going to deploy ‘law and order’.

Emily Harding

So, conversations are available now that would not have been available otherwise.

Professor Kimberley Johnson

Right.

Emily Harding

Absolutely. Great, and Dr Grant?

Dr Keneshia N. Grant

Yeah, I think the fact that a Vice Presidential Candidate in Mike Pence is even saying that systemic racism doesn’t exist is a direct response to that work. I think the other thing I was thinking about is this idea of protest fatigue, and I just want to – I think, to be clear about the idea that not everybody has that luxury. And so, when I’m thinking about Black voters, I think we are tired just in general, but I think the protest fatigue might look a little different for us because it’s a constant onslaught of things, than it might look for the general public.

And I think Professor Johnson is right that for the general public or for White Americans, we don’t go all the way back to where we were, and that we can have conversations and have some kind of basic understanding of a baseline being different as a function of Black Lives Matter protest happening. And so, I think for sure, they shape not only what the President does and how the President responds, but I think it shapes the Democratic Party too. It doesn’t shape it as much as I want it too, right, but I don’t think that a Kamala Harris nomination is possible, without all the things that follow from George Floyd. It remains to be seen what she’s going to look like as a Politician. I think it’s right that’s she’s going to look more like Obama than she does any kind of radical person who we might’ve been hoping for if you are on the far left. But I again, don’t think that that happens without a Black Lives Matter conversation.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, absolutely, so some very clear manifestations directly from the influence of the protests. I mean, I remember when – I’m sure we all remember when the VP pick, there was kind – they were kind of helicoptering over it, which felt like forever, you know. And there was that very clear message at a certain point that it has to be a woman of colour that takes that spot, and it – so, yeah, I agree that that’s something that’s a direct reflection of the movements from over the summer. And Dr Wright-Rigueur?

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

Sure, so I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind. So, the first is to, one, give Black Lives Matter as a movement, right, as this broad kind of – not simply just in one organisation, but as a broad smattering of organisations and institutions committed to, you know, the uplift of African-American communities and police reform their due credit. One of the things that we know about the 2016 race is that Black Lives Matter as a movement was deeply influential, perhaps not in the way that we imagine it to be though. We do know that Donald Trump used Black Lives Matter as a rhetorical punching bag on the road, and that the 2016 campaign and the election of Donald Trump had a profound impact on Black Lives Matter because it forced these various organisations to adjust their strategies, right?

There’s – it’s one thing to say, you know, we’re pushing, essentially, the Democratic Party, we’re pushing them further left or we’re pushing them. It’s another thing to say we’re pushing a brick wall, right? But I do think those adjustments and the transformations that we see in Black Lives Matter, and the sustainability and the resilience of this movement is actually very much responsible for the kinds of transformations that we see happening almost immediately. The fact that, you know, we can say that the movement around Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, is the largest mass movement that the world has seen, right? 26 million plus participants is really important. I also think we can talk about how Black Lives Matter has influenced politics, not simply on this kind of large-scale level, but on, like, the micro and the local level, right?

So, we’ve seen the influence of Black Lives Matter, in various local races, right, various state races, the kind of candidates endorsed by Black Lives Matter, which is a transformation that Black Lives Matter moved into in the aftermath of 2016. So, I do think that a lot of the kind of power politics and power plays that we see happening that seems very sudden in the aftermath of, say, George Floyd’s death, are actually the result of compounded movements that have been going on really, not just since 2013/2014, but even building on movements before that.

Emily Harding

Absolutely helpful to kind of put it in that historical context. So, I mean, some of the – some of what we’ve just heard is, you know, maybe some hinting at, you know, Kamala Harris might be more of an Obama, that Biden is a bit more traditional in his approach, in terms of race relations and inequality. How much – there’s been talk about both of these candidates, and whether it be the 94 Crime Bill that is kind of coming back to haunt Biden a little bit now, or some of Kamala Harris’s previous decisions in her previous elected offices. How much do you think those are going to affect things in the race? Let’s start with you, Dr Grant.

Dr Keneshia N. Grant

It’s tough. I think that most folks are kind of clear about where they are. I think they know who they want to support. I think the question is, will they turn out? And I think the question is, will the folks on the left feel comfortable to turn out putting these things aside? Is the – it seems like the Biden-Harris camp is trying to contextualise the 94 Crime Bill and contextualise Harris’s decisions. And I’m sympathetic to some of that, but I don’t know that everybody is sympathetic to that. And so, I don’t think that it’s – there’s a question about will or won’t they support Biden-Harris. I think there’s a question about will or won’t they turn out to vote?

Emily Harding

Which, as we all know, is a crucial question in these really tight races. Professor Johnson, do you have any additional thoughts?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

I think what I would add to that is – and also, I think, to build on Dr Wright-Rigueur’s remarks, I think one of the things that’s happened because – not because of, but I think certainly alongside of Black Lives Matters from the very beginning has been, I think, a generational replacement in Politicians at – particularly at the local and state level. And I think those are the folks who have been leading the charge, in terms of undoing some of the harms of the 94 – the Crime Act. And so, I think, in some ways, those folks and those movements on the ground have perhaps given Biden and Harris a little bit of space because change has started to happen or at least discussions are happening about how to repair some of that damage that occurred because of the Crime Bill. So, I think they’re not being wholly held responsible for it because I think change has started to happen or at least discussions have started to happen before they started their campaign.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, absolutely, thank you, and, Dr Wright-Rigueur, what would you have to add?

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

So, you know, just very quickly, I think to echo what the other panellists have said, is that part of where we see the impact of this is with turnout, right? That’s what matters. In fact, you know, we’re at the stage of the election where it’s not about, you know, oh, am I undecided, right? This whole thing about undecided voters. It’s about who can turn out more people to vote for their preferred candidate of choice. That’s it. And I think one of the areas, part of why we’re not seeing the kind of, you know, pushback that you saw with Hillary Clinton in 2016 is, one, people have Trump fatigue, right, particularly Black people who have experienced a very different kind of experience, under the Trump administration and the Trump years. But also, two, a lot of those things played out in the primaries, right? And so, we saw a lot of this conversation happen, and happen vigorously, where it needed to happen during the primaries. It’s part of the reason why Kamala Harris is not, you know, number one on the ticket. But it’s also, I think, part of the negotiation that happens, with these generational shifts and these – the generational divides between, say, older and younger people of colour.

But the one area where I will say, in addition to turnout where something like this could matter, is that we’ve seen this really kind of small group of Black male voters that have dropped off in – including under the Obama years, right? But it really show – doesn’t show up until 2016. And we’ve seen the Trump campaign try and take advantage of that, not and necessarily in terms of attracting Black voters, right, but instead encouraging Black male voters not to vote at all in swing states. And I think that’s an area that’s ripe for really trying to tease it out, particularly in the gender differences because we know it doesn’t work on Black women, right? But there’s something there that even if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win, I think one of the conversations we have to have and we have to really think about is that, you know, why is it that Black men, the small cross-section of not insignificant Black men, right, are alienated from two-party politics, and how are political campaigns taking advantage of that?

Emily Harding

Yeah, very important questions about both voter turnout, but also potential voter suppression, and I want to turn to a question. Forgive me if I’m not pronouncing this very well, but Tangy Morgan, who has a question for us along those lines. So, Tangy, we’re going to invite you to unmute and ask your question, please.

Tangy Morgan

Okay. Hi, it’s Tangy Morgan…

Emily Harding

Tangy, okay.

Tangy Morgan

…and I am a member of the St James’s Roundtable at Chatham House. My question is really, although this discussion has really, you know, centred on the Presidential candidate and Vice Presidency, more wanted to hear your thoughts around the state elections and, you know, the blatant voter suppression that’s going on there because, as we know, the down-ticket candidates in elections are just as important if not more important because of the seats that we are needing for the Senate. So, if you could maybe express some thoughts around that particular aspect of the election?

Emily Harding

Thanks very much for your question, Tangy. Dr Wright-Rigueur, would you like to address this?

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

First of all, to start off, I’ll say that, you know, the question of voter suppression, particularly in this election, is one that is extremely salient. And I think, you know, just before I jump into the actual logistics or importance of voter suppression, I do want to say that the combination of voter suppression and voter depression is one that is really quite powerful. And then, in fact, that when you add in voter depression, which is much harder to tease out, much harder to identify, and much harder to get people to rally against, it actually is quite insidious the kind of damage that can be done on state and local levels.

But, just quickly, I think what we’re seeing is that, on the one hand, the question of voter fraud has been – or this – the alleged question of voter fraud has been one that Republicans have been trying to hammer home for at least, you know, the last decade, not just the last, you know, four years, but really the last decade. I think in combination with questions of gerrymandering, it’s provided a really important way of delegitimising, you know, Democratic norms of voting in participatory politics. But added to that, I think we are seeing, right, this kind of idea of voter suppression come to life, but in different forms. So it’s not always voter intimidation, right, where people stand in the lines and with pitchforks and things like that, or where we have, you know, poll watchers, which we saw, you know, recently Donald Trump called for an army of poll watchers to show up at the polls on election day. You can’t do that.

It’s not simply that, but it’s other forms of suppression. So, for example, one of the – you know, this – 2016 was the first election without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. And we’ve seen consistently that political parties have tried to chip away at that, at every level, but – and particularly at the state level. We’ve seen the North Carolina GOP has consistently gotten in trouble around voter suppression efforts. We’ve also seen the closure of voting polls, you know, hundreds if not thousands of voter polls across states, right? All of these things matter, right?

When you’re in Georgia, and you show up, and there’s a six-hour line just to cast a ballot, right, an early ballot, that is a problem with democracy. And so I do think this has, you know, again, this will be the second election, second major Presidential election that we’re seeing without the protection, the full protections of the Voter Rights Act, but it’s also the second election that we’ll see where we have to deal with things like foreign interference and domestic interference by political parties, and all of that really does matter.

Emily Harding

Thank you for that terrifying take. It is really a terrifying situation that we could be facing in November, in less than three weeks, as I said. But thank you for that. Any – Professor Kimberley Johnson, what’s your take on that?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

I think that it is truly terrifying, but I think this also signals, I think, a shift in party organisation and strategy. I think we have to, I mean, at least the Democratic Party really has to focus on bolstering state-level organisations to protect the vote, essentially, and be in contact with election boards, and really think about the relationship of the party, the national party with state, electing folks to the State Legislature. And all this is also again, sort of put into danger because of the census, which was just shutdown essentially and so, that is also going to be, I think, a huge issue. But I think from my sort of sense of looking at voting during the Jim Crow, early – late Jim Crow era, I mean, it really is interesting the ways in which groups like the League of Women Voters really worked very hard at trying to at least open up the vote, at the state level, before the Voting Rights Act was enacted.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, and do you have a sense of – you mentioned the readiness of local – of state parties to secure the vote. Do you have any sense of how ready those state parties are to do so?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

Well, I think that this is a huge issue, and it really varies by the state. I mean, I live in a blue state, so it’s not particularly an issue. But I think that particularly in red states where the Democratic Party has been struggling, there’s a lot for that Democratic Party to do, and voting access is simply one of those issues.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, yeah, it’s a really varied net and I guess hard to get a handle on. But, Dr Grant, voter suppression, depression, tell us your thoughts.

Dr Keneshia N. Grant

I think to pick up on the place where you just left off, there’s not just a question of can the states organise themselves to prevent voter suppression, but do they have the will to do that? It’s not clear that all of these places have State Legislatures that are interested in opening the vote, and so some people won’t do that. But to kind of think about a concrete example for the member who has – who had the question, I, as I mentioned, am from Florida. Andrew Gillum, who is a friend of mine, runs for Governor. He loses by 30,000 votes and so, I have to ask questions about his race and about Stacey Abrams’ race where people in Georgia are reporting that the election machines give a printout that is different, that has a different gubernatorial candidate listed as their preference from their actual preference. And I have to wonder what Florida looks like, in October of 2020, with Andrew Gillum as its Governor, or Georgia looks like with Stacey Abrams as its Governor. And I’m thinking about my sister, who is a Teacher, who has to go back to work, who is sitting in a classroom right now.

I live in Washington, D.C., where they are not in classrooms, but I can imagine that the decision from the Governor or the ability of the President to intimidate the Governor of the state of Florida about whether they’re going to have class or not is going to be different. And so absolutely, those state and local things matter, and they have consequences. And we have to be asking ourselves questions about not only do states have the capacity to stop suppression, to help us, do parties have the ability to help us through our depression, as Dr Wright-Rigueur says? Which I think is, like, yes, I hadn’t thought about that, but that makes perfect sense, and then, you know, what do we about it? I’m thinking about my sister, who’s a schoolteacher, but, you know, we could be thinking about water in Flint or any other number of hyper-local things.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, so is the will there to actually protect the vote as it stands? I was listening to NPR this morning, and hearing about ballot boxes that the Republican Party there were putting out to collect ballots, and the Head of the Party there saying that it’s absolutely legal to do so. And of course, the Secretary of State of the state of California saying it is absolutely not legal. But that kind of confusion, I think, is going to be a centrepiece of the election this year, perhaps more than others.

So, we have a great question from Jeremy Ross that I’m going to come to in a moment about, kind of, looking at the, you know, Black minority vote that might be more socially Conservative. But before we go there, so, Jeremy, I’ll be with you in just a minute, Professor Johnson brought up an interesting note about the census. So, can you say a little bit more about what’s going on with the census, and why it’s significant to this issue in the race?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

Well, I think the census, for the first time in decades, has become incredibly politicised, and so, there were earlier moments, in US history, when the census was politicised because of the issue of representation. Certainly, in the early 20^th Century as the country became more urban and less rural, there were real struggles over the census because folks from more rural states and more rural districts knew that they were going to be losing seats in the House. I think today, the effect is just of the census on politics is huge. I mean, it ranges from early attempts to add a citizenship question to depress, again, thinking about that notion of depression, to depress literally the number of people who would be willing to fill out the census form, to reducing the number of people particularly, I think, in states that are not seen as or places that are not seen as open to Republican Party, and so, reducing those numbers. And then also, I think, the census is very much linked to funding. And so, if places that typically gain more funding because of their population were to lose that funding, that funding would go to other places, and I think, in that sense, particularly to perhaps Republican-leaning spaces.

So I think that, you know, the census is this odd thing in which we now recognise that parts of the Government can be and have been politicised, and this has really, I think, blasted away some of the norms around sort of professionalism, about objectivity, about neutrality that permeated a lot of the American bureaucracy, and I think that has really been challenged by the Trump administration.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, so there’s so much at stake there, in terms of, you know, funds that get delivered to various groups, and political representation that can happen, from this point on where it’s due to this. Dr Grant, anything to add about the census, in particular?

Dr Keneshia N. Grant

Yeah, I think I want to add that we – sometimes we might think of it as a national thing. But I teach at a local government, so I’m always thinking about the state and local ramifications, and I think it’s an example of the Republican Party’s long game, and so we have to worry. The Electoral College is inherently, like, unfair. The fact that we have a Senate is inherently unfair and not democratic in its most – in a form that would be closest to pure, and so then, we layer on top of that the census, and that we didn’t necessarily count the people who live in densely populated places. And that has impacts on what our most democratic place, the House of Representatives, looks like, but also, on the State Legislatures.

And so, if we’re asking questions about, well, how could it be the case that the state of Georgia almost elects Stacey Abrams, but we have a Legislature that doesn’t reflect that? And we have that happening in all these states. We have these Legislatures that are hyper-Republican, and it doesn’t seem to represent the people. Well, that comes down to decisions that folks made about how they would draw these lines. And so, I think the fact that the census is being tampered with here is problematic on a national level, problematic for resources, but also has this very problematic thing that has consequences for our state and local resources and representation.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, and to your point about the Electoral College and the unfairness of distribution there, there’s a stat I saw recently that the Republicans in the Senate, which are the majority, actually represent 11 million fewer people than the minority of the Senate. So, I mean, just those kinds of things are decided with this very important, you know, census that’s happening this year.

Professor Kimberley Johnson

I just want to jump in really quickly that it’s really – it’s interesting in the last couple of weeks that there’s also been this message, I think, pushed by a number of prominent Republicans that we’re a republic and not a democracy. So, I think, in some ways, there is this sense that, well, yeah, sure, we are not representing the majority, but that’s okay because we’re a republic and not a democracy. So, I just wanted to add that.

Emily Harding

Getting it in on a technicality there, yeah. So, Dr Wright-Rigueur, what are your thoughts on the census, on the disparity potential involved in what’s happening with that now?

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

Sure, so I think my colleagues have covered it quite well. But I just wanted to add one quick point, which is to say that the decision to not to extend this census, right, so to end it at a certain point in time actually came from the Judiciary, and it came from judicial figures who had been appointed by the Trump administration. And so, one of the lasting legacies and impacts of the Trump administration, irrespective of if Trump is re-elected or if Joe Biden ends up winning the race, is just how much the Judiciary has transformed, how the Judiciary’s decision actually affects people on the ground and these major, you know, these kind of major formerly apolitical areas, but that also, in terms of people on the ground, that has impact. And we saw this with, I think, with Dr Johnson and Dr Grant’s examples, has very real-life impacts for everyday ordinary people, including people of colour. So, you know, when we talk about elections have consequences, this is what we’re talking about.

Emily Harding

Absolutely, absolutely, so we have a couple of questions. So, Jeremy is not able to come on mic, but his question is quite similar to one from another of our members online, Mustafa. But I’m just going to say this out loud ‘cause they’re a bit similar. So, Mustafa’s saying, “Can you help understand what arguments Black voters who support Trump are saying, and how might you counter these arguments?” And Jeremy’s question was kind of, as I mentioned before, around, you know, “Black voters who might be more socially Conservative, and therefore wouldn’t identify necessarily with the platform of a Democratic Party and Biden and Harris.” So, Professor Johnson, you took off your mute very quickly there, so I wonder if you have something to add on this?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

Well, I mean, I think this probably builds on something that Dr Wright-Rigueur mentioned earlier, which is Black men. I think that is not only are there Black men who perhaps are not voting, but there are Black men who, for a variety of reasons, are attracted to Donald Trump. I think that there’s something about his sort of presentation, his masculinity, the idea of individualism, that attracts – seems to attract a certain population, and that’s across, I think, all population groups. But I think particularly for a subset of African-American men, that’s very appealing. And from some stuff that I’ve seen, it does seem to be appealing to men who are in law enforcement or in the military, so, in places where I think they’re kind of surrounded by these kinds of ideas.

So, I think that – and I think, you know, it’s not necessarily a large number. But I think there are still people who very much vote on the issue of abortion, and that they might otherwise vote for Biden, but abortion is a very – still a very, very important issue for them. So, I think that’s some of – I would say that those are two groups that seem to be kind of leaning towards Trump, for their own particular reasons.

Emily Harding

Thank you, yeah, those single-issue voters can always sneak in there in unusual ways. But, Dr Wright-Rigueur, do you have thoughts to add to this?

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

Sure. So, I should start by saying that in 26 – October 2016, I wrote an article basically explaining who are these Black Trump supporters? So, if you’re interested, please, by all means, you can look it up. I also wrote a book on Race and the Republican Party, and Black people and their relationship to the Republican Party and Conservatism. So, to answer the – but I think it was the first question, which turned into the second question, yes, there are Conservative Black people. They’re about – at any given time there, about one-third of African-Americans self-identify as Conservative. However, that rarely, if ever, translates into partisan support for the Republican Party. And there is a basic reason for that, which is that most African-Americans including those African-Americans who self-identify as Conservative, right, whose policy preferences line up with what we think of conservatism within the Republican Party, say that they will not support a candidate that they believe to be racist. It’s as simple as that, right.

And so, year-after-year-after-year, in fact, decade-after-decade, Republicans really sit down, and they try and figure this out. They say, “Why aren’t we attracting Black evangelicals? Why aren’t we getting, you know, the Black pro-life vote? Why aren’t we getting, you know, Black men who are in,” you know, they’re very rare, “but Black men who are in the top, you know, 10% of income earners?” And the reason is straightforward, which is that the racism, right, or racialised kind of politics of the Republican Party bars greater participation from Black people.

Now, with that said, when we think about Black Trump supporters, the vast majority of whom are men, it’s exactly like President – like Professor Johnson mentioned, which is that many of them are attracted to this idea of individualism. Many of them are attracted to the idea of, you know, a kind of machismo or masculinity, hyper-masculinity exhibited by Trump. But then, also, too, one of the defining features of these individuals is a dissatisfaction with electoral politics at large, right? So, they say, “The Democratic Party has failed me.” Now, they may not kind of differentiate or decide how the party has failed them, but they also point to the fact that they feel like, say, electoral politics at large has failed them. And so, what do they do, this very small cross-section? They turn to the Republican Party as the solution to their issues.

One other thing that I want to throw out, many of them are not necessarily members of the NRA, but are Second Amendment supporters, and I think that does matter as well.

Emily Harding

Right, right, thank you. So, as we are getting very near out of time here, we have one last question that I’m going to put to you, Dr Grant. I’ll start with you here, and I think this kind of frames, you know, where do we go from here very well, which is what steps can or should the next administration take to show that they are taking protestor concerns seriously? So maybe inherent in the question is assuming that it’s a Biden administration. I’m not sure. But, Dr Grant, what would you like to see happen with the next administration?

Dr Keneshia N. Grant

I think the – do you want to know what I want pie in the sky or do I – what do I think is going to happen? I think the Biden administration’s already fundamentally at odds with what protestors want. Protestors want to abolish the police. They want to defund the police and Joe Biden has already said that he will increase funding for the law enforcement. And so, I don’t really know what he could do, as the President, to respond to some of these issues, without upsetting the balance of kind of what folks were looking for. I think maybe it could be possible to say, I want to increase the number of police on the streets and I’m going to enact some of the ideas that folks have about having a First Responder be a Social Worker or some other person that’s not a Police Officer. But I just am unsure about how they come back from some of the stuff that came out of their campaign.

Emily Harding

Sorry, couldn’t unmute there. So, right, so no easy road, and, Dr Grant, I know that you have another event very shortly, so you may need to drop off. But, Professor Johnson and Dr Wright-Rigueur, what are your thoughts on what you would like to see the next administration do to show that they are taking this seriously? And, Dr Wright-Rigueur, I’ll start with you.

Dr Leah Wright-Rigueur

Sure. So, I think, at one, even though I don’t – I know we don’t have enough time, I think it is useful to think about what would we – what do we aspire to see from the next administration, irrespective of if it’s a Joe, you know, a Biden administration or a Trump administration, because there still is a possibility that there may – Donald Trump may be re-elected to the Presidency. What I think is realistically going to happen is that in a Biden administration that we will exactly see the protestors – the Biden administration sit down and meet with the protestors, and I think it’ll be very, very similar to what we saw in – under the Obama administration. But I would argue that that’s a kind of domestic détente, you know, that it is a neutralising tactic, right, meetings, boards, commissions, organisations that help us assemble a lot of data, really important data, but doesn’t actually necessitate, like, necessitate or open up the kind of change that we want people to see.

I do think the closest that perhaps Biden could get to acting on something, but also acting on what the protestors want is something like the Kerner Commission, right? So the Kerner Commission 1968 comes out with, you know, essentially hundreds of pages of suggestions, which also include, like as Dr Grant mentioned, increasing, say, the number of police in communities, but also, increasing funding to areas of social service, you know, areas of domestic reform, infusing billions of dollars into these communities to take, you know, the response – to re-imagine how we do policing and how these communities are affected, so really addressing institutional issues and systemic issues. I think that’s the – that would be incredible.

And I’d also say, aspirationally, we can hope that the Biden administration fundamentally re-imagines not simply how we’re doing policing, but how the law legislates around issues of policing, so that we don’t have moments like a George Floyd, but also like a Breonna Taylor, right, which was highly – which was, you know, essentially happened because of the law. The law doesn’t have room to actually – to institute fairness into a case like Breonna Taylor’s. So that means fundamentally rethinking how – not just how policing is done, right, and it’s not just about reform or training or cam – body cameras. But it’s fundamentally how the law is implemented, in order to get real justice.

Emily Harding

So, big aspirations, but they might start with that initial meeting of just meeting with the protestors, and bringing them to the White House, and starting there. So, Professor Johnson, what’s your thought on this?

Professor Kimberley Johnson

I mean, I think I probably would have to echo what Dr Grant and Dr Wright-Rigueur said, that I think, should Biden win, I can imagine that the first move would be sort of creating some sort of commission, and at least, at the first run, providing some sort of lip service and some sort of incremental change. I think the real question will be to the extent to which both the activists, Black Lives Matter activists, but also other groups will be able to sort of force more substantive change into the Biden administration. And I think, you know, for a variety of reasons, I think Biden – the Biden campaign is sort of playing things very cautiously because, you know, we’re – we – the election hasn’t happened yet. So, it’ll be interesting whether there might be a sort of an FDR moment in which, suddenly, once the election is over, all sorts of things can be imagined. We’ve had that moment with Obama, and I think the opening wasn’t quite as widespread as we thought. But, you know, one could always hope.

Emily Harding

One can always hope. That is a very good last sentiment to end on. Thank you wholeheartedly to our panellists who joined us and, of course, Dr Grant who had to leave. Well, I should say had to leave on time. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for adding more contour and feel to this discussion. I know that I’ve enormously enjoyed it, and I’m sure that I’m not speaking out of line for our members who greatly appreciate your time as well. Thank you to our members for coming. These events wouldn’t happen without you. Your conversations and your questions drive these, so thank you for coming, thank you for participating, and we hope to see you next time.

We have – this is – this event is part of a series, in advance of the US election, and our next event is going to be on the 21^st of October at 4pm, and this is going to be focusing on how guns and gun control is influencing the debate, the campaigns around the election. So, we’re just taking the small issues, as you can see. But thank you very much. Have a brilliant afternoon, evening, morning, wherever you happen to be, and hope to see you next time. Thank you.