African American women are the workhorses of the Democrats – consistently demonstrating the strongest loyalty to both the party and its individual candidates, both Black and White. According to a Pew Research report, 95 per cent of Black women voted for Joe Biden in 2020 – roughly the same percentage as supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Indeed, led by powerhouse African-American former State Representative Stacey Abrams, Black women were crucial in securing Georgia for Biden in 2020, the first time a Democrat had taken the state in nearly 30 years.
Four years on, Kamala Harris – the first Black woman to receive the democratic nomination – is counting on this cohort to secure her own historic victory. She cannot win without them. But that support – despite early enthusiasm from thousands of Black female voters – is hardly guaranteed.
Earlier this week, a video on X posted with the hashtag #imnotwithher generated nearly three million views. The video featured Black women from across the US – of all ages, hair styles and skin tones – stridently declaring that they will not be voting for Kamala Harris on November 5.
“I am not with her,” they say, “because she is not with me.”
The video, slick yet plain-speaking, was produced by the Trump campaign and makes no effort to hide its “vote-for-me” agenda. But just as with Trump’s first victory, his second could easily depend upon just a handful of voters in just a handful of states – all with sizeable African-American populations.
Polling, for instance, already suggests that Trump could pull in nearly 30 per cent of the total Black vote this year – more than three times the number back in 2020. Black men, in particular, are demonstrating strong support for Trump over his promises to tackle unemployment and other economic issues exacerbated by the pandemic. With so much riding on so few votes, any shift by Black women like the #imnotwithher crowd could ultimately deny Harris that historic turn in the White House.
Much as with Black men, the #imnotwithher ads suggest Black women approve of Trump’s economic focus – as well as his promise to restore law-and-order in America’s crime-ridden inner cities. But beyond mere politics is personality. Even more than Obama – another mixed-raced Democrat from a far Western state – Harris has always been an unlikely “Black” candidate.
The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, Harris’ family – much like my own – is a mash-up of Blacks, Jews and Asians who perfectly encapsulate America’s increasingly multi-culti reality. But the one thing the Harrises are not is conventionally African-American. And Kamala, more than any of them, reflects this politically awkward reality. Harris may be married to a White man, but Black women of her education and economic level actually have the lowest intermarriage rates of any American demographic. As the daughter of immigrants, Harris also has little of the direct familial connection to the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow that inform so many of the issues – from black maternal mortality to reparations for slavery – that have dominated her career.
True, Harris attended a historically Black college and pledged a historically Black sorority. But with her White husband and multi-ethnic parentage, Harris has never been quite like the Black people known by most other Black people. And this, more than anything, may be why those #imnotwithher women believe Harris is not with them.
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