In early polls of the 2020 Democratic presidential field, Biden has held a strong lead among African American voters—an outcome that, to some, might seem surprising when two black senators, Harris and Cory Booker, are also running. While progressives on Twitter were appalled by Biden’s speech, many in the Congressional Black Caucus downplayed the former vice president’s comments or defended him outright. Nor did the dustup hurt Biden at the grassroots level, either. In a recent report from South Carolina, a key primary state where nearly two-thirds of Democratic-primary voters are black, CNN found that support for the former vice president was holding steady. [...]
The long history of discrimination against African Americans, at the polls and elsewhere, has shaped voting behavior in more distinctive ways. Black voters have been highly pragmatic: They have typically favored candidates who are known quantities over fresh faces with shorter records, and in primary campaigns, have deliberated long and hard over who’s most likely to win in the general election. [...]
Exit polls showing that more than 90 percent of black voters now support Democratic candidates in midterm and general elections fuel the myth of a monolithic black vote and conceal the diversity of opinion within the African American community. The partisan skew is easily explained. While 31 percent of African Americans identify as liberal, 42 percent identify as moderates, and 22 percent as conservative, nearly all of these voters have ascertained that the Republican Party is less interested in federal protections of civil rights than the Democratic Party. Indeed, African Americans’ enduring quest for stability and certainty on civil rights helps explain a cautious voting pattern in primary races as well. When a candidate has had a long relationship with black America, the risk of any unpleasant surprises on civil-rights issues is lower. [...]
Political solidarity is not an innate characteristic of black America; it is a survival tactic that adverse experience has reinforced time and time again. Chattel slavery and Jim Crow paid little mind to the specific talents, abilities, and aspirations of each black person. Simply being a member of the race was sufficient to be disenfranchised and oppressed. Black Americans have been made acutely aware that their individual fates are linked to the wellbeing of the whole group. As political scientists have documented, social norms in the community encourage African Americans to look out for one another and ostracize those who don’t. During presidential campaigns, politics is a major topic in what the political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry has described as “everyday talk”— the lively conversations that occur in African American common spaces such as barbershops, salons, churches, neighborhoods, and now, black Twitter. After all this deliberation, African American voters typically end up backing the same candidate—which maximizes their electoral power.
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