With calls mounting for recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Democrats are paying renewed attention to turnout among Black voters. White liberals like me are quick to decry an “enthusiasm gap” between Black voters in this election and those who showed up to vote in 2008 and 2012. Observers have pointed out that 2012-like numbers among black voters in those states would have given Clinton the win. Our analysis of that shortfall mostly begins and ends with the fact that Barack Obama is Black and Hillary Clinton is not.
Keen as that observation is, it’s a woefully inadequate explanation for lower Black turnout this year – and for Clinton’s loss. It ignores five big reasons in particular:
1. Clinton’s checkered history on race
Clinton is no Obama – and not just because she’s white. Regardless of how much she liked Lemonade, her record on racial equity is troubling. To acknowledge her “super-predator” comment is but to scratch the surface. She uttered that line in support of her husband’s 1994 crime bill, a piece of legislation that is part of the reason his administration was responsible for jailing more Black people than any other. Welfare reform and draconian post-conviction restrictions didn’t help. When approached by protesters during the primary campaign, she talked over them. Bernie didn’t get it either, but he listened – and so he learned. Some are convinced Hillary has, too, but I can’t blame anyone who isn’t.
We White Democrats spent much of the general election campaign calling bullshit on the lesser-of-two-evils narrative. We had a point. One candidate offered an inspiring path forward, the other a burning bag of poop on our collective doorstep. But for Black Americans, as clear as the difference in magnitude might have been, both candidates presented legitimate threats. It’s hard to rally behind the less-scary alternative. For White Democrats to bemoan flagging enthusiasm without acknowledging that is an utter failing of empathy.
2. Mass disenfranchisement by state and local authorities
Even for those who were excited about Clinton, you had to have the franchise to exercise it on her behalf. This year saw massive restriction of voting rights. Republican officials in a number of states reduced the number of polling places open for early voting in predominantly Black communities. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, state authorities expunged hundreds of thousands of black voters from the rolls.
In short, voters in 2008 and 2012 could count on the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, just as voters in all elections since 1965 have. Voters this year couldn’t. No explanation of low turnout is complete without accounting for that.
3. Efforts by Trump and his supporters to intimidate voters
Let’s say you could vote – legally and logistically speaking – and were excited to do so for Clinton. Voting while Black in 2016 was nonetheless potentially scary. It’s true that only small numbers of “observers” heeded Trump’s call to swarm polling places. But when he said that fraud in Pittsburgh and Philly would be the only way he could lose Pennsylvania – and when he exhorted his followers to watch for “you know what I mean” – I’d venture that most Black Pennsylvanians knew exactly what he meant.
White voters can walk up to a poll without worrying that everyone knows that 90 percent of people who look like them would vote a certain way. That makes us safer. Klan members and neo-Nazis publicly pledged to assemble at polling places. White observers ought to be awfully careful about evaluating excitement to vote when voting entails risks we can’t fully imagine.
4. The fact that racism is less surprising when you deal with it every day
Some Black voters who were excited about Clinton, who retained the franchise, and who could vote safely might not have been as indignant about Trump’s racism as White Democrats. They overwhelmingly dislike it, of course. But polling shows they’re less likely to judge harshly a friend who voted for him. By virtue of being more accustomed to the daily realities of racism, Black voters may be simply less surprised by Trump’s brand of it, according to Steve Phillips of the Center for American Progress. For many White folks, Trump’s bigotry comes as a reality check. Black people are more likely to inhabit reality already. That too, merits inclusion in any analysis of the “enthusiasm gap.”
5. The majority of White votes that went to Trump
White turnout beat 2012 numbers, but White people voted for the other candidate. White Democrats’ energy is better spent talking to our Trump-voting cousins for 2018 and 2020 than it is showing up pm Black people’s doorsteps and asking for trust in the party’s candidate only to disappear for another four years. Converting a Republican vote has double the impact on the gap in the outcome than does getting a 2016 no-show to the polls for Democrats.
We are right to ask why fewer Black Americans turned out this year. We just need to think more critically about the answers.