No, Black People Don’t Vote Blue “No Matter Who”

“Black Gothic” by the artist Kadir Nelson.

Joe Biden’s recent “you ain’t black” comments sparked on The Breakfast Club a new round of discourse surrounding whether or not the black agenda is best served by the Democratic Party and how to leverage the black community’s political power. There is often a critique of black voters who “vote blue no matter who.”

However, this critique, though well-intentioned, can often unintentionally cast black voters as blindly following the Democratic Party. The “no matter who” part of the critique is a misreading of black communal political agency, and leaves out both historical and current political factors that cause most Black folk to choose between two imperfect options: voting for Democrats and not voting at all.

Black voters came to overwhelmingly vote for Democrats largely between the New Deal and Civil Rights Era. Social welfare programs, Civil Rights legislation, and the Great Migration of black people from southern to northern and western cities caused black voters to leave the Republican Party while the same factors compelled white conservatives to leave the Democratic Party.

Books like “Asymmetric Politics” by Matt Grossman and David Hopkins, “The Great Alignment” by Alan I. Abramowitz, “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics” by Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Senand and “Steadfast…