How Black Men Voting Trump Kills Black Politics

Political scientist Michael C. Dawson, in his 1995 book Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics, investigated why the political voting preferences of Black people who had entered the middle class remained unchanged. Historical evidence told researchers that economic advancement triggered voting preference shifts. Black folk, this theory predicted, would vote like their new economic cohorts of other races. That political reimagining, though, failed to unfold. Black voting unity persisted despite growing economic polarization. Why? 

What Dawson termed “linked fate” answered the question. Linked fate describes the belief that individual fortune is intertwined with the fortune of the group. Black folk, Dawson argued, use race as a proxy for their own interests. Those who subscribe to linked fate believe what lifts Black folk writ large lifts the Black individual. And the opposite holds true too. When a police officer bludgeons a Black motorist, for example, Black folk process that as a group injury. “Cops abuse us.”

Black folk, Dawson determined, do consider their economic interests but truly focus on the status of the race in comparison to White folk’s economic status. When policies help raise the financial standing of Black people writ large, that raises the fortunes of the race, and that is the economic result that Black voters seek. “We are closing the gap,” is what the Black individual wants to say.

Linked fate powers Black solidarity which beats the heart of Black politics. It supercharges efforts to defeat caste preservationism, the White supremacist project of seeking to subjugate the Black population to a lower caste. A phalanx with it. Scattered prey without it. Black folk without linked fate cannot resist racial tyranny. Sustained opposition to racial oppression demands collective action. And people balk at behaving as members of a collective if they feel no connection to, and responsibility for, the group.

Since the colonial days, Black Americans have existed as a subordinated caste. Racial solidarity has sustained our spirits and stoked the flames of resistance.

I hear the footsteps, however, of many Black men walking away from linked fate. If my ears do not deceive, and more footsteps follow, Black politics succumbs and with it, the fight for freedom from caste.

When Black men enter the voting booths, traditionally, we have done so first as Black men.  During the 2024 Presidential election, however, some Black men voted not as Black men, but simply as just men. They were not considering how to protect the race against the various forces aligned against us. They were more concerned with protecting whatever imagined losses men claimed to have accrued over the years. They were not voting against White supremacy—they were voting for the patriarchy, which, in this case, was the White patriarchy, though the distinction escaped them. And, because of that, about twenty percent cast their ballots for Donald Trump. If Black men can be persuaded into joining a White supremacist coalition by abandoning linked fate, then we as Black people will have been undermined by men who exchanged nothing for everything.

The Department of Justice, under President Joe Biden, investigated sanitation issues in Alabama Black Belt counties, Lowndes County in particular, finding severe crises in these overwhelmingly Black communities, notably raw sewage flooding residences. “For decades, Lowndes County residents have endured living without basic sanitation and wastewater disposal services. The disproportionate impact of this on Black, low-income, rural residents—who, for generations, have suffered through illness, infectious diseases and public health risks simply for living in their own neighborhoods—is unacceptable,” remarked Director Melanie Fontes Rainer of the HHS Office for Civil Rights in May 2024. Investigating under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids recipients of federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, the DOJ and the HHS reached a settlement agreement that required the Alabama Department of Public Health to take “actions to advance sustainable and equitable solutions for onsite wastewater management for Lowndes County residents.”

Earlier in April, however, the Trump administration torpedoed that settlement agreement, denying relief to these Black communities. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon announced the DOJ’s reversal by saying, “The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.” One in five Black male voters enabled this—a presidency that would leave Black folk to drown in sewage because saving them from race discrimination supposedly amounted to DEI. They pulled the lever for an administration that equates extending Black folk equal protection to an undeserved handout.

But why did twenty percent of Black men vote for White supremacy? Ninety-two percent of Black women voters rebuffed the caste preservationist ticket, favoring instead Vice President Kamala Harris. Something clearly venomous is attaching to the minds of a non-insignificant number of Black men, but a paucity of Black women. Of course, the patriarchy offers nothing valuable to Black women, and thus that may explain some of the discrepancy. But I sense something far more ominous afoot.

One explanation we must confront: The breakdown of Black civic institutions and proliferation of social media means Black men's worldviews are now disproportionately shaped by voices indifferent—if not hostile—to Black existence. Compounding this, as Black men continue to fall further behind Black women in educational attainment, they become more vulnerable to democracy-eroding lies, especially when isolated from other Black men who model racial solidarity. Without intervention, rescuing these lost brothers becomes our collective survival imperative.

I came across a social media post from a Black man that read “78%, don’t ask us for help” showing a group of Black men drinking beer as the world burned. The man’s point shone through—he voted correctly, and thus his work was done. “About 1 in 5 Black men voted for White supremacy,” I responded. “That’s a horrifically high number. Instead of watching shit burn, let’s talk to that 20% that would expose us to our enemies in exchange for nothing.”

A choice lies before the seventy-eight: reclaim the twenty or bury the hundred.

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