It Shouldn’t Be on Black Voters to Save America’s Democracy
Credit for a Trump defeat must go where it’s due
It happened again. In an election staged under circumstances we can only call “unprecedented,” the final tally rested not only on a predictable group of swing states but on specific districts within them. Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta: cities with sizable Black and Democratic voting populations. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen before, in recent presidential elections with razor-thin margins between candidates. Except, this time, we’re reminded that the very fate of American democracy hung in the balance. The subtext, it seems, is something like: Don’t mess this up, Black voters.
In the New Yorker, Jelani Cobb notes the discord between a liberal narrative of thwarted fascism and the fragility — or, even, the legitimacy — of American democracy since the nation’s founding. How democratic can a nation be, after all, if the viability of its democracy rests on the ballots of consistently, systematically disenfranchised population of voters?
Cobb writes:
To be Black in the first week of November 2020, is to yet again have the feeling of being called off the bench and being told that the whole game is riding on you. Trump is a dangerous man, but he is not nearly as dangerous as the…
