Batya Ungar-Sargon
Subject: Why Trump appeals to working class Americans
Bio: Journalist and author
Reading: Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women is here
Corey Fields
Subject: Why Republicans have been unsuccessful in attracting Black people
Bio: Professor of Sociology at Georgetown
Reading: Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans is here
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics and politics.
Today’s topic is White vs. Black Working Class Voters. I want to understand why the white working class have abandoned the Democrats and support Trump.
I also want to learn about why Blacks with similar views as their White Working-Class brethren have rejected the Republican Party and instead continue to vote Democratic.
We have two speakers.
The first speaker is Batya Ungar-Sargon who is the author of the new book entitled Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. And I am going to ask Batya to focus her comments on why Trump appeals to Working Class Americans.
Our second speaker is Corey Fields who is a Professor of Sociology at Georgetown and the author of a book entitled Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans. I want Corey to explain why the Republicans have historically been unsuccessful in attracting Black people and if it will be different in the upcoming presidential election.
I recently held a conference in Washington DC with a bunch of my friends where we chatted with Batya and Corey. This podcast will be different than normal because most of the questions will be asked by my friends.
Batya, please begin with your opening six-minute remarks.
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
I'm going to talk about what my book Second Class, how the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women. I wanted to understand the American working class, and do they still have a fair shot at the American dream?
I spent a year traveling around the country interviewing hundreds of working-class people, who often do not respond to polls from all religious backgrounds, racial backgrounds, both progressives, democrats, liberals, but also conservatives Republicans.
There is only one thing that a working-class Republican hate more than the Democratic Party, and it's the Republican Party. They love Trump because they love his policies. What I found was that there is a class divide in this country, but there is not a political divide. The partisan divide, the polarization that we hear about endlessly is non-existent. It is only our elite who are polarized. But if you talk to working class Republicans and working-class Democrats, they agree on 98% of the issues.
For example, the supermajority of the people I interviewed were pro-life and anti-abortion ban. They were moderate on every issue. They were pro-guns, but pro-background checks, they were very against welfare, which they hated, but they enthusiastically supported raising taxes on corporations and the rich, which party are these people supposed to vote for?
They supported radically reducing the number of immigrants, legal and illegal, who enter this country who they see as an endless supply of cheap labor that drove down their wages, but they also support radically increasing access to healthcare. And this is whether they were Republicans or Democrats. I was floored by this. I would say to people, the first party that gets to this combination of much fewer immigrants and much more access to healthcare, it's going to get 60% of the vote.
The problem is that the donor class on either side is totally opposed to it. You have one party that cares a lot about immigration, but the donor class only cares about tax cuts. And then you have the other party that will talk about immigration, that will talk about healthcare, but their donor class, George Soros for example, supports totally open borders and ninth month abortions.
Working class where neither party was speaking to them. And Donald Trump showed up with a policy platform that looks a lot like what the Democratic Party looked like when it was the party of the working class. He is pro-choice within reason in a way that most Americans are 15 weeks, 12 weeks, what have you. That is where 80% of Americans are at. He's courting union voters.
He believes in restricting immigration the way that the Democrats used to up until the nineties. It was acknowledged that if you let in millions of people, Black people are going to pay for it and they are our base.
I interviewed a lot of Black men and not one of them told me that they were planning on voting for Joe Biden. And a lot of them were telling me they really liked Donald Trump, and I thought there was something wrong with me, I was like, this is selection bias. He only got 18% of black men, but now we see in the polls he's polling at 35% of black men.
If you are zeroed in on this class divide and you're talking to working class people, people who don't have a college degree, you're going to find that his agenda appeals to them, especially on the economic front because he showed up in a country that had two economic models.
You had the Democrats economic model, which was raise taxes on the wealthy and then redistribute that which working class people hate. They hate welfare. They hate the idea that they should get somebody else's tax dollars. What they want is for their hard work to be rewarded with the most modest version of the American dream. But they disliked the Chamber of Commerce free market trickle down model that the right was addicted to pre-Trump. And Trump showed up with this protectionist model where he said, I'm going to build the economy around not sitting at home collecting a welfare check but your labor that should be respected, have dignity and give you a modest version of the American dream.
Why down ballot people are running behind Trump? It is because they have not figured this out. A lot of the Republicans trying to run in the Donald Trump model make the same mistake about his supporters that the Democrats make. They think he is popular because he's brash and because he sticks a finger in the eye of the elites. Obviously, people like that aesthetic component about it, but if you talk to working class people, they will point to the policies that put money back in their pockets at the end of the month when he was president, and these very brash down ballot, Republicans don't fundamentally get that.
And you can tell that Trump thinks about the economy from the perspective of a worker. Every single arm of that policy agenda was about how he's thinking about service industry workers, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. This is people who work in jobs that don't require college degree don't require a command of the English language. If you look at the Republican primary, you can see how it was DeSantis, Haley and Trump and everybody thought DeSantis had all this momentum and he flamed out.
And then it was Haley, and, maybe enough Democrats, and she is going to get us back to the moderate people are sick of the Trump crazy. And then she totally flamed out, and I don't know if you guys know this, but she outspent Trump 2:1 in that primary. Irrespective of how you feel about Trump, that should make you feel positive about the state of our democracy. I was upset about Citizens United. I thought, we will never again have a real election where the will of the people is simply going to overcome all this spending millions and millions of dollars. And it turns out the will of the American people is stronger than that.
It does not matter how you feel about him as a person. Our democracy is extremely healthy. The question is why? Why couldn't Haley get anywhere? Why didn't DeSantis get anywhere? DeSantis had a zero interest in talking about economics. He wanted to fight woke. And it's true the working class is anti-woke. But they're pro-gay and that includes Republicans. At this point that culture war is over.
They are very pro-gay, worried about the trans stuff. They do not like seeing trans-people playing on girls’ teams and all of that stuff. They do not like the racial obsessions, but they just don't have the luxury of voting on that. In an economy like this, they are struggling to pay for basic things like housing and healthcare.
Republican voters, a lot of them are Christian conservatives. They are not looking to a leader to tell them what to think. They already have their own values. They are looking to somebody who can guarantee the most modest version of the American dream to them and their children. And as for Haley, she just represents that exact version of the GOP that Trump took an ax to.
When he showed up, there was this neoliberal handshake agreement that we were going to have free trade, we're going to offshore manufacturing to China, we're going to have a free immigration system where people can come in and work for slave wages. These were things that both parties agreed on. And Trump was we are not going to do that. We are not going to let good middle class American jobs in steel and aluminum that pay an average of $88,000 a year, we're not going to let China come in and take those jobs. And Haley represented this return to that Chamber of Commerce free trade version of the party that is the one thing that Republican working-class voters hate more than the Democratic Party because they feel sold out. The way somebody put it to me was we're pimped out on the altar of these culture wars that get the elites really excited and then our children don't have a future in this country.
Zachary Schur:
Being a younger person in the room here, it was my first foray into politics seeing Donald Trump and the whole election process. I remember talking about PC culture. One thing that was repeated multiple times was the way he talked about women and how he treated them. As a woman, how do you feel about that? How has that not dissuaded you to support him?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
I was much more offended by that in 2016. Now I'm not offended by that. The class divide is mapping onto the gender divide. Women are 15 points more likely than men to get a college degree. That's why you have this feeling like Trump's campaign is for men and Kamala's campaign is for women because Kamala's campaign is for the college educated, and Trump's campaign is for the working class.
Larry Bernstein:
I want to follow up on the use of language by politicians. They often speak using a vocabulary that is refined. Trump does not do that. Elites find his vocabulary and expressions offensive and inappropriate for the public space. How do the working class respond to his vocabulary and choice of topics?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
You hear both sides, and they will say, I love his policy, but I just wish he would shut up. He is so undignified. Why can't he speak in a more dignified manner? You also hear people say, he just tells it how it is. They see him as a truth teller. Somebody who does not seem worried about offending people.
In my book, there is a lesbian couple that I profiled and one of them is a Democrat, and the other voted for Trump. And she said he could not be bought because he was so rich.
Dave Bunning:
I spent a lot of time in rural America. I know a lot of hunters and fishermen and it's an economic issue. My brother worked at a manufacturing plant for Procter and Gamble. And the guys in the plant had a great life. They had a house; they had a family; they could make ends meet. And in manufacturing plants today, that same family can't afford a house. It is just a completely different economic environment in rural America today.
I do not think they are racist. They see immigration as a threat to their wages and they know their wages have gone down. I mean it's economic.
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
1971 was the high-water mark for working class wages. The share of the population that was foreign born was 4% the lowest it has been in American history. It's 15% after Biden the highest it's ever been in American history. The last time it came close at 14% was the Gilded Age. A time in American history that is characterized by inequality.
Larry Bernstein:
How do the working class feel about Trump’s call for more tariffs?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
In a democracy, what the majority wants should become what we do. They have the right to be wrong about this. Everyone in this room is much smarter than me, better than me in economics. But I'll just give you the example of steel and aluminum. Trump put a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum from China. And every economist was like, this is going to be hugely inflationary. No one's going to be able to be able to afford anything. Toasters are going to cost a hundred dollars and what happened was for about four months, the price of steel and aluminum did spike and then it went back to where it had been before the tariffs because there is a lot of competition within this country. This is a capitalistic country.
The reason I believe that it came down is something that a West Virginia Amazon truck driver explained to me. She's profiled at length in the book really interesting woman. Massive Trump supporter, incredibly pro-gay. She and the gay couple that I interviewed in Florida nothing distinguished their views from each other. By the way, the one view you can read in the book that every single person I interviewed said was, “Why are we funding the war in Ukraine?” Not one working class person I interviewed thought that that was worthwhile. Though they are all very pro-Israel, they don't see that the way that the elites do.
I do not understand why we can't just make things at home; you save a lot of money. There is a lot that goes into Trump says, we are going to get all this money from the tariffs. They are going to keep shipping stuff here. It is probably not going to happen that way. What it will do is open a conversation about why we are all driving Japanese cars and nobody in Japan is driving American cars. These are conversations that had been put to rest by both parties and as a result, auto workers now are really struggling. Or Trump's saying to John Deere, you ship that factory out of here. I am slapping a 200% tariff on you. This is how you think and how you talk and the policy you enact when your concern is not that the people who have a ton of money can buy cheap stuff from China, but that the people who make things can live in middle-class families rather than broken down communities in the rust belt.
Xudong Wang:
I saw some statistics, the biggest per capital welfare recipients are in red states. If people prefer work over welfare. How do you explain that?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
Well, there is not a lot of work there. The Rust Belt used to be thriving communities built around factories and work. People remember that time and look back on it fondly. And a lot of those jobs disappeared. There has been a brain drain out of Appalachia, out of rural America specifically. That is a big part of it.
Xudong Wang:
Which was your economic status growing up?
Batya Ungar-Sargon
My dad's a country doctor in Indiana. I grew up middle class.
Xudong Wang:
So, you are not like JD Vance?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
No, just an extremely grateful Jew who cares a lot about this country, doesn't want it to go down the toilet.
Alan Scholnick:
The idea of playing class warfare is dividing America and you are seeing more of a United America. In “Second Class America,” sorry to use the term, but
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
This is the name of the book.
Alan Scholnick:
The way our politicians have been playing class warfare, class against class or race against race, seems to be a losing hand.
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
Class warfare is going well for Trump. It is so exciting to see working class people of all races just proving the race war narrative that rural Americans are racist, that working class people are racist, proving them wrong should make us all feel better. If you are on the left and in the elites makes you feel worse because you get a lot of power off of this narrative.
When he said, I'm going to make controlling immigration and tariffs and a trade war China the centerpiece of my policy agenda, and then successfully did that. He was not taking on one party, he was taking on both parties.
The truth of the matter is nice people do not do that. I could not do that. I mean, I do it, but it really sucks. And for a politician to be able to say, I do not care that I have neither side of the elites backing. Every day open the newspaper and see both sides attacking me, hiring people and they did not do what I asked them to do, and then they're going to join the other side and attack me. It takes a certain character to pull that off. And it is not a nice one. It is not the kind that you might want to be the godfather of your child. And working-class Americans had been treated with utter disdain and contempt by the elites on both sides who loath them.
Brande Stellings:
Did people talk about what their aspirations were for their children? And then how elite became a bad word to be embarrassed about going to college?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
I don't think the question is like it being bad to be elite. It was the contempt with which people who were not feeling the pinch, who had created an economy that was an upward funnel of wealth from the middle class to the elites.
In 1971, the largest share of the GDP was in the middle class, and today it is in the top 20%. There has been this upward funnel through things like NAFTA and defunding vocational training and mass migration, and the leftist love to rail against the billionaires. But if you look at the share of the economy that is controlled by billionaires and you compare today to 1971, it is not that much bigger. The funnel was to the educated elites, the same people who sit on cable news and sneer at the working class as racist because they oppose open borders, which means that their children will not have a future.
That is how it became the snideness, the moral superiority while they were making their fellow Americans poor in the name of this higher ideal of poor people from poor countries. That is the modality that is so worthy of contempt.
What people want for their children. And there is this catch-22, so people will point to the fact that people are making more now than they made in the seventies. And that is true. But the fundamentals of a middle-class life of the American dream, which are housing, healthcare, and education or upward mobility for your children and retirement, these four things have become 400% more expensive.
Meaning even if you are making 10% more, you cannot afford the most modest version of the American Dream and your chances of achieving it are much higher if you go to college. But again, college now is 390% more expensive than it was in the seventies. They are in this Catch-22. Do they tell their kids to go to college, take out all these loans, and then maybe have a shot at this? The problem is that we are overproducing college educated Americans. The economy now is already the Wall Street Journal said about 52% of college educated college graduates are underemployed, meaning they are not using skills they picked up in college. We do not have room in the economy for more college educated. What we do is a severe dearth of is skilled trades folks, which used to be totally funded in high schools across America.
Barack Obama defunded that to push people to go towards college. I do not who they thought was going to do all the working-class jobs. I guess they thought we would just import people to do them, which is exactly what they did. But the problem is that that leaves a lot of people out. People wanted their children to be better off than them. And then there was this Sophie's choice of how we get there because the avenues did not seem very promising. Trump does not have a healthcare plan. Healthcare is unbelievably unaffordable for people. If he had the immigration piece and the tariffs and the healthcare plan that that would overcome a lot of the obstacles.
And you need immigration and healthcare. Those are the two planks. The first political party to get to both the first side to get to both of those is going to run away with this.
I was so convinced that the Democrats were going to be more receptive to this because they were the side controlling immigration in the nineties, and they already have the healthcare piece. I was like, this is such an easier lift for them than Republicans. They were completely not receptive to this. And meanwhile, every time I said to Republicans, you really need a healthcare plan, they would say, wow, that is so interesting. I never thought about that.”
It was were we're in the midst of a political realignment that's just starting right now and in 10 years next cycle, the idea that after the Teamsters refuse to give the Democrats their endorsement because 60% of Teamsters are Trump voters, the idea that next cycle, the electrical union is going to be able to get away with saying no to 80% of its workers and saying, we're still going to endorse the Democrat. That is so over. The watershed has started.
Larry Bernstein
I like to end on a note of optimism. Batya, what are you optimistic about with the working class?
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
Everything! My God five years ago nobody would care what working class people's lives, or how to improve them, or why populism is on the rise in both parties. I feel unbelievably optimistic. Whoever wins, we are going to see economic populism.
Larry Bernstein:
Batya, thank you very much. We are now going to turn to Corey Fields who is a sociologist at Georgetown. Corey, can you please begin with your opening six-minute remarks about Black Republicans.
Corey Fields:
I'm going to be talking about what is it like to be a Black Republican? I did research interviews, ethnographic observations, hanging out with Black Republicans in a red, blue and a swing state. I was interested in how the experience might vary depending on political context. In most conversations about Black Republicans, they are understood vis-a-vis Black Democrats.
How are Black Republicans different from other Black people? And are Black Republicans somehow less Black than their Democratic counterparts?
There is something must be missing to make them different. And that is they are less focused on black identity. And empirically, that was not the case in my research. What I found was that Black Republicans were as embedded in Black communities as anybody else. Instead of focusing on relations with other Black people, I look to relations within the Republican Party.
The Republican party wants black people around. This is now an organizational imperative. You must be diverse or at least nod towards it and you certainly cannot be a hostile space for black people in America. I call it the skeptical embrace because I want to hug you, but I am afraid you might stab me in the back. So, I'm going to sort of hug you at a distance.
Black Republicans must manage how to make white Republicans feel like I can trust you while simultaneously coming off as authentically Black, because the Republican party is not interested in Black people who have no connection to Blackness because part of the role that Black Republicans play is to offset concerns around the party is racist. Black Republicans manage to combine Blackness and being Republicans and their efforts to alleviate White Republicans concerns.
I talk about two different distinct groups that are Black Republicans. The first is a colorblind strategy that essentially downplays race. Black Republicans who I categorize as being colorblind, I would describe as culturally Black but not politically Black. They live in Black neighborhoods, go to Black churches, want their kids to not be the only Black kid in class, but when they think about what makes for good tax policy, they are like, I do not see what my race has to do with that.
It's not that different from Barack Obama. He was very culturally Black but was not staging his political engagement as I am going to be a president for Black people. It was like I'm a Black guy, but just like you.
Politically I'm this colorblind construction of Black people who need to embrace conservative policies and principles. And so Black people need to be changed to make them more amenable to the Republican party.
Now, in contrast to this race blind perspective, you have a second group which I classify as a Race Conscious Black Republican, and the race conscious Black Republican is a Black person who thinks of himself as culturally Black and politically Black.
Race Conscious Blacks believe that the best thing for Black people are pro-business policies, socially conservative policies that promote stable families and independence from the state, because the state is coded as a white institution that does not have Black interests at heart. They frame their entry into the Republican Party as being driven by frustration with the politics of the left. They are just like everybody else. Black people are respectable. They work hard, care about their families, but the thing that separates Black people from the rest of Americans is that Black people also must deal with racism and discrimination.
For Race Conscious Black Republicans, there is this deep belief that the best thing Black people can do is to take care of ourselves and be conservative around social policies. And it is important to do that precisely because you cannot trust white people to help. So, the best thing for Black people to do is to be conservative.
You have these two groups of Black Republicans: Color Blind Black Republicans and Race Conscious Black Republicans. These two groups have different ideas about who Black people are and how to link Blackness with Republican politics, which fundamentally makes it impossible for these two different black groups to work together.
There has never been a successful national Black Republican organization. Take Log Cabin Republicans as a comparison. There is no equivalent among Black Republicans, and that is because these two groups of Black Republicans cannot work together.
One of the most striking racialized attacks that Black People make to Black Republicans is you are not authentically Black. You are a coon sellout or Uncle Tom among Black Republicans. This highly charged discourse was infinitely more prominent than you would hear in general mainstream media concerns. I was constantly having to listen to one group of Black Republicans complain about the other group and their inability to work together.
I saw this family member recently who asked me why are Black Republicans today are so terrible? They used to have respectable coons like Clarence Thomas but now they just have fools like Herschel Walker. What is that about? And this phenomenon among Black Republican leaders reflects what is happening with the Republican Party more broadly.
Larry Bernstein:
In your book you suggest that it is not considered socially acceptable in Black circles for a Black person to be a Republican.
Corey Fields:
Black Republicans try to be a part of the Black community and the Republican community. They are minorities in both. Using this metaphor around gayness, as Black Republicans almost every person I interviewed would talk about this as a “coming out story.”
This feeling that my family does not understand me. They accuse me of not caring about Black people. Black people think Black Republicans are sellouts and are seen as a shill for the Republican Party.
Ray Iwanowski:
The more prominent Blacks in Congress, particularly Tim Scott and Byron Donald. If you were a desired demographic within a party and you are rising up, that you would use some of that to have your own little advantage. Joe Manchin did it in the Democrat Party. I am the conservative Democrat, and I could break the ties, so I'm going to impose some of that. But Tim Scott and Byron Donald seem to fall directly in line behind Donald Trump on everything. They are not taking any advantage of their unique standing within the Republican party to gain some benefit.
Corey Fields:
What is interesting about Black conservatives is why that conservatism does not get translated into partisanship. Black conservatives are less interesting to me than Black Republicans because being a Black Republican is weird. What happened that converted this conservatism into partisanship? A lot of the hesitancy comes from the Republican Party not being appealing because of the race issue.
Black Republicans at the national level are not elected by black people. And their electoral success does not depend on their appeal to black audiences. The resource dependence that Black Republicans’ experience mean they are tied to white gatekeepers. They must talk about things in a way that aligns with what white people who provide the funding for a political campaign or hire people at a think tank.
Republicans make black people talk about race in the way that they want to hear. We should understand this as a case of what it is like to manage blackness in white context. Black Republican experiences within the party mirror black people who work in white companies or white universities. What is it like to be black in a context that is dominated by white people?
Those challenges to manage blackness in a way that aligns with what gatekeepers want. When I was on the job market after grad school, I suspect they would not have hired me at Stanford if I had gone in there and said “that race is about structural oppression and white people dominating black people, but that's what it is.”
That is an empirically accurate enough position that an academic could reasonably take. But instead, I was like, “race is cultural. It is about meaning and meaning making and it's not consistent.” I talked about race in a way that aligned with what university gatekeepers and sociology departments wanted to hear in terms of how people talk about race.
What I am saying is not wrong or inaccurate, but I do think this idea of what it is like to be Black and Republican is this broader story of what it's like to manage a minority identity in an organizational context.
Hugh Nickola:
This movement of black men towards either Trump or the Republican party. Are Blacks becoming more Republican? is it Trump, the Republican Party, or conservative values that are drawing them in?
Corey Fields:
I am not convinced it is empirically true. The polling that I have seen on black political behavior recently with large samples of black people suggests that we're talking a 10 to 12% range of black people voting for Trump that is higher among men.
The best way of looking at this issue is to realize that Obama was an anomaly where 97% of black people were voting for the Democratic candidate. Obama jerked up those numbers that is mind shatteringly crazy. When I talk to black Republicans during the Obama administration, they were like, I can see myself in him.
He's not this crazy radical, he's a black dude managing blackness in a way that aligns with how I see myself. Post-Obama the numbers settled back into normal Black Republican voting patterns. Donald Trump gets 12% of the black vote, that feels crazy good compared to Obama was getting 97%, but it feels about normal compared to what was happening outside of those two election years.
I don't see Harris reproducing those Obama numbers, but I don't think she's going to do worse than any other Democratic candidate. She will do as well as Biden did with black voters is my guess. The real issue will be, is there going to be enough of a get out the vote? I am not convinced enthusiasm will be there.
Mark Spindel:
Is there a difference between Black women against Black men in their decision to join the Republican Party?
Corey Fields:
This is a story around black men who are activists in the Republican Party. I do not think that the Republican Party has made any traction among black women voters. Black men were more likely to identify as Republican than black women.
Mark Spindel:
Are the typical attributes that predict partisanship for white people the same for Blacks?
Corey Fields:
No. The dynamics of what predict Republican partisanship operate differently for Black people than for whites. So higher income, more education, higher class status is not associated with more likely to be Republican among Black people, whereas for whites it operates differently. Younger Blacks are way more likely to be Republican than older Blacks, but it's the opposite for whites. Patterns of partisanship operate differently.
Larry Bernstein:
The Republican party was originally the Party of Lincoln. African Americans switched political parties during the FDR Administration from Republicans to Democrats. This political party switch did not seem to be a big deal then. Why is the change in political parties by Blacks different this time?
Corey Fields:
That is partly because of perceptions of what the Republican Party was and what it represented. There was this period where being Black and Republican was just like your weird uncle at dinner. It was harmless. But there is this perception that the Republican Party where it's putting out denigrating messages about black people, and certainly now it's leaning into a white grievance platform that makes people think, well, this isn't just like crazy Uncle Joe at dinner. The Republican Party has not remained constant, and so black people's reactions has changed as the party has changed.
Larry Bernstein:
Do you disagree with this idea that conservative Blacks will eventually join the Republican Party in time?
Corey Fields:
I do not. I do not think there is a guarantee that you have these conservative beliefs are going to turn into partisanship. It could happen, but that would require an understanding of what is keeping conservative Black people on the Democratic side of partisanship.
And that was striking to me in doing this research was how little White Republicans knew about Black Republicans. I do not right now feel like that there is a well-organized effort by the Republicans to capitalize on the presence of conservative beliefs among Black voters.
Larry Bernstein:
White people who are religious and active in the evangelical church are likely to be Republicans. Do you think that the Black church will encourage Blacks to join the Republican Party?
Corey Fields:
Religion played a much smaller part of the story of the Black Republican activists I talked to than I was expecting. Religion was not anyone's pathway into the party. And the Black Republicans I talked to fundamentally felt like the Black church itself is left leaning in terms of the politics.
Larry Bernstein:
Why is that?
Corey Fields:
The Republican party platform gets coded as being bad for Black people. The Black church operates as a hub and centers what is good for Black people in its operations and decision-making.
Certain black people believe that abortion is bad, and they would say that they are on board with the Republicans. And then later they hear White Republicans say stuff like, “black people just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Racism is not real.” Then these same Black folks will say, “slow down, what are you talking about? You had me. But now you do not. That is a fundamental challenge for the Republican platform.
The Republicans have a race problem when it comes to reaching out to black voters that must be managed. I do not think the point of Black Republicans is to get more black people to vote for the Republican Party. If that were the case, all the efforts would be put behind the “Race Conscious Black Republicans,” the people who are saying black power through conservative principles. That is the way to do it.
The point of having Black faces in the Republican Party is to allow white people who do not want to be seen as racist, but maybe want to vote for racist candidates. It is like, “if Tim Scott is saying it, then it is not racist. And he is saying the same thing the other Republicans are saying. So, it's okay.”
The role that Black Republicans play is to get a voter in Alpharetta, Georgia to be like, “I think it might be racist to be a Republican, but I want to vote for the Republicans.” And then you have a black person articulating the party line, and now that person gets to be like, “oh, it's not racist, so I can do it.” That is certainly how Black Republican activists understand the role of black faces within the party, and they convinced me.
Howard Shainker:
When we talk about race conscious blacks in the Republican party, did the Trump-Kanye bromance, was that an attempt at a race conscious?
Corey Fields:
Yeah, I think it was. And that there certainly has been more incorporation of race conscious framing of Republican policies, but it's happened alongside this escalation of white grievance in a way that is discombobulating.
Colin Teichholtz:
When Biden in 2020 made this comment, “if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black.” To what extent are there at least some Blacks who are pushed away from the Democratic Party being taken for granted, Democrats are not doing anything for them?
Corey Fields:
It is super prominent among Black Republicans that it is important for the Black vote to not be understood as a decided monolith. It is strategically important for Black people to be in play in a way that means I must hold my nose and be Republican, but I'll do it. That attitude expressed by Biden cannot possibly play well among Black people.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to both Corey and Batya for joining us today.
If you missed our previous podcast, check it out. The topic was Don’t Glorify Manufacturing Jobs.
Our speaker was Marty Eichenbaum who is a Professor of Economics at Northwestern. Marty has said publicly that the focus on American manufacturing jobs is misplaced, and that our economy is better served with more employment in services. Manufacturing jobs used to be good jobs in the 1950s but no longer.
I would like to make a plug for my next podcast with Patrick Ruffini about Presidential Election Polling which is incredibly relevant given that early voting has already begun.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, Don’t Glorify Manufacturing Jobs, here.
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