Why Black Voters Should Be Mad at Obama (and themselves)

I’ve spent the past several days absorbing commentary via social media and NPR about President Obama’s views on same-sex marriage and Black voters’ reactions to it. Both anecdotal evidence and real numbers suggest that if the president wanted to retain his most devoted voting block, he made a mistake on May 10, when he told ABC’s Robin Roberts he thinks same-sex couples should be able to get married.

Many Christian Black voters are angry about what’s been touted as President Obama’s support of homosexuality.  They and Black voters in general should be angry, but not for the reasons they are.

The reasons I’ve heard Christian Black voters express so far are a variation of what Pastor Jerry L. Stephenson of Midwest Church of Christ in Louisville, KY, said to his congregation last Thursday.  He called the president’s announcement, “very sad news,” and said “[Blacks] who are committed to their Christian faith won’t vote for this president.” In other words, to vote for a president who supports same-sex marriage is to vote against the Bible.

Perhaps my listening and comprehension skills are subpar, but here’s what I heard:

Robin Roberts: Mr. President, are you still opposed to same-sex marriage?

President Obama: I’ve been going through an evolution on this issue … At I certain point I just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married. And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going to be worked out at the local level, because historically this hasn’t been a federal issue.”

Consider this: President Obama didn’t endorse same-sex marriage as some media headlines have claimed.  He validated homosexuals’ humanity and the equality of all people by saying that their long-term, monogamous unions should have the same legal standing as those of heterosexual couples.

Should.

Which is why Black voters who have supported him unwaveringly up to this point should at least be annoyed with the president and with themselves. Follow me on this:

 

  1. President Obama seriously put his re-election at risk by galvanizing Evangelical Christian voters who otherwise would have stayed home because they’re stuck with Mitt Romney, a man they don’t trust as a “true” conservative. Same-sex marriage isn’t a top priority for most voters, but for many voters, it’s the issue that will convert them into a one-issue voter. Because of the perception that being for marriage equality means being pro-homosexuality and therefore anti-Christian, for some, the legalization of same-sex marriage is a direct attack on the Christian faith.  If faith, and living it out as closely to how Jesus would want you to as possible, are one’s number one priorities, then you can see how homosexuality becomes the issue.
  2. By allegedly going all anti-Christian on this issue, President Obama risked the Black vote.  Sure, only about 10% of black people vote Republican any given year, but in 2004 (pdf), President George W. Bush managed to get 11 percent of the Black vote. He received 8 percent of it in 2000. By 2004, Nader was out of the race, there were two wars going on, and George W. Bush had appealed to Evangelical voters by proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. A 3 percent shift isn’t much, but in an election as close as the one 2012 will be, 3 percent could make all the difference.
  3. His risk of the Black vote is unsettling because the president knows Black voters.  He knows Christian Black voters.  He knows what a difficult and divisive issue homosexuality is in Black communities.  He said as much on GMA, and he took this risk anyway, which leads me to believe he’s tossing the Black vote aside for the new, trendy Civil Rights Movement that will draw disillusioned young voters out again and excite first-time voters. President Obama is appealing to voters who share some of our issues (poverty, unemployment and discrimination are issues for the LGBTQ community) but who pretty much aren’t us, and he’s doing it by saying nothing of substance regarding policy. His views on gay marriage have been “evolving”; what were the chances they were going to evolve to Mitt Romney’s views when he’s already asked the Dept. of Justice not to prosecute Defense of Marriage violations? He’s not suggested a “radical” solution, like leaving marriage to religious institutions and having a totally different designation for the state, like civil unions, that could apply to any two adults living together and sharing household expenses, whether they are related or in love or not. (Anyone else what insurance benefits and power of attorney for everybody in a multi-generational household?) He’s not said, “My personal belief is now my administration’s policy, and I’m going to urge Congress to pass bills supporting marriage equality on the federal level so that no matter where same-sex couples live within theUnited States, they can have the same rights as everyone else.” He said the same thing Dick Cheney said years ago: leave it to the states—where bans on gay marriage have been supported 30 times (well, by people who vote).

And of course he took this risk.  Black voters have been quiet. We have let journalists be criticized for asking the president tough questions. We have been so about getting a Black man in the White House that we’ve been willing to go with it when he does things that directly target black communities, like making the sentences for selling crack cocaine a little less severe than they were but still more severe than those for selling powder. We haven’t mobilized on our issues the way the LGBTQ community has.

And the black church, as conservative as it is, doesn’t always attack these issues as it should, because church-going Christian Blacks often look at problems like violence, mass incarceration and high unemployment behaviorally, as sins, instead of viewing them systematically, as the profits from richer communities’ sins.

I can’t say that the lack of mobilization is entirely Black people’s fault.  It’s also about how politics work and how media coverage and campaign financing have changed since the 1950s and 60s.  Liberal journalists, academics, Hollywood stars, and people with money have embraced gay rights. To get the president’s attention once he’s in office, you need political clout.  You need pleasant depictions of the normalcy of you and your lifestyle on prime time TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Modern Family.  You need not to be poor or incarcerated or unemployed or uneducated.

Or, you need to go tit for tat. Offer support for gay issues, because, as Rev. Dr. William J. Barber of North Carolina so passionately states (PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO), they are civil rights issues.  But expect gay rights activists to see that the systematic oppression of people of color continues, and expect them to fight hard for the president, whoever it is come 2013, to fight for our causes, too.  Because as Huey Newton said in 1970, “We must … have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.”

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4 thoughts on “Why Black Voters Should Be Mad at Obama (and themselves)

  1. Really interesting read and perspective Mariam. It’ll be interesting to see if more people catch on to this.

    1. I strongly doubt it will catch on. It’s not a popular view in any way. (And it’s not my site is read a lot.) Thanks for reading and for leaving a comment.

  2. (Here’s what I found while webbing today)

    GOD TO SAME-SEXERS: “HURRY UP!”

    (written by a friend in 2003)

    Even the God of the entire Bible is behind the gay rights movement—-and I’ll prove it.
    (Although this paper focuses on lost persons in the “Northeastern Bermuda Triangle” outlined roughly by New York City, Montreal, and Boston, I’m sharing it with everyone everywhere.)
    You who identify with GBLT (no, not Gay Bacon Lettuce & Tomato!) already know about your own history. So for the unlearned I’ll include some info on it, much of which is on the internet.
    Gay activist John McKellar has stated: “The major media are all nonstop advertisements for the gay lifestyle, so how far are they prepared to go in denying free speech to Christians, Muslims, and Jews?….No major world religion has ever accepted homosexual behavior. And if [gay] activists had any sense of history, they’d realize their own lifestyle is a symptom of an overurbanized, relativized culture heading into decadence.”
    Thomas Jefferson revealed that in Virginia, “dismemberment” of the offensive sex organ was the penalty for sodomy, and he himself authored a bill penalyzing sodomy by castration. The same internet article, “Homosexuals in the Military” by David Barton, also stated that sodomy , homosexuality etc. were regarded as felonies in early America and were even punishable by death in New York, Connecticut, South Carolina, and Vermont!
    You GBLTs have traveled far. You are now helping to fulfill two big signs that Jesus said (in Luke 17) will characterize life on earth just before His return to it: “days of Noah” (physical violence) and “days of Lot” (your GBLT ancestors).
    Even the New York Times has expressed amazement over the suddenness and pushiness of today’s campaign for legalizing same-sex marriage, and Prof. David M. Halperin wrote that “lesbian and gay studies scholars” have led the way in fighting against policies that “criminalize gay sex or limit access to abortions.”

    I said early on that the Bible’s God is behind you GBLTs. Yes, He’s behind you and even pushing you down the dead-end road you have insisted on taking. Several scary Bible passages show that God will actually “program” those whose motto seems to be “HELL-BOUND AND HAPPY!”: “the Lord God…gave them up to desolation” (II Chron. 30:7); God “gave them up to uncleanness,” “gave them up to vile affections,” “gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:24,26,28); “God shall send them strong delusion” (II Thess. 2:11); and “he which is filthy, let him be filthy still” (Rev. 22:11).
    Now that you GBLTs have invented strange architecture (closets opening on to main streets instead of bedrooms!), have traded limp wrists for clenched fists, and are fighting for shame-sex marriage, I wonder if you will be happy when you’ve turned New York into New Yuck, Boston into Bah!-ston, and other places into Messychoose-its, Nude Hampshire, Vermin, and Cana-duh (where at least the maple leaves will be blushing!). And of course I should include Hell-A and San Fransissyco which, appropriately, are in Quake-ifornia!
    So what are you waiting for? Since you’re bent on fulfilling the predicted end-time Noah/Lot days (your way of helping to make the Bible even more believable!), and since seemingly you’d rather discover the “wrathful Judge” side of Christ instead of His “merciful and loving and forgiving” side, can’t you speed up your role and get it over with? You’re holding up the true and everlasting peace that God wants to give to the whole world!

    (You’re free to reproduce and distribute this non-copyrighted paper everywhere including the internet. You’re also free to use a different title with it, if you wish.)

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    1. Sara, this comment caught me off guard. I’m guessing the quoted text begins at, “Even the God of the entire Bible” and ends at “peace that God wants to give to the whole world!” but there’s no way for me to tell. I’m not going to delete this because I don’t like censoring people’s opinions, but I really don’t want comments of this tone posted on this blog. I also appreciate it when comments stick, at least initially, to the subject of the post so as to foster a dialogue on the topic. This comment doesn’t do that. In the future, if you reference something you found online–especially something that’s inflammatory and off the subject–a link to the original post will be sufficient. (Just FYI, that’s also better for the author of the original post and his or her website/blog. Everybody likes it when other sites link back to their content.) Given the comment, I’m not sure you read the post, but at any rate, thank you for stopping by and leaving your thoughts, or someone else’s.

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