Op/Ed: Harris Charts New Course for Democrats by Reaching Out to Black Men

Kamala Harris this week is rolling out policy proposals to court Black male voters, including offering up to 1 million forgivable small business loans to Black men, investing in job training and mentoring for Black men in high-demand fields, and focusing on health issues that disproportionally affect them.

Jason Nichols, senior lecturer in the African American and Africana Studies Department at the University of Maryland, argues in a new essay in Newsweek that the Democratic candidate for president is working to earn Black men’s votes by addressing their economic, social and health care needs. The question is whether she’ll reach this important audience in time.

For several years now, sincere, left-leaning Black male political analysts have been warning Democrats that they could lose enough Black men's votes to alter the outcome of a presidential election. As Democrats have reached out to many other demographics, advocating for them with rhetoric and policy, a small but growing number of Black men have felt left behind and ignored, watching Democrats seek to gain favor with groups who have been less devoted to the party.

A recent nationwide poll conducted by the NAACP found that 26 percent of Black men under the age of 50 supported former President Donald Trump in the upcoming election, with the economy being their top issue. While Harris holds a massive lead over Trump among Black voters as a whole, swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia will undoubtedly be determined by which candidate turns out their base. Harris cannot afford to lose votes either to Trump or to attrition.

Read the rest in Newsweek.