https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/biden-campaign-black-men/616735/American bunting frames Headliners Barbershop in Detroit. Out front, four barber’s chairs, spaced six feet apart, form a straight line. In one of them, Garlin Gilchrist, the lieutenant governor of Michigan, sits up, then leans on the right armrest, turning to Senator Kamala Harris, who occupies the seat next to him. “All of us know somebody who has been affected or who has died,” he tells the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. “That’s happened to me 23 times since this pandemic hit. Twenty-three goodbyes.” Harris nods along.
Through his black mask, Gilchrist tells the smattering of Black men from the area who have joined the “Shop Talk” event, the Biden campaign’s series of conversations focused on Black voters, that all of this was preventable. Since the pandemic began, more than 7,000 Michiganders have lost their lives to the coronavirus. “Not a single one of them had to die. Their death was a policy failure—a policy failure that started with a failure in the White House,” he says.
Although Black women have often been called “the backbone of the Democratic Party,” Black men have not been reliably Democratic in such large numbers. During the 2016 election, 98 percent of Black women who voted cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, whereas 81 percent of Black men did. Fourteen percent of Black men voted for Donald Trump. The Biden campaign knew, going into the race, that it would need to maintain that support Clinton received. But merely matching Clinton’s numbers would not be enough—it needed to build upon them. The campaign recognized that its success or failure in energizing Black men could dictate whether America had four more years of the Trump administration. As millions of voters have begun mailing in their ballots and voting in person, the Biden campaign is racing to make its final pitches to the electorate, including Black men. It has held virtual conversations with prominent Black mayors, dispatched Magic Johnson to Detroit, and blanketed television and radio with ads designed to reach Black men and avoid a repeat of 2016
But Richmond—and the Biden campaign—want to expand the conversation beyond that question. “There are a number of things that highlight the urgency of this election. One is the racial awakening. But if we’re talking about Black males, that’s nothing new,” Richmond told me. Systemic racism is nothing new when you’ve lived it. “We didn’t need eight minutes and 46 seconds of a police officer on George Floyd’s neck to know what was happening.” The 41 percent of Black businesses that have closed as a result of the pandemic, the 60 percent of Black households facing “serious financial problems,” and the abysmal Black unemployment rate after four years of the Trump administration offer a clear divide between Biden and the president, Richmond argued. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The real question is who we want to be.”
