4 Key Policy Areas Where The Democratic Leadership And Black Voters Disagree

The Democratic party often touts its emphasis on race.

With a party preamble that includes a promise to “root out structural and systemic racism in our economy and our society,” the Democrats certainly position themselves as the party best suited to tackle ethnic and racial tensions in the United States. Indeed, the Democrats claim to represent the issues of black Americans to such an extent that voters “ain’t black” unless they vote blue.

However, recent data seems to tell a different story. In the 2020 election, for example, President Trump won 18% of votes from African-American men — a record-shattering number for a Republican presidential candidate in modern history. If Democrats hope to retain their grip upon the black voting bloc, perhaps they should re-evaluate some of the positions they claim exist “for the good” of African-Americans. As polling shows, the visions of Democratic leadership and black voters are drastically different across many key policy areas.

Here are four examples.

Election security

Leading Democrats routinely decry Republican attempts to enact voter identification laws as racist — despite overwhelming support for such attempts among black voters.

Most recently, President Biden cast a recent push in Georgia to increase election security as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” according to a White House press release. He also said that there exists a “moral and Constitutional obligation to act” against the new legislation and in favor of the Democrats’ “For The People Act,” which would effectively scrap voter identification requirements across the nation.

However, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that 75% of likely American voters believe that citizens “should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote.” Only 21% opposed such a policy. 

African Americans were no exception; they rejected the idea that voter ID laws “discriminate against black voters and other minorities” by a nearly two-to-one margin. Sixty percent agreed that photo identification laws are not discriminatory, while 31% disagreed.

Defunding the police

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, many leftists began asserting that the police were a fundamentally racist institution — again, to the contrary of most black Americans’ convictions.

One Princeton University professor — who happens to be sponsored by one of Colin Kaepernick’s social justice initiatives — claimed in an op-ed that the goal to “reform the police” usually means to “reward the police” as they “brutalize and kill.” Such ideas received nods from legacy media, major corporations, and progressive politicians — all of whom are partial to the Democratic Party.

Drowned out under calls to defund the police — which were carried out under the auspices of the “Black Lives Matter” movement — were the voices of many black Americans. One YouGov poll discovered that African Americans overwhelmingly oppose the notion of defunding the police.

“Self-described liberals support defunding the police by a 13-point margin,” reported HuffPost. “But nearly every other ideological and demographic group opposes it. Democrats and Democratic leaners oppose it by a 4-percentage point margin, and Black Americans oppose it by a 20-point margin.”

After calls to defund the police proved to be unpopular among virtually all demographics in the United States, Democrats finally took the hint. One month into the newest Congress, Democrats in the Senate voted unanimously for a resolution to defend — not defund — the police.

School choice

The Biden campaign platform promised to “build the best, most innovative schools in the country in low-income communities and communities of color.” However, the Biden administration and other Democratic leadership hold starkly different ideas from communities of color in fulfilling those ends. 

Across federal and state ballot measures, Democrats tend to vote against school choice programs, which seek to harness market forces to improve primary and secondary schooling outcomes for students — regardless of race or ZIP code. 

Though Democrats oppose them, school choice programs are extremely popular among the Democrats’ minority voting base. One recent poll indicated that 58% of black Democrats held favorable views of school choice, while only 31% held unfavorable views. Hispanic Democrats indicated 52% favorability, while 30% were unfavorable.

Studies routinely show that school choice programs boost results for African American students. For example, Georgia’s education scholarship program — which offset the costs of students attending private schools by incentivizing taxpayers to donate toward education nonprofits — saw high school graduation rates rise by 18% for black children.

Illegal immigration

During election season, the Democrats promised to “welcome immigrants” by “creating neighborhood resource centers” that would help illegal immigrants access the healthcare and schooling systems. The Biden platform floated a plethora of similar initiatives which, as many suggest, are leading to the present migrant crisis at the border.

One CBS News/YouGov poll from the Trump era showed that 40% of black Americans agree that illegal immigrants ought to be deported back to their place of origin. Only 20% of black Americans believe that detained families should be released during the asylum hearing process.

Studies consistently prove that illegal immigration has particularly salient economic impacts on black communities. For example, Vernon Briggs of Cornell University and the Center for Immigration Studies wrote that “because most illegal immigrants overwhelmingly seek work in the low skilled labor market and because the black American labor force is so disproportionately concentrated in this same low wage sector, there is little doubt that there is significant overlap in competition for jobs in this sector of the labor market.”

“This is not surprising, since if employers have an opportunity to hire illegal immigrant workers, they will always give them preference over legal workers of any race or ethnic background,” added Briggs. “This is because illegal immigrant workers view low skilled jobs in the American economy as being highly preferable to the job opportunities in their homelands that they have left.”

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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