Some new research highlights the diversity of political thought and voting behavior within the Black community.
Researchers with the Democracy Power and Innovation Fund, along with other groups, surveyed nearly 3,000 voting-age people in a handful of states, including Michigan. Over 900 were not registered voters.
Branden Snyder of the Detroit Action Education Fund said that for too long, political leaders and consultants have focused almost exclusively on white swing or independent voters, while treating Black voters largely as a monolith.
“There is a diversity of opinions, there's a diversity of backgrounds, there is a diversity of experiences when it comes to Black voters,” Snyder said. “Both here in Michigan, but also throughout the United States.”
The researchers found that Black voters clustered into five groups based on their political and social values, as well as their likelihood to vote. The largest of those groups, at around 41% of survey participants, were what they called “Legacy Civil Rights” voters. These people tend to be 50 or older, and highly motivated to vote. They not only believe that voting can make a real impact, but that they have an almost sacred obligation to participate in the political process.
Younger Black voters tended to break down into smaller groups. The youngest of all is what researchers dubbed the “Rightfully Cynical,” and accounted for 22% of all people surveyed. This cluster, made up predominantly of Black men, is the least likely vote.
Rightful Cynics have the lowest belief in their own political efficacy of the clusters – meaning they don’t believe people like them can change things with the government or politics. The researchers describe their cynicism as “rightful” because it is rooted in their experiences with politicians and institutions "failing them and their communities,” the survey’s authors wrote.
Another younger cluster was the so-called “NextGen Traditionalists,” who according to researchers tended to be religious and hold more socially conservative values. This group is among the least likely to vote. But another, slightly smaller cluster, dubbed “Secular Progressives,” were much more likely to vote and participate in the political process. This group is majority-women, tends to be higher income and better educated, and is more socially progressive than most other Black voters.
Snyder said the results of this research give organizers more tools to not only encourage Black people to engage in the electoral process, but to engage them in civic and community life and institutions more broadly. “In order to engage them and really involve them in the electoral process, we have to treat those categories as different,” he said. “And we have to treat those categories as each unique with their own set of circumstances, their own stimuli and interests, and their own desires.”
Snyder noted that across all age groups, Black women tend to vote at much higher rates than Black men. “The majority of the Black men that we were talking to, [they] don't believe that the system works,” he said. “And they believe that they aren't being engaged at all.”
Snyder said that people working to engage the Black community in the political process not only have an obligation to recognize the political diversity within it, but to find ways to engage groups like the “Rightful Cynics” by “giving them a home where they can actually communicate and talk about not just the election at hand, but also what do they want in the economy, or what do they want in the community as a whole.”
