Commentary: As Election Day approaches, Black folk must hear this crucial message

C’mon, man!

That’s the simple, urgent translation of former President Barack Obama’s plea to Black men ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

Last week, Obama was out on the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris, delivering an admonition to African American voters who may be leaning toward supporting former President Donald Trump in the highly competitive presidential contretemps.

Recent polls suggest that Harris’ support among Black voters is waning. About 15% of Black likely voters said they planned to vote for Trump, a 6-point increase from 2020, according to a New York Times/Siena poll taken Sept. 29-Oct. 6.

The Harris campaign is wringing its hands over fears that, even with the prospect of electing a Black woman as president, her support from African American voters is lagging.

Black voters are the Democrats’ most reliable base. Harris can’t win the presidency without their overwhelming support and turnout. Those fears inspired Obama, the nation’s first and only Black president, to lay it out during a visit to a Harris campaign office in Pittsburgh.

“I’m going to go ahead and just say, speak some truths, if you don’t mind,” Obama said to the gathering of campaign staff and volunteers, many of them Black men, “because my understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running.”

That attitude, he noted, “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”

“You’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said.

It’s a risky ploy. Obama subsequently got clobbered on social media, attacked for what some saw as elitist “lecturing” to Black folks.

I am sure there is misogyny and sexism among my brothers. Quiet as it’s kept, sexism in the Black community is a vicious fact of life. Some Black men don’t like to see women get ahead. Especially their own. Black men are also a proud class. Calling them out in public could backfire.

Yet, as Election Day approaches, Black folk must hear this crucial message.

Allow me to convey the more pointed, real deal conversation Obama could be having to reach the recalcitrant Black men who are edging away from Harris.

Picture Obama at a bar, tie off, beer in hand, watching the game with the guys. The conversation could go like this:

“You wanna vote for Trump?” Obama would say. “On Election Day, you are gonna stay home on the couch? C’mon, man, have you lost your mind? Man, I know you want to be macho, and I get that. But don’t tell me you are falling for Trump okey-doke.

“Kamala Harris is an African American woman. She went to a historically Black college. She has a Black daddy. Kamala is your grandmother, mother, sister, aunt. Real men take care of their women, and that means supporting them to the hilt, as they have taken care of you.

“Man, when this guy was a landlord in New York City, he wouldn’t even rent to you. The federal government once sued Trump and his management company, charging them with systematic racial discrimination in his rental apartments. Trump eventually agreed to settle the case and entered into a consent decree in which he admitted no guilt but pledged to not discriminate against Black and Latinos in the future.

“When Rachel Scott, a Black woman and senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, asked Trump a tough question at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, Trump retorted that she was being ‘nasty’ and ‘horrible.’

“Do you remember how, back in 2019, then-President Trump attacked four Democratic congresswomen, saying, ‘Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.’ All are women of color.

“C’mon, man. Trump has called your communities ‘hellholes,’ ‘crime-infested’ and ‘war zones.’

“At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last month, Trump called Harris, our Black vice president, ‘mentally impaired.’

“Man, I could go on. I know one thing. If Trump talked like that about your mama, you would do a lot more than not vote for him. You would kick his you-know-what.

“Do you really think Donald Trump is going to prioritize your needs? Trump won’t do anything for you, other than denigrate and demean you.

“So if you want to be a proud Black man, get off the couch and stand up for sister Harris, rather than that racist, misogynistic and, as Harris says, ‘unhinged,’ demagogue.

“C’mon man. Go with Harris, and not because she’s Black, but because she’s you.”

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Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist.

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