Washington Post wants black men to return to the plantation

What’s up with all those black men who voted for the Republican in the Georgia governor’s race?

White female voters in Georgia showed little interest in helping black women fulfill their dream of electing Stacey Abrams as governor, which would have made her the first African American woman to head a state in the nation’s history.

Seventy-five percent of white women voted for Republican Brian Kemp, who was declared the winner late last week, more than 10 days after disputes over absentee and provisional ballots.

Among black women, 97 percent supported Abrams, who is the first black woman to win a major party’s nomination for governor.

Although white suburban women were praised for helping to flip the U.S. House from Republican to Democratic control, liberal political pundits and activists criticized them for backing Kemp over the female Democratic candidate.

But another group of voters also raised eyebrows for how they voted in the race, in which Abrams fell about 17,000 votes short of forcing a runoff with Kemp.

Black men voted for Kemp at a higher rate than black women, according to exit polling, a data point that drew gasps and rebuke on social media and news commentary.

According to CNN’s exit polling, 11 percent of black men voted for Kemp; the Associated Press’s Vote Cast reported 8 percent.

Those numbers are reminiscent of the double-digit level of support that Donald Trump got among black men in the 2016 presidential election. Trump endorsed Kemp, which helped him win a runoff primary contest in July, and he traveled to Georgia to stump for Kemp two days before the Nov. 6 election.

Kemp’s campaign mirrored Trump’s political themes and rhetoric. During the primary, Kemp promised to protect the Second Amendment by running a campaign ad in which he brandished a shotgun at a teenage boy who wanted to date his daughter. Another ad showed him sitting in a pickup truck that he said he’d use to personally “round up criminal illegals.” He described Abrams, who campaigned on expanding Medicaid, increasing spending on education and protecting the rights of women, immigrants and people of color, as “radical” and “extreme.”

“How can so many black men still align with a party that, now more than ever, is unified by white identity politics?” Renée Graham asked in a Boston Globe column after the election. “This Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln. This is unabashedly the party of white supremacy, migrant family separations, racist fearmongering, and Brett Kavanaugh.”

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