Harris Tries To Crack Democrats’ Black Men Problem

PHILADELPHIA — Robert Lindsey, the owner of Sharp Skills Barber Shop, thinks his customers have some questions for Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Even with this whole election right now, brothers ain’t really behind Kamala because of her track record, you know? She was a prosecutor, and that was her job, and a lot of guys are sensitive about that,” Lindsey said, not long after the National Center for Black Civic Participation had used his barbershop as the home base to canvass the majority-Black Overbrook neighborhood in West Philadelphia. “I would love for her to answer some questions straight up.”

Lindsey and his customers are getting a chance to hear Harris answer a lot of questions this week. Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, is conducting interviews with a trio of Black male journalists and personalities following the rollout of a new economic plan, all in the hopes of improving her standing with Black men, who some polls show are less enthusiastic about the election than their female counterparts or may even vote for Republican Donald Trump in historic numbers.

Harris’ campaign schedule along with comments from former President Barack Obama suggesting Black men were insufficiently supportive of Harris and a New York Times/Siena College poll showing the former president winning the support of 20% of Black men have jolted the issue to the front burner of the presidential race.

There is some skepticism about polling showing significant gains for Trump among Black men, with Democratic operatives noting polls underestimated Black support for Democrats in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and in the 2022 midterms — even if all three of those races also saw Democrats struggle to turn out as many Black voters as they hoped.

In an interview with the Black news outlet The Shade Room, Harris seemed to both downplay reports she was struggling with Black men and admit she had more work to do with the demographic. “That’s not my experience,” she responded when asked about the polling.

“There’s an assumption that I have Black men in my pocket when it comes to their vote,” she continued. “Black men are no different from anybody else. They expect that you have to earn their vote.”

Harris’ comments reflect how Democrats are still internally debating the nature and extent of their purported struggles with Black men — which, keep in mind, would mean Democrats earn the vote of Black men at only twice the rate of their white counterparts, instead of nearly three times the rate — and how to best solve it.

Many Black operatives feel the threat of Black men voting for Trump is overstated, and most of the party’s problem is around turnout and enthusiasm. Some feel the key to improving Harris’ standing can be solved with talk about economics, while others believe they have to talk about criminal justice and police reform.

The one thing they do agree on: Many Black men are not getting what they want out of the Democratic Party, and the party needs to do better.

“A lot of Black men really feel like others when they hear us talk about politics,” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) said earlier this month after a roundtable with other Black elected officials in Milwaukee, noting even she focuses on issues more aimed at women like protecting abortion rights and expanding child care access. “So it sort of sounds like you’re not including men. And so then when somebody comes and they’re macho man or something, then that’s speaking to them.”

Moore said she has started talking up Harris’ record as a prosecutor, including her work to create programs to help young people convicted of drug crimes access job and educational opportunities, and pointing to Harris’ plans to help small businesses when Black men ask her about the candidate. “You have to talk to the whole family,” Moore said.

Sean Floyd, the manager of national programs and outreach with the National Center for Black Civic Participation — who drove around to four different barbershops and three churches in Philadelphia over the course of the weekend with a branded bus declaring POWER OF THE BALLOT — similarly noted some Black men feel they have been left behind.

“Black women are the most marginalized group there is, and as a result, there has been extra emphasis placed on them, rightfully so,” Floyd said. “But I think just like any other constituency, you can’t forget about the other constituency groups that are out there, and that’s what really all parties should be trying to do.” (The NCBCP is officially nonpartisan, though their bus also declares “we won’t go back,” a line suspiciously similar to one of Harris’ campaign slogans.)

Even so, Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, the largest Democratic outside group focused on Black voters, said they have yet to see a major gender gap in their internal data.

“We see Black voters across demographics trending towards identifying as independents and not as strong Democrats as they have in the past,” she said, noting it’s a long-term challenge for the party to woo them more firmly into the fold. “This massive gender gap that’s being reported on? We are not seeing it.”

Shropshire blamed Trump’s ability to wage a culture war around the concept of masculinity for creating a perception Black men were more pro-Trump than women. “As long as he’s shaping the narrative, we’re trapped in a conversation that may or may not be based in reality.”

What she is seeing is cynicism about the importance of voting, with Black voters often feeling their local governments have let them down and creating feelings of helplessness, which trickle upwards into national politics.

“It’s always been about convincing people that this is an election worth participating in,” Shropshire said.

The nature of the problem Shropshire described was easy to see here in Philadelphia. Bianca Iverson, one of the 120 organizers knocking on doors in the city for the group BlackPAC on Saturday, approached a group of Black men sitting on a porch in the Haddington neighborhood of West Philadelphia.

“I’m not the type of person you want to talk to,” one of the men quickly told her, a sentiment largely echoed by his friends. “I’m jaded. I know all politicians are full of shit. I know the presidential election does not have much to do with us.”

Iverson left some literature for the men after convincing them to tell her about their top issues for the election, and moved on to the next door. She said the reaction wasn’t uncommon. “They don’t know what to make of her,” she said of younger Black men’s reaction to Harris.

But over the course of more than two hours of door-knocking, the young men’s cynicism was a clear outlier. Most of BlackPAC’s targets were enthusiastic about Harris, and with Iverson’s help, made plans to vote if they did not already have one. Negative reactions tended to come because BlackPAC or another group had already knocked on their door once.

The idea of voting for President Donald Trump, as some polling suggests Black people are planning to do in historic numbers, seemed laughable to most of the door-knocking targets. One voter said her top concern for the election was “getting rid of the racist idiot.” Another young woman said she was terrified of “that 2025 thing” — a round of mailers from the Pennsylvania Democratic Party on the threat of Project 2025 had just hit mailboxes in the neighborhood.

In interviews on political talk shows on Sunday, both Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) quickly pivoted to Trump’s past racist behavior and comments when asked about Harris’ pitch for Black men, a sign of how Democrats continue to think their best defense is a good offense.

Warnock, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” brought up Trump’s infamous New York Times ad calling for the Central Park Five — who were wrongly convicted of assault and rape and were later exonerated — to receive the death penalty, and contrasted it with the numerous breaks the criminal justice system has handed Trump over the decades.

“Donald Trump has shown no deal of concern about what they went through, no bit of contrition about it. He’s doubled down on his position,” Warnock said. “This is who he is. And Black men know that, as they watch him deal with his own criminal problems and concerns, that the criminal justice system certainly doesn’t handle them the way it handles him.”

The question of how much Democrats should bring up criminal justice and police reform has loomed over much of the discussion over how to best win back Black men’s votes, with some Democrats fearful discussions of criminal justice reform could quickly lead to GOP accusations that the party is soft on crime.

Frank White, the executive director of Black Men Vote, has pressed for Democrats to more directly address Black men’s concerns about criminal justice, and Harris’ record on the issue. A poll the group released in August found highlighting some of her achievements on criminal justice reform, like requiring a statewide law enforcement agency in California to wear body cameras, could move Black men in her direction.

“Kamala and the powers that be — her campaign, whoever — needs to get in the face of these young Black men and tell them that all that stuff they’re hearing about Kamala locking the wrong folks up is just BS,” White told HuffPost, adding he fears the campaign and other groups will be “a day late and a dollar short.”

So far, however, Harris’ pitch has focused more on economics than on justice issues. The plan she rolled out Monday involved providing a million loans to Black entrepreneurs to start businesses and investing in Black male mentorship and training programs. Even the one criminal justice angle in the plan — the legalization of marijuana — was framed around letting Black men start businesses in the field.

And while a Harris ad targeted at Black radio stations released in August briefly mentioned her work “pioneer[ing] a program to give nonviolent drug offenders a second chance,” more recent television ads focused more on the dangers of Project 2025 for Black Americans and on her plans to lower the cost of housing and groceries.

Harris did address criminal justice issues once during her interviews on Monday, telling Roland Martin she would “absolutely” continue to have an aggressive civil rights division at the Justice Department.

“Under Donald Trump as president, those cases were not happening with any vigor or commitment,” she said, referring to investigations of police departments or prosecutions of law enforcement officers accused of wrongdoing. “He took resources out of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice.”

If it still feels like Democrats and other groups are figuring this all out, that’s because they sort of are. The NCBCP was working with a Philadelphia-based group to poll Black men in the area about what issues were important to them, with a QR code on literature left at doors leading to a survey asking about issues like Black men’s mental health, police reform, reparations and their faith in local government.

But the party may be running out of time with a demographic frustrated by a lack of progress. “It just feels like more of the same,” Lindsey said. “I think the brothers are tired of it. If a Democrat gets elected, then the House is full of Republicans, or vice versa. And then what really gets done at that point? It feels like all they care about is their reelection.”