The most confident prediction I can make about this upcoming election is that black men who don’t vocally support Vice President Kamala Harris will be treated with the same contempt as the 53% of white women who voted for President Trump in 2016. The attacks have already begun. MSNBC host Joy Reid recently claimed that black men with traditional values are “white- adjacent.” Social media is rife with stern warnings to black men who don’t fall in line. This type of public slander is not new.

In 2020, Rutgers University professor Brittney Cooper called black men voting for Trump “traitorous MFs.” One Democratic candidate for Congress said one in five black men voted for Trump because “they hate black women.” Black men voting Republican have been characterized as politically unsophisticated race traitors who just want access to the power and privilege of their white counterparts.