America is at a racial and political crossroads. Protests over the past two weeks in response to an interrelated set of issues and events — the killing of George Floyd, police brutality, the Covid pandemic, a nation in lockdown, joblessness, a devastated economy and a presidential election — give rise to a key question. Will the Democratic coalition of minorities and liberal whites emerge empowered?
Current polling reveals a shift to the left in the public’s position on key race-related issues. But there are also some potential warning signs for Democrats.
The split reactions to the protests are represented by the contrasting comments of Opal Tometi, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas.
In an interview in The New Yorker last week, Tometi said:
My view of these protests is that they are different because they are marked by a period that has been deeply personal to millions of Americans and residents of the United States, and that has them more tender or sensitive to what is going on. People who would normally have been at work now have time to go to a protest or a rally, and have time to think about why they have been struggling so much, and they are thinking, “This actually isn’t right and I want to make time, and I have the ability to make time now and make my concerns heard.” So I think it is markedly differently in terms of the volume of demands we are hearing.
On June 3, Cruz spoke on the Senate floor. Careful to note that “there are zero legitimate law enforcement justifications for what happened to George Floyd,” Cruz continued:
What for some was legitimate First Amendment speech speaking out for justice became co-opted, became taken over by violent, criminal radicals ….
There are radicals who cynically took advantage of these protests to sow division, to sow fear, to engage in murder, to engage in violent assaults, to engage in looting, to engage in theft, to engage in intimidation, to engage in fear ….
None of us have a right to burn the cars of police officers, to shatter the shop windows of shops throughout this country, to engage in acts of terror, threatening the lives of our fellow Americans.
Let’s look at some of the contradictory narratives in American race relations, starting with Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland.
Mason posted a seven-part Twitter thread in which she makes a strong case that the United States is in the midst of a major transformation:
For decades we have been worried about the terrible power of an entire political party dedicated to maintaining the historical racial (and gender) hierarchy that has oppressed and denied justice to so many Americans.
While attention has focused on Trump and the Republican Party, Mason continued,
What we haven’t focused on as much is the potential power of the other political party that has been amassing a coalition of those who would like to upend that social hierarchy.
Now, she writes, the other party, the Democrats, has begun to flex its muscles:
As white supremacy concentrates its power in the G.O.P., it fosters an alliance of those that oppose it in the Democratic Party. The US has never seen this kind of coalition. But it is showing its power now. This is one cause for hope — that we may be at the beginning of an overdue national reckoning with our legacy of white supremacy. If it were ever to happen, the first major step would probably look a lot like this.
And in her Twitter feed, Mason posts a photo of a mass demonstration in Washington D.C.
Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, is among those envisioning a new era of racial reconciliation. In comments accompanying the release of the June 2 poll, Murray declared:
It seems we have reached a turning point in public opinion where white Americans are realizing that black Americans face risks when dealing with police that they do not. They may not agree with the violence of recent protests, but many whites say they understand where that anger is coming from.
In what Monmouth described as “a marked change in public opinion from prior polls,” its May 28-June 1 survey found that for the first time “a majority of Americans (57 percent) say that police officers facing a difficult or dangerous situation are more likely to use excessive force if the culprit is black.”
Consider the sharp increase in recent weeks in the public’s favorable rating of Black Lives Matter.
On April 17, 42 percent of the public supported B.L.M. and 31 percent opposed, an 11-point spread, according to Civiqs Polling. By June 6, 12 days after the death of George Floyd, the percentage supporting B.L.M. rose to 52 percent, and the percentage opposed fell to 24 percent, a 28-point spread.
On May 15, Trump’s disapproval rating was 51.5 percent, his approval level was 46.4 percent, a 5.1 point difference, according to polling averages collected by RealClearPolitics. By June 8, just over 3 weeks later, his disapproval rating had climbed to 54.4 percent, and his approval rating had fallen to 42.6 percent.
The trends to date provide a basis for Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, to point out that
1) There has emerged a much stronger awareness of racism and discrimination especially around policing and the chance to get ahead. 2) The pattern of killings and the video have had a cumulative effect of creating a real turning point. 3) Trump’s response had been so out of touch with what people were feeling and the pain, healing, and change they want. 4) It’s a different America than Trump understands especially with young voters so diverse and white women so upset at his style of governing. 5) And then there are unexpected and vivid validators, the generals and police themselves.
Some analysts are cautiously optimistic that the country is finally becoming more liberal on matters of race.
Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, wrote by email that the alliance between white and black Democrats is strengthening:
White Democrats live in the same cities as blacks, vote for the same candidates as blacks, and attract the same ire from President Trump as blacks.
In addition, she added, white and black Democrats “share egalitarian ideology, geography, urbanicity, and notably a common out-group enemy in Trump and the Republican Party.”
Wronski believes that a degree of prudence might be warranted in the case of some of the protest rhetoric:
The messaging of “Defund the Police” is horrible political communication — and the impression that it gives the public (that the activists want to eliminate all police) is definitely seen as going too far. That message elicits anger, then confusion.
The Times noted earlier this week that “proponents of a more moderate approach support new measures to exert oversight over police departments and regulate the use of force, but not break up the departments.”
African-American political scientists I contacted were, on the whole, measured in their assessment of positive developments in white racial views.
Vesla Weaver of Johns Hopkins, is among the most optimistic. She wrote by email:
As someone who has studied racial oppression and specifically policing, even I am quite bowled over by the rapid shifts in discourse that have emerged in our moment.
And yet, while
demands for black liberation are being widely embraced, opposing narratives that usually try to delegitimize the grievance or shift frames towards law and order, the need to be more patient for change and go through conventional channels, or outright conflate protesters with common criminality are being drowned out and have not had a footing.
(The New York Times)
