A new Quinnipiac poll finds that there’s one group of Americans who oppose Donald Trump’s stupid, wasteful border wall even more than Latinos — and that’s black Americans, 87% of whom do not believe that the wall should be built.
In his Washington Post analysis, Eugene Scott notes that there are a few reasons why this might be the case. Some black Americans are undocumented, and some identify as Latino. But black Americans have been on the receiving end of racist attacks from Republicans since the Southern strategy, and Republicans have been overtly trying to pit them against Latinos and immigrants for years. Black voters seen through the fear-mongering, and not only are they not into it; the GOP’s racist efforts have created a backlash.
Last November, for example, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie — a Republican — ran a famously anti-immigrant campaign where he tried to out-Trump Donald Trump by endlessly demonizing immigrants. It didn’t work for voters of any background, including black Americans. As polling from the African American Research Collaborative (AARC) showed, Gillespie’s attacks on immigrants made black voters across all demographics less enthusiastic about him by a whopping 73 percent.
Matt Barreto, a pollster, political science professor, and founder of Latino Decisions, as well as the AARC itself, tweeted today about the support black voters have shown in recent years for progressive immigration reforms as well as their antipathy to racist GOP attacks in general:
Great piece in @thefix @washingtonpost by @Eugene_Scott showing African Americans reject #BorderWall and Anti-immigrant policies, even more so than Latinos. This is consistent with research by @AfAmResearch & @LatinoDecisions in Virginia 2017 Gov election re: Gillespie MS-13 pic.twitter.com/UOYlnPhYm8
— Matt A. Barreto (@realMABarreto) April 12, 2018
And here’s data demonstrating that in Virginia, AfAm voters were more supportive of in-state tuition for undoc immig than any other group @AmericasVoice @AfAmResearch @LatinoDecisions pic.twitter.com/MVdcrbynWB
— Matt A. Barreto (@realMABarreto) April 12, 2018
We have polled African Americans for two cycles now on immigration questions and they always perform as well or better than every group on progressive reforms (supporting DREAM, comprehensive immigration reform & opposing wall). The backbone of a just America is the black vote. https://t.co/Qr0IeINmQw
— African American Research Collaborative (@AfAmResearch) April 12, 2018
The Eugene Scott column goes on to quote author Raquel Reichard, who explains that many blacks and Latinos have come to understand that their fight against people like Donald Trump is shared:
Our struggles, even for those of us who aren’t Afro-Latino, are linked; therefore, helping to dismantle the racist systems that incarcerate one in three black men can also put a crack in the structures that place Latino families in detention centers. …
Black and brown people in the U.S. have always lived in the same neighborhoods, worshiped at the same churches, attended the same schools and frequented the same stores and restaurants. We are neighbors and allies in the class and race struggle.
There’s a reason why Republicans have sought to pit these groups against each other. With two-thirds of both black voters and Latino voters identifying more with the Democratic Party than with the GOP, Republicans know that this continued solidarity against them is a ticking demographic bomb.
