The tight presidential election revealed that America is divided against herself, and it further exposed racial tensions that have been growing over the course of 2020. While Joe Biden won the popular vote and electorial college, a blue wave did not sweep the nation as predicted, and instead, states became battlegrounds.
“The outcome of the election and the predicted blue wave that was going to sweep the country did not come to pass. Mr. Biden has to deal with a Republican-controlled Congress, Senate, and a House of Representatives that gained Republican members,” said Abdul Haleem Muhammad, the Southwestern Regional representative of the Nation of Islam out of Houston. “So regardless of what his agenda is, he’s going to have to compromise and negotiate with a Republican-controlled Senate and an emboldened House of Representatives and the Supreme Court with a conservative majority.”
He said Black people should have learned that they can’t trust the corporate media or the political pundits.
“Their election didn’t turn out the way that they predicted,” he said. “And what we should learn is that we have to build our own independent Black political institutions.”
At Final Call presstime, Mr. Biden had garnered 290 electoral votes making him president-elect. A record number of voters turned out and Mr. Biden led with over 76 million in the popular vote with Mr. Trump garnering over 71 million. Mr. Trump had yet to concede the race and many of his supports contend he had been cheated. “Trump has not lost,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” before adding, “Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard,” reported Associated Press. Around the country while thousands took to the streets in several cities celebrating Mr. Biden’s victory, supporters of Mr. Trump have been vocal about their anger in what they charge was an unfair election. Interviewees said the election shows that White people are choosing White supremacy.
“White people in this country showed us in this election that they will once again pick White supremacy over their health,” said Dr. Greg Carr, chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He saw exit poll data that revealed that an overwhelming number of White people who voted for Mr. Trump said Joe Biden would do a better job at handling Covid-19 than Donald Trump. “Yet, they voted for Donald Trump, meaning I pick my Whiteness literally over my health, and potentially my life. I would rather die than not support White nationalism,” Dr. Carr said.
He explained how voting is an act of self-defense for Black people, and he said Black people should learn how to vote out of the collective interests of the whole.
“Biden is not going to advance a Black agenda unless he’s forced and even if he’s forced, he’s still not going to do everything we would want, which is why the day after he’s certified and Harris is certified, we then look at the 2022 calendar,” he said.
Umair Haque, the director of Havas Media Lab, a global media agency, wrote an article on his website titled “America’s Problem is That White People Want It to Be a Failed State.” Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau say that America is almost 80 percent White, which means, Mr. Haque concluded, that the 2020 election is about White America. The last Democratic president that had the majority White vote was John F. Kennedy, who won the 1960 election.
“We see in this election that if only the voting White public were included, Donald Trump would win the presidency of the United States by an overwhelming majority,” Dr. Carr said.
Vicki Dillard, an activist and social media commentator, said the election has caused Black people and the world to wake up to the idea that America is a fraud, given the level of disenfranchised voters, gerrymandering and the strategies that were used to disrupt the voting process.
“The Electoral College, as we know, comes out of slavery, and the fact that it is still intact, which silences and disenfranchises a large number of people, that compounds the reality that this American democracy and government is a fraud,” she said.
She commented that though Mr. Trump has been an open enemy to Black people, Mr. Biden represents the polite arm of White supremacy.
“Black folks know he’s a racist, but they want that lull before the storm. You know how they say before the storm comes there’s a lull? He offers people that little five-second respite that they could just take a breath. But sometimes that can be the most dangerous one. Why? Because Black folks will start going back to sleep,” she said. “I believe that Biden represents rock-a-bye baby. I believe that he will represent someone that temporarily rocks us back to sleep. I believe that he will try to do something because of the extraordinary pressure that’s going to be on him in terms of trying to do something for Black folks, but I don’t believe it’s going to be substantive, because you got to keep in mind, he’s still going to be trying to strike that balance with these White supremacists.”
Bobby Henry, the publisher of Westside Gazette in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., said he doesn’t think Joe Biden will put Black people on the backburner because of Kamala Harris. But, he said, Black people should set their own course rather than being pushed and prodded into a direction. He talked about forming a November 4 Coalition that would help with that.
“The greatest movement that Black folk had in this country was from the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and what they did was they refused to get on the bus,” he said. “We shouldn’t continue to get on this bus of the sameness. We shouldn’t continue to get on this bus of racism, of self-hate.”
Cheryl Smith, publisher of Texas Metro News, Garland Journal and I Messenger in the Dallas-area, said Black people can’t count on either party and need to hold both accountable.
“Racism is alive and well, and racists have been celebrating their racism,” she said. “If Trump wins … they’re gonna feel empowered to be more racist, and if Biden wins, those same racists who say they are not racists, who don’t recognize White privilege … those people are going to be out there and they’re going to try to make our lives miserable.”
She said Black people will have to do for self. Marcus Davis, an entrepreneur and restaurateur out of Houston, also said Black people need to save themselves.
“We are a community that wants to be made whole, that needs to be made whole, and we align at the pool of Bethesda and wait for Congress to put us into the water once the president stirs. And that’s just not going to happen in our community. We have to do it ourselves,” he said. “We have enough power in our community to elevate ourselves by the circulation of our dollar and the building of our institutions, our educational institutions, and our social institutions.”
Filmmaker and activist Tariq Nasheed said many Black people were strategically absent from voting and that Mr. Biden was saved by the older Black voters who vote out of tradition.
“The younger voters who wanted tangibles for their vote, they did more of a protest this time. And it’s those Black young voters, they are the ones who could have taken this thing over the top for Biden,” he said. “Biden should have easily beat Donald Trump. Donald Trump is an open White supremacist. He should have been an easy win. The fact that Biden couldn’t wash Trump means that that young Black vote didn’t come out and put Biden over the top.”
He said that puts Black people in a place to weaponize their votes to get something tangible during the next political cycle.
“The young Black voters, these are the Black men and women who are getting targeted by the White racist police system and all of the Karens. Breonna Taylor, that was a young Black woman. A lot of our young Black youth, they are the ones who are targeted by police the most,” he said. “So they’re going to feel a certain way about the system. They’re going to want more protection, and they’re going to want more tangibles out of the system.”
Both he and Mr. Davis said Black people need to unite and form an economic base, which can then be used to strengthen political power for the Black community.
Ms. Dillard said Black people should be looking at separation.
“There’s a lot of pain for our people right now. There’s a lot of bloodshed. There’s a lot of difficulty. But those are the exact same traits that you find with a woman that’s getting ready to give birth,” she said. “I’m saying to breathe, I’m saying to push, because we’re about to give birth to the hereafter of a new world.”
Abdul Haleem Muhammad referenced the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s words at the Nation of Islam’s 2020 Saviours’ Day event. “What we’re witnessing is the unraveling of a great nation. We’re also witnessing what the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote of America in the book Fall of America, confusion of the people,” he said.
He said Black people should unite behind the Muslim Program and follow the leadership of Minister Farrakhan towards separation.
“God is speaking today, and He’s the Author of events that are taking place. So no matter what they do or what they try to do, it is He who is the hidden power that is bringing America to her knees,” he said. “And He’s doing it on our behalf because of their mistreatment of us for 465 years. It’s time for us to go free.”
Min. Farrakhan recently told the Executive Council of the Nation of Islam that many Black people and others in America are heavily invested in the outcome of the 2020 election, explained his national assistant Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad. “We know that President Trump is a very proud man, and he loves to win, but losing the Minister said, he (Mr. Trump) can’t handle that too well,” shared Student Min. Ishmael Muhammad during the Nation of Islam’s weekly Sunday broadcast that aired Nov. 8 in his message, “The Lull Before the Storm.”
“The Minister said that if he should lose this election and a man that he mocked, that he thinks is so inferior to him wins and if the Whites of this nation look at him and see him in a weakened state even in victory then the image of Kamala Harris as vice-president, a heartbeat away from the president becomes a focus. So White people have come out in record number, out of their hiding places from rural America to vote for Mr. Trump hoping that if they poured out in great numbers he would win. This is the condition of America right now. People on both sides are heavily invested. People on both sides are being fed toxic words; words that undermine the institutions of America; words that are an anomaly to the behavior of presidents; words that are an anomaly to the peaceful transfer of power,” continued Student Min. Ishmael Muhammad.
“So this toxic, poisonous, explosive talk, the Minister said, can be set off. The president’s rhetoric and careless speech is feeding his supporters, so emotions are running very high. Nearly 150 million Americans voted in this election—a record number—and right now according to the latest numbers, nearly 75 million have cast their vote for Mr. Biden an over 70 million for President Trump. So the country is divided and the focus, the focus in the battleground states is on the population centers of Pennsylvania which is Philadelphia; Georgia—Atlanta, in Michigan it was Detroit, Wayne County. So it is the votes coming from the inner cities, the most populous of the population in these battleground states and it largely has come in from the African American community. This means and shows that our vote has according to what they reported, determined the outcome of this election.”
