GOP chair claims party 'has always been the home to Black Americans'

In an op-ed published on Tuesday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel claimed the GOP “has always been the home to Black Americans.” McDaniel’s op-ed comes just a few months after Black voters overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party at the ballot box, once again.

“Politically speaking, the Republican Party has always been the home to Black Americans, and I am humbled to be the leader of the party that carries on that torch of freedom and opportunities for all that came before me in our party, especially those Black Americans,” McDaniel wrote in the AFRO, a Black newspaper.

Her op-ed piece was tied to Black History Month and sought to tout the Republican Party’s connections to Blacks in America.

Yet in the 2020 presidential elections, an overwhelming majority of Black voters rejected Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

According to exit polls, 87% of Black voters voted for President Joe Biden, while 12% of Black voters chose Trump. Among Black women, the gulf was even wider, with 90% of Black women voting for Biden and Trump receiving 9% of their vote.

The lopsided vote came after four years of hostility from Trump toward Black voters and causes. He used the presidency to attack Black athletes protesting police brutality, regularly derided Black Democratic politicians as stupid, and referred to immigrants from nonwhite nations as coming from “shithole” countries.

During the presidential campaign, Trump and his political allies within the Republican Party repeatedly mispronounced then-Senator Kamala Harris’ name and lobbed other racist attacks at her. Harris was the first Black vice-presidential nominee and now serves as the first Black vice president in American history.

But the Republican Party’s failure to appeal to Black voters goes beyond Trump.

Since 1964, Republicans have never earned more than 15% of the Black vote in presidential elections.

Even in elections that Democrats lost, Black voters supported the Democratic nominee. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 89% of the Black vote, while John Kerry got 88% of that voting bloc in 2004. Even in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won in an electoral landslide, his opponent Walter Mondale received 91% of the Black vote.

Despite the Republican Party’s close affiliation in the distant past to anti-racist causes, its embrace in the modern era of racism and bigotry has demonstrably affected support among Black voters, along with other nonwhite demographics.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.