Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios.
I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding.
I'm your host, Rams' job.
He is Rams' job, I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher, Yes.
You are, and you know we've been putting it off long enough. We've been teasing it long enough. Of course, q is now back despite having you know, committed to having him back on the show for some time. He's now back with us. So the family is complete, and we bring a very special gift for this episode. We hope that you will be as enlightened as and as informed by the conversations we've been able to have with
our guests today as we have been. Our guest, of course, is the one and only doctor Christopher Twer, who is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. He is the director of the Back the Black Voter Project, the co founder of Black inn Sites Research, and the editor in chief of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics.
So welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here excited to have this conversation.
Yeah, and we're very much looking forward to it.
And for those that may not know what all of that means, and I'm sure that you know, you'll get into it a little bit more.
Doctor Tayler works with data.
So you know, a lot of times us as journalists and you know, people politicians, et cetera, derived conclusions from you know, their own experience, from you know, the way the world feels to them, whatever. But a lot of times that information is really siloed and people don't really know it. And so what doctor Taller has been able to do is kind of give us a global view of where we are as a people, where we are politically, what our goals should be, and what our goals no
longer should be. And we're again, we're very much looking forward to the conversation we're about to have. But before we there, it is time to start off with some ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall. So today's ABNY excellence comes from the Black Information Network and I will share a seventeen year old Georgia student has received over sixty college acceptances and one million dollars in scholarships.
Good morning, America reports. Montavius Lebron Presley, a student at Douglas County High School in Georgia, said he started applying for colleges on the first day of his senior year in the hopes of pursuing medicine and later becoming an anesthesiologist. Presley juggled dual enrollment courses and work based learning while
completing as many applications as possible. He also held leadership roles in the National Honor Society and Future Business Leaders of America as he worked at a local pizza restaurant. Presley said he received his first college acceptance from the University of Alabama, one of his top school choices, in October.
The offers continued to pour in.
As of last week, Presley received sixty one acceptances and was awarded over one point one million scholarships. The teenager said he was determined to attend college from a young age. Quote when I was a little boy, I always said that I would go to the university because people in my family will always talk about how much they love their college life and how much it really impacted them.
So I always thought.
When I was a little boy that I would just go off and do something amazing. So again, Montavius Presley, you are our example of e any excellence this week, especially when we talk about the amount of scholarship money you've received, that in and of itself is a testament to just a great accomplishments that you've already achieved.
And hopefully the things that are to come.
And so the segment is the segment here exists to highlight people that we think are doing great things and to remind other folks that we aren't just the worst things, you know, and often enough we are the best things. In today's example is you now, doctor Tyler again, welcome
back to the show. You know, for folks that you know, for what we didn't cover, you know, go ahead and give an introduction of you know, kind of the work that you do, the nature of the work that you do, and a little bit more about yourself, just so folks have a little bit more of an idea of who they're talking to today.
Absolutely, as I said, pleasure to be here. I've been
studying black politics for over a decade now. A lot of my work has focused on collecting accurate and reliable data of the black community, something that really doesn't exist, not just in today's political world, but even in the academic spheres, and it's something that I've taken pride in doing really for the last six to seven years as part of the Black Voter Project, where I've periodically collected data sets, both nationally regional data sets, statewide data sets
of just black people to try and get a sense as to how Black attitudes and opinions might be similar and different from those of the rest of America, attitudes that oftentimes aren't captured in mainstream surveys and work that's
done in mainstream publications in mainstream media. This past election cycle, I had the privilege of having a project funded to collect four waves of election data from Black Americans, waves that were of the same people at four different points in time throughout the election, and then one wave after the election to see how things have changed or shifted once the election took place.
And so a lot of.
My recent sort of work and ideas come from that data set, But that data is built on a number of years of different projects collecting other types of data, again all focused on Black Americans and the black experience and trying to understand how attitudes and opinions and behaviors of black people are shaped in ways that are similar and unique to general America.
Really pushing for.
A clear path to having a narrative for black political power and having pundits and politicians understand what Black America is thinking when they otherwise might not really have the data to do so.
Doctor Tyler, There's an interesting thing that happens hosting this show. Because of the type of stories that we cover and our position with our listeners, we spend a lot of time talking about very, very difficult subjects. A counterpoint to that is that oftentimes we get to talk to people who we admire and respect and who we are honored to have a conversation with.
And today is one of those times.
So you know, if you can see my smile, I'm trying to fight my smile off. Very very excited and honor to be speaking with you today. A wonderful thing that happens in your space is the use of data in facts and ramses. And I in our travels have heard many times that facts don't care about your feelings, and using data to tell stories is just a far more effective way to do it than how sometimes I get very emotional. So thank you for providing that balance for us as well.
Yeah, happy to do it.
We've asked before, and it had conversations before about the idea of black men defecting from the Democratic voter base.
Is that something that you noticed.
And a second question would be, have you seen that black men are regretting or those who did vote for President Trump regretting the decision that they made.
Yeah, that's a great question and one that kept coming up throughout the election cycle. I think, first and foremost, it's important to point out that the data that I've collected, some of the largest data sets on Black Americans, in what I consider some of the most reliable data out there when looking at black public opinion, kind of puts to bed these narratives that a lot of black folk
defected and voted for Trump. There's nothing in the data that suggests that the turnout did decline slightly, and I'll
get into that in just a second. But when it came to who black people voted for, I found that just as many black people voted for Kamala Harris about eighty six percent, as they did for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, and almost the exact same amount of the black community, right around twelve percent voted for Donald Trump, and so there was no major defection, no racial realignment of Black people moving towards Trump or the Republicans in
this election cycle. When it comes to black men, My data, because it's unique, and then I collected data over time, shows that in the beginning there might have been some truth to the idea that black men were not very excited about voting for the Democratic candidate, especially when it was Joe Biden. Early on in April, when I asked people who they were going to vote for, only about fifty eight percent of black men said that they were
going to vote for Joe Biden. By the time I asked people to get in August and Harris had moved to the top of the ticket, the number of black men who said they were going to vote for Harris jumped to sixty three percent and ended up all the way at eighty two percent saying that they voted for Harris. After the asking them after the election who they ended up voting for. That number rose tremendously throughout the election cycle, showing that black men came.
Around to the Democratic Party.
There was not much defection, if at all, and we actually see that there's a slightly higher percentage of black men at eighty two percent, that voted for Kamala Harris in twenty twenty four than the seventy nine percent of black men according to exit polls, that voted for Biden in twenty twenty and so kind of both of these narratives fly in the face of good, accurate data that black people, and especially black men, actually defected much, if at all, this election cycle.
I'm sure you've noticed there's been a lot in the way of counter programming and loud contrarian opinion with regard to where black people stand in the current political climate. Where from what you see, does the overall black public opinion like now post election, now that those those votes have been cast, we are now in this current administration, What does the data say about where our opinion, our public opinion collectively stands today.
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. There's tons of misinformation out there. I'm finding that it's especially affecting younger black cohorts because they rely a lot on social media and YouTube and podcasts, more so than older Black people who pay more attention to sort of television and traditional media. However, all Black people that I've talked to after the election are far more disillusioned and apathetic than they were even.
You six months prior to it, when Biden was still the candidate.
Over the election cycle, the data that I collected suggested that there was some sense of positivity building amongst the Black community when it came to the Democratic Party, primarily because of Harris elevating to the top of the ticket, and so initially about twenty eight percent of Black people said that they felt that the Democratic Party was welcoming
to Black people. That rose up to forty two percent right before the election when asked in October, after Harris having successfully sort of mounted a campaign that looked like
she was very competitive going into election day. However, when asked again in December after the election, that number dropped from forty two percent back down to thirty five percent, reversing course right and so there were significantly less people saying that the Democratic Party was welcoming to Black people after the election, showing this sense of sort of disillusionment
and apathy with party. We also asked people looking forward whether or not they felt like a second Trump president was going to motivate them to participate or if a second Trump presidency would prove exhausting and they kind of just want to be left alone. And when we ask people this question, about twenty three percent said that they were motivated compared to a whole forty three percent who said they were going to be they felt exhausted and
wanted to be left alone. And when we looked at that in some different breakdowns in the beauty of collecting sort of these large data sets of just black folks, as you can actually look at things based on age and gender and have real ideas as to what's taking place instead of having to do cuts with small sections of data and other surveys that aren't designed to measure
black opinion. And when doing so, when it comes to looking forward, we found that a whole fifty one percent of black women said that they were exhausted and really just wanted to be left alone after the election, kind of building on this sentiment that you suggested where people are really tired, right and they feel like this selection really beat them down, building on a lot of the memes that we see where especially black women are ready to just you know, sit back and watch the world
burn if need be.
A very interesting mixture of frustration, apathy, and just kind of a lack of enthusiasm is what Ramses and I have noticed. People being feeling hopeless has led to conversations
that we've noticed where there's a blatant false equivalence. You know, people are like throwing up their hands like, hey, neither party cares about us, which Ramses and I thought was a dangerous trend because even if that's how you feel, I think it's pretty obvious that one side of the aisle is more of what we've been hearing people call for years an existential threat to democracy, and the other why do people feel black people specifically so unenthusiastic about
what the Democratic Party brings to the table currently, Because we've seen people just kind of tapping out on the whole process and throwing their hands up and saying aloud that neither party cares about us, So why should I care? When we see that again, one side of the aisle is just far more dangerous than the other.
Yeah, there's two things that I want to say here. I think first it's important to point out you're exactly right. The danger of building this false equivalency is real, and
I think it happened before the election took place. As well, A lot of the rhetoric around certain black people voting for Trump, or black men in particular moving towards Trump, rhetoric that does not bear out in the data, tried to build this false equivalency and really make it seem like there's not much difference between the two candidates or
the two parties. And although this doesn't didn't necessarily cause people to actually vote for or Trump or vote against the Democrats, it did drive apathy and it caused people to stay home and to not vote altogether. We absolutely saw that numbers suggest black turnout was down in twenty twenty four compared to twenty twenty, compared to twenty sixteen, and especially compared to the Obama years, and in states like Georgia, the only group to have turnout fall is black voters.
Right.
Every other group, White voters, Asian American voters, Hispanic Latino voters, they all saw increases in turnout from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four. It was black voters who saw a drop. And I really feel like that comes from building this false equivalency. And so there's really two things here, right, One it's the idea that the Democrats aren't doing anything for black folk, and this has to be a misnomer that is fought by breaking down some of the policy
that's taken place in real simple terms. But to do so, you have to first meet a lot of black voters where they are with their disillusionment. You can't kind of talk down to people and tell them, hey, we've done all this stuff. You should like us, Like are you dumb? Why don't you know this? You have to understand that a lot of people are working from a historical understanding of politics where black people have been alienated and left out for generations, and so it's not surprising that they
approach party politics with skepticism. So you have to meet them where they are before you try and sell them on any real accomplishments, especially with how complex a lot of policies are, and it doesn't always easily translate down to an individual's life. You might not exactly see how some of the larger policies, especially things such as environmental policy or healthcare policy, fit into one's everyday life. So
that's the first thing. The second thing is I think Democrats failed to make as strong of a case they could as to the dangers that Trump and the MAGA movement represent to the Black community.
In the surveys that I've conducted, a lot of people were.
Not necessarily sure if Trump was going to follow through on some of his threats. They didn't necessarily believe Project twenty twenty five was a real thing, right, And this again I see as more of a failure of Democrats to really message as strongly as they possibly could, to convince as many people that this is a real threat, This needs our attention, and we need to vote to
protect ourselves from this. And all of the modeling I've run before and since the election suggests that convincing people that you need to vote to protect yourselves in this time, in this political environment is the most effective and efficient way to get people out to vote in thinking that politics is important and relevant to their own lives.
You know, doctor Tyler, I wondered if the public, black people and those who supported you know, Democratic candidates throughout you know, the last let's say ten years, felt like the party was crying wolf when it came to Project twenty five. I said the word existential threat before, but that wasn't the first time you heard that, and that wasn't the first time A lot of voters heard that as well.
I think when you come and you say.
That again, after people have already been through a Trump presidency, they think, well, maybe it's not going to be that bad. And the messaging about how afraid people should have been of what the possible outcome could be with this election, I think may have fallen on death ears because of that.
As black people are looking.
Forward to what we can do now, what we can do next, and what politics and society can look like in the future, what do black voters, black citizens, black Americans have to look forward to as we see the promises of Project twenty twenty five coming to life. Right the first time that Project twenty twenty five got the type of attention that we'd hoped, I think it was Taraji p Henson at a BT Award ceremony where she kind of threw that term out into the stratug sphere
and people started reacting to it in real time. And you know, the Republican ticket denied and denied and denied that they had anything to do with it, even though that was clearly a lie. I think some people bought into that, so as we look forward, how do we deal with this sense of hopelessness and apathy and look forward to what we can do next.
For me, it's twofold right.
On the one hand, it's really important that we understand that the political dangers are real when it comes to Project twenty twenty five, when it comes to the Trump administration, and that we don't just kind of sit out our hands and wait for other people to see how real
it is and to act in our behalf right. The black community has seen time and again different electorates, different populations would rather take policies that hurt themselves and take material hurt if they feel it's going to allow for black people to gain less right, they'd rather see the Black community hurt than benefit themselves. And so as black people, we have to really stand up and find ways to
get our voice heard. We have to look for representatives that we support, especially black representatives, who we feel are speaking for the community, and prop them up and get behind them, whether it's at the local or statewide level. I think we have to look for other ways to have our political voice heard too, beyond just voting right.
We're coming to a time where voting itself is becoming more and more tenuous, and there's going to be even more questions about access to voting and what type of power the vote has, And so we have to make sure that we have our voices heard political otherwise in other realms, right, And so we see a number of boycotts being organized. I think those are really important to pay attention to right to use our economic power.
To have a voice.
There's other ways to have protest movements, sign petitions, find ways to continue to speak your political voice with and beyond voting, and really make the case to those, especially those who are disengaged, who don't follow politics, who don't pay attention to politics, that this is really going to be a turning point in American history when it comes to the road forward for the black community, and there's an opportunity here to continue to fight, to continue to
push forward and sort of push back the authoritarian press, if you will, trying to move us back towards an era of Jim Crow, an era of less rights for the black community, rather than allowing for those rights to be infringed upon and having to work for generations again just to get back to where we are right now.
Once upon a time, it seemed like our collective voice was more singular. We were all fighting for the same things and one of the same outcomes. It doesn't feel like that anymore. Before we close out this segment, I just wanted to get your opinion and on what the data might show regarding how we collectively feel we can work together for a better future for all of us.
Yeah, I've noticed that too, and especially when looking at sort of connections to party politics and solidarity within political identity.
There are younger generations of black people coming up today who are different, who are more independent, who are more ideologically moderate, less likely to attach themselves to the Democratic Party than older people older Black communities, And to me, it comes with the relationship and the connection to the civil rights movement, the struggle in such a way that these stories need to be told, that connection needs to be maintained and people need to know what we've done
for each other right to continue to build and to bring the youth back into the same cohorts that we've had for generations sticking together