How socially conservative are black voters?
Conn Carroll
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Gallup has a poll out on Monday showing that voters across the ideological spectrum are increasingly less likely to support letting biological men play in women’s sports. Asked, “Do you think transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity or should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” 69% of all respondents said “match their birth gender” Monday compared to 62% two years ago.
Opposition to letting biological men play in women’s sports grew equally among both Republicans and Democrats, rising from 86% to 93% for Republicans and from 41% to 48% among Democrats. Critically, a plurality of Democrats now oppose letting biological men play in women’s sports, with just 47% supporting it.
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Gallup did not release the breakdown of support for women’s sports by race, but it has long been noted that black voters who overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party at the ballot box are not nearly as socially liberal as the mostly wealthy whites who run the party.
As American Enterprise Institute fellow Robert Cherry notes in his new book, The State of the Black Family, black voters are often far more conservative when it comes to family issues than white voters. He notes a 2015 CNN poll that asked respondents to quantify the role that various factors play in the economic problems facing black people. CNN found that 61% of black respondents said “breakdown of the family” was a major reason for the economic problems facing black people, compared to just 51% of white respondents.
Separately, a 2019 Pew poll found that three-quarters of black people, compared to less than half of white people, identified “violent crime” as a “very big problem” in the country today. And a 2020 Gallup poll, taken at the height of the George Floyd riots, found that 81% of black respondents wanted either the same or more police in their neighborhoods. Just 19% of black people want the police to spend less time in their neighborhoods.
“The reduction of violent crime must be central to any effort to turn around failing black neighborhoods, not least because it will improve their ability to attract middle-class families,” Cherry writes. Instead of defunding the police and decriminalizing misdemeanor offenses, Cherry calls for more community-policing efforts, including hiring liaisons in the community, such as local church pastors, and recruiting more officers from the neighborhoods they police.
Cherry also acknowledges, as the majority of black people do, the important role the decline of marriage has played in the deterioration of black communities. “National data are replete with studies that demonstrate the adverse impact of children’s educational attainment and emotional health when fathers are absent, especially for boys,” Cherry writes. “Beyond father involvement in educational efforts, other behaviors could positively affect well-being. For example, less educated fathers who spend more time with their children might be more valuable to a child’s development than education.”
The two problems, crime and family breakdown, are related. Those neighborhoods where households are not likely to include married fathers are more likely to have higher rates of crime, Cherry notes, pointing to research showing that much of the difference in crime rates between Watts and Compton can be traced back to differing marriage rates in the two communities.
Cherry doesn’t note this in his book, but if anything, black people value marriage more than white people. In 2019, Pew asked if society is “just as well off if couples who want to stay together long-term decide not to marry” or “better off if couples who want to stay together long-term eventually get married.” Just 52% of white people said society was better off if couples got married, compared to 61% of black people.
To increase marriage rates among black people, Cherry recommends eliminating marriage penalties in safety net programs, investing in relationship skills programs, and allowing Pell grants to be used for vocational training. College is not a good fit for every man, Cherry reasons, but with valuable vocational training, a man can better provide for a wife and children.
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Cherry spends most of the introduction of his book recounting his political journey from the left to the center, the definitive break occurring when he wrote a paper detailing how black workers were harmed by low-wage immigration, but the solutions in the book, and there are many more not mentioned here, are all worthy of bipartisan support.
Too many Democrats, particularly white Democrats, are afraid to admit the role of the breakdown of the family in hurting black people. Hopefully, Cherry’s book will help push them in the right direction.