Barbershops are where the black community tends to have direct and frank conversations. But this Monday afternoon it is necessary to use the corkscrew to talk about politics with CC, the owner of Stylinerz, a beauty center in the south of Los Angeles, the African-American heart of the Californian city. This very tall man focuses on the head of the boy over whom he passes the razor. And think very carefully about what you are going to say before talking about Donald Trump.
“I think he is someone who is going to shake up the system. I don’t dislike it…” says CC, 49 years old. The child, with his head motionless, opens his eyes wide and raises them to see who said those words.
Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have recently visited barbershops like this one. The Democratic candidate was in one on Sunday, during a tour of Philadelphia, one of the key states she has focused on in the final stretch of the campaign. The hairstylists at Philly Cuts sat her in “the lucky chair.” They assure that the politicians who went there to ask for the vote won. Harris took the chair with a smile and a knowing look. Before a handful of young people, he promised to increase the number of teachers from minorities. “Statistics say that if a black child has a black teacher before third grade, his or her chance of going to college increases by 13%. And if they have two, the percentage reaches 30%,” said the vice president.
Luck seems to change for the Democratic candidate. Three recent polls suggest that Harris is managing to convince black men, adults and young people, at the close of the campaign. Just over 34 million African Americans are called to vote on November 5, 14% of the census. The ABC network indicated this week that the vice president has 85% of the preferences in this key sector of the vote. The figure exceeds the mark that Joe Biden achieved in 2020, with 79%. Donald Trump remains between 11% and 13%. In 2020, the Republican achieved 8% of the black vote.
The hairdresser, who asks to be called “just CC,” is one of the undecided voters in the United States one week before the presidential elections on November 5. “Definitely, I’m going to vote,” he says. “So far I have only heard how the candidates attack each other, but nothing about what they will do for us,” he says. The last time he voted with true conviction was in 2008, when he voted for Barack Obama. He was the first black man in the White House and the politician who gave his name to the avenue that adjoins the beauty center. CC jokes that these days in his business they prefer to talk about religion in order to avoid politics, but that many of his customers don’t know who to vote for.
Arguments aimed at Black voters have featured prominently in the final two weeks of Harris’ campaign. Democrats mobilized after summer polls showed Trump had gained ground and was poised to be the Republican most voted for by African Americans, traditional allies of the Democrats, since Richard Nixon in 1960. The mogul has attracted male voters under 44 years old. In 2012, Obama won this group by 81 points. Hillary Clinton did it by 63 points and Joe Biden did it by 53 four years ago. Harris remains in the lead, but by the end of September his lead had been reduced to 41.
Emily Bazelon, an academic at Yale Law School, explains that in this group of voters there is a clear division among other minorities as well. Harris is the favorite among women and Trump is the favorite among men. For African Americans, furthermore, educational level is an important differentiator. “African American women complete higher education at a higher rate than men. College-educated black and Latino voters are more aligned with white college-educated voters. “We see a division between class and educational levels,” says the researcher, also an analyst of the media. slate.
Educational gap
Bazelon suspects that this gap between education in the African-American population ends up showing up in the polls. 57% of black voters between 18 and 49 years old say they feel little or not at all satisfied with the presidential candidates, according to a study by the Pew Center. The percentage drops to 29% when registered voters over 50 are asked.
Romey Smith, a 56-year-old cybersecurity engineer, believes many Black voters are victims of misinformation. “They believe that what Trump promises is not going to affect them,” says this resident of Baldwin Hills, a neighborhood considered since the 1950s as the black Beverly Hills and where such prominent figures as Ray Charles, Tina Turner and Lenny Kravitz lived.
Smith is originally from St. Louis, Missouri. He moved west to attend college, where he met his current wife. Both are “lifelong” Democratic voters. They live in an area of the city that propelled Karen Bass to become the first black mayor of Los Angeles. And they hope to do the same for Harris. “What I am most interested in supporting in this election is a candidate who seeks to improve our society and supports our community,” he says.
The Democratic campaign has taken a series of measures designed to address the biggest concern of black voters: the economy. Harris promises to provide one million loans of up to $20,000 for young black entrepreneurs to start a business. Other promises are to strengthen the regulation of cryptocurrencies to guarantee investments, legalize marijuana for recreational use and promote a health initiative to address diseases that mainly affect black people.
Barack Obama jumped into the campaign ring to help Harris retain the black vote. He did it with a rant to the community about the sexist dynamics that could be affecting the vice president. “People come now with all kinds of excuses and pretexts. Part of this makes me think, and I speak directly to men, that they have an idea, a feeling, about having a woman as president. And they come up with alternatives to not have it (…) And they think about sitting back or supporting someone who has a long history of denigrating them. “They believe that it is a sign of strength, that that is what it means to be a man,” said the former president in mid-October during a visit to the industrial city of Pittsburgh. It was a direct and frank message. Like the one usually heard in black barbershops in the United States.
