The State of Black voters ahead of the 2026 Midterm Election

// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

Reginald Hardwick (00:12):
From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick, News and Public Affairs Director at Illinois Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. The midterm elections are less than a month away, and no doubt, you've heard a lot of campaigning.

Donald Trump (00:39):
I'm not on the ticket. You got to pretend. I'm not on the ticket. You got to do me the biggest favor you've ever done me. You've got to do this for me. You've got to pretend I'm on the ticket. I'm on the ticket. I'm on the ticket. He's on the ticket.

Angie Nixon (00:53):
Have access to quality healthcare, wanting to make sure that our seniors don't have to ration their prescription drugs, wanting to ensure that children have a strong foundation so we have universal childcare and they're not rerouted into the school to prison pipeline to make some of these big corporations richer.

Abdul El-Sayed (01:11):
We want to build a broad coalition, but sometimes when the Democratic Party talks about a big tent, we push everybody into the corner and then go talk and pander to the corner. I'm just trying to bring everybody to the tent pole in the middle to talk about what we really need. We need good housing. We need good schools. We need healthcare. We need to know that our government works for us rather than the corporations who buy off politicians.

Byron Donalds (01:29):
I would say we are by far a nation that's had more ability for people from disparate backgrounds, frankly, backgrounds where there was real destitution, real poverty, that have been able to change their lives in one generation. And I think if you take the long view of world history, you examine governments across the board, there really has not been another nation as exceptional like America.

Reginald Hardwick (01:57):
Those were the voices of President Donald Trump, Florida US Senate candidate Angie Nixon, Michigan US Senate candidate, Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed, and Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds. So how are African Americans feeling in this moment? Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential race, won 92% of Black women's votes and 78% of Black men's votes over Republican Donald Trump who returned to office for a second term. Two years later with a war in Iran higher cost and interest rates, Trump is unpopular. Silver Bulletin says as of October 7th, 60% of Americans disapprove of the job he's doing. And although some voters are motivated to vote against Trump, they're not exactly embracing the Democratic Party, which according to real clear polling has a 54% unfavorable rating. To talk about where Black voters fall with all of this, including the rise of Democratic socialist candidates and races in Illinois and nationally, I'm joined by two people who follow this closely. Dr. Jaira J. Harrington is an assistant professor of Black studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She earned her doctorate in political science in the subfield of comparative politics at the University of Chicago. And Dr. Kevin Anderson teaches courses in American government, political theory and African American politics at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. We began by talking about the state of Black voters right now, starting with Professor Anderson.

Kevin Anderson (03:36):
I think that it's both in a state of influence and it's also to a large degree in a state of flux. There's a dynamic in African American politics where as long as African Americans sort of vote as a block, they can be decisive in an election. You can swing the "the black vote" one way or another. But the problem with that line of thinking is that it assumes a sort of universal interest among African Americans. And oftentimes what we've seen is that among African Americans, there are cleavages of class, of gender, of religious affiliation. And I think we've, in the last two elections, we've seen this sort of play itself out. And going forward, not just in the midterms a little over a month, but heading into 2028, it's going to be a sort of interesting dynamic to see how candidates are going to try to appeal to African American voters. Will they try to do it as looking at a community that has a common set of interest or will they sort of drill down and see that there's going to be concerns that are going to be different based on class, based on religion, gender, that type of thing.

Reginald Hardwick (05:11):
Professor Harrington, same question to you, the state of Black voters today.

Jaira J. Harrington (05:16):
Thank you for that question. And I'd like to dovetail on Professor Anderson's insightful comments. So it's no secret that Black voters have supported the Democratic Party in large numbers. So according to Pew Research in a 2026 study, Black support for the Democratic Party from 2020 until the present hovered at around 75%. And so Black people are quite influential in the politics of the Democratic Party, while also as Professor Anderson stated, there is a desire for a different kind of leadership. There's something that structurally that is frustrating to a diverse category of voters such as Black people. And one of those I would say is the kind of turn to authoritarian politics that has seeped its way even into the voting process. So whereas now Black voters want to see what is it that this party can do for me? And those high demands require dialogue and that there has to be a space for questioning, a right to push back on ideas. And Black elected leadership without the voice of the people, particularly the Black people that they represent, can be drowned out by other interests. So some leaders have been taking the stance of not how can we help? Their approach has been, here's what you need. And for some Black voters, this servant dynamic of elected Black public servants has been missing. And what they are demanding at this time and into the future is that their voices need to be heard.

Reginald Hardwick (07:03):
As you mentioned, a lot of the Democratic base is of course Black voters. Is that party taking them for granted or in the case of a lot of the autopsies on the 2026 election have gone, are they being ignored in hopes of getting more of a working class white voter base? And Professor Harrington, I'll start with you.

Jaira J. Harrington (07:27):
So I'm thinking about this through the lens of identity politics and the kind of discussion that we had. And each time I hear the term identity politics as a researcher on Black feminism and radical traditions, I kind of bristle a little bit because there isn't a strong reference to the phrases origin. And so then I think about these kind of intersectional blocks that we're describing within the Black community that includes Black women's strategies and theories are often sidelined in political discourse. So it was coined by the Combahee River Collective, and in their statement, the author said that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of their own identities as queer, socialist, anti-imperialist, and as Black women in their political orientation. So with this said, the Democratic Party across different demographics of who represents the Democratic Party, whether these are non-Black representatives, Black representatives, we as a community have experienced an economy that has been in turmoil. The economy and the job market has been at a crisis point for nearly everyone for several years. And since 2025, almost 600,000 Black women have been impacted by massive layoffs in the public sector and DEI rollbacks in the private sector. And with this disproportionately impacting Black women at the intersections of gender and race, this is a crisis of massive proportions that is important to the Black community and should be important to the general public as well. So the kind of advocacy around those issues related to the economy, its impact on Black communities broadly, and its specific impact on the most marginal members of the Black community are not taking the kind of priority in discourse that we're seeing coming out of Democratic Party representatives. The economic health of Black people and especially Black women is an historical indicator of where it is that we're headed as a country. So it needs to be taken into account.

Reginald Hardwick (09:46):
And Professor Anderson, how do you think about the words identity politics?

Kevin Anderson (09:52):
I think I agree very much with Professor Harrington that it's kind of a frustrating label because it sort of argues on one level that if a voter or if a member of a group in the community emphasize one aspect of who they are, that that somehow makes their demand inauthentic to say that Black women are being disproportionately harmed by cutting public programs and somehow it's like, oh, well, it's unfair for you to point that out. And it's like, no, not really. That's just the fact. And the larger point is that oftentimes policy discussions kind of occur almost in an intellectual vacuum. We talk about, oh, well, we have to reduce the budget deficit or we can't have spending all these welfare programs without sort of connecting to here are the real people who are going to be harmed by the policy choices that we're making. And when people talk about the working class, well, African Americans are working class. To specifically target white working class voters, that's a form of identity politics because basically what you're sort of saying is those voters are more important or more intrinsic to victory than these others, but African Americans are working class and have concerns based on that status and that needs to be addressed because part of the problem with racism is that racism tends to exacerbate other inequalities. So if we're talking economic inequalities or educational inequalities, the prejudice that attaches itself to racism often makes those things worse. It may not be the overriding factor that explains those inequalities, but it exacerbates the impact. And so understanding the real world policy implications on real people is incredibly important.

Reginald Hardwick (12:15):
You're listening to Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick. We're speaking about the state of Black voters ahead of the 2026 midterm election on November 3rd. And we're talking with Dr. Jaira J. Harrington, an assistant professor of Black Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Dr. Kevin Anderson who teaches courses in American government, political theory and African American politics at Eastern Illinois University. We know the Black community is not a monolith and there are Black Republicans and Black conservatives such as Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds.

Byron Donalds (13:04):
During Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative because Black people always have been conservative minded, but more Black people voted conservatively.

Reginald Hardwick (13:19):
And South Carolina US Senator Tim Scott, who is also a big Trump ally who said this during the Republican midterm election convention in Dallas earlier this summer.

Tim Scott (13:30):
We are not done yet. President Trump's agenda is keeping America safe.

Reginald Hardwick (13:39):
I remember in the 2024 presidential campaign, there was a lot of reporting that said that Black and Latino voters were becoming MAGA Republican voters, despite the fact that 92% of Black women and the majority of Black men voted for the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. Have Republicans overestimated how many Black voters they have now in their camp?

Kevin Anderson (14:03):
I won't say that they overestimated it. I will say that I think it got disproportionate media attention. For one reason is that there's a stream of conservative thought that is sort of consistent throughout African American history, going all the way back to sort of abolitionist thought. There's an element of that, that it's not the same as what we would see as "conservative political though" today. But the lawyer, a man named John S. Rock, who wrote a very famous essay that says, "We will be elevated by our own efforts, that we cannot count on others outside the African American community to help elevate us." So there's a stream of that thought that has always been there, but what people have sort of taken as it's like, "Oh, well, there are people who don't necessarily ascribe to the traditional sort of liberal Democratic party platform and they see that as a breaking away from the larger community identity." It's not a breakaway. Those type of things have always been there. But more to the point, what's happening is that in sort of modern politics, we're amplifying those voices in a way that suggests, "Oh, there's the possibility of a major shift." But the problem is those earlier sort of conservative voices, part of what drove them to that stance, there was a specific sort of policy or there was a specific ideal that made it intellectually viable to suggest, "Oh, John Rock makes the argument that we will be elevated by our own efforts simply because he believes racial prejudice is so strong that it will overwhelm any possibility of coalition." And you'll see that with a lot of black nationalists who say, "Oh, no, no, no. We can't trust that other community to help us elevate because given the way racial prejudice sort of plays itself out." So today when you see these modern conservatives, what they seem to be saying, and I want to try to be fair to them, is they want credit for sort of being conservative, for embracing this ideology, but they're not explaining, okay, well, this is what this leads to. This is why this is good to adopt a certain stance on immigration or adopt a certain stance on abortion or something like that. And it's like, well, if you believe that, that's fine, but what is the impact writ large on the community?

Reginald Hardwick (17:09):
We've heard a lot about democratic socialists making headways in this midterm election and in some cities like Denver, for example, but also like Florida US Senate candidate did Angie Nixon, who is Black. So Professor Harrington, I'll ask you, is that a movement that's making headways with the African American community from your studies?

Jaira J. Harrington (17:35):
Sure. Well, let's start with this term of socialism, which for some is a bit confusing or a bit convoluted. And socialism as a political orientation is not new to black communities in the US, especially Chicago. So thinking about its contrast with capitalism, which is a system where productive goods or the means of production are owned by individuals and companies to turn a profit, and workers under the system only earn wages. And with socialist thought, the worker's condition is central. And we've been talking a lot about labor, working classes in this interview, and black people under capitalism have always been a disposable population. So we think about the history and legacy of slavery in this country. From Antebellum South Plantation uprisings and rebellions of enslaved Africans, Black people have always struggled for their labor rights and resisted against capitalism. W.E.B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and other prominent Black people identified with socialism. And even in his later years, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became a strong advocate of workers' rights as his last living days, as we recall, were spent in Memphis, Tennessee to support the sanitation worker strike. And so this also leads to a kind of ongoing concern with socialist ideologies. And the way that socialism is described today by some political actors that are conservative or right-leaning, it reminds me of the Red Scare McCarthyism era, which was a political tactic to discourage and punish alignment with socialism during the Cold War. And the current rhetoric around socialism as a threat is both antiquated and rather irrelevant to the Black community. In a 2022 Pew study, 52% of Black Americans have a positive impression of socialism and 40% of Black adults view capitalism positively. So we see that disparity there. Critiques often arise from our people seeking an economic alternative as the capitalist system rarely functions on our behalf. And that makes me think about this question of conservatives or Republican and conservative trends in the Black community. And I think that that's also related to an underestimation of political apathy in that the bipartisan two-party system often is too small and too narrow to encapsulate the interests of the Black community. And the repression of independent third party candidates has also made it very difficult for Black populations to consider political alternatives and futures. And the influence of the Democratic Socialists of America on democratic politics and creating a kind of space apart from what has been mostly moderate to centrist action within the Democratic Party is an extension of that. And so Black communities, given our kind of experience under what has been the United States political system, there's a desire to find an alternative otherwise. And that's what these kinds of trends in the Democratic Party are responding to. Younger voters that want something different, don't really want to play into the party politics of old, but want to transition to progressive issues that appeal to them, whether that is debt as it relates to college education and university education, whether that is related to healthcare and the kind of socialism that's embedded in what would be access to healthcare for all. These are the kinds of issues that particularly for Black people for whom education access, healthcare access, economic opportunities have long been denied. And so this is a part of a trend of pressuring the bipartisan political structure to really start thinking creatively on how to earn our support.

Reginald Hardwick (22:13):
You're listening to Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick. We're speaking about the state of Black voters ahead of the 2026 midterm election on November 3rd. And we're talking with Dr. Jaira J. Harrington, an assistant professor of Black Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Dr. Kevin Anderson, who teaches courses in American government, political theory and African American politics at Eastern Illinois University. I'll ask both of you, starting with Professor Harrington, what races here in Illinois or around the country will you be watching real carefully on November 3rd or at least the results?

Jaira J. Harrington (22:57):
Yeah. For me, I'm based in Chicago, so this is not a national race, but I am very interested in the Chicago school board elections. So it's really creating a buzz, the kind of participation that I've mentioned before, having a dialogue with the public. It's important for Chicago residents to vote on the entire board of education for the first time. And there are so many issues of concern chiefly, how is it that we might provide quality public education access to students with the budget deficit that we have in this city, which is among the largest in the country. And for me, thinking about the plans for the Chicago's Black Student Success Plan is also a critical component of the foundation of education access in black communities of Chicago, where since 2012, there were many shutdowns of schools in the city of Chicago and the dissolution of public education institutions on both the south and west sides. And this initiative is quite inspiring. It's something that would allow for the academic disparities that black students face to be addressed. However, the intersection of the local and the federal are quite close in every single election that we're going to see in the midterms. This success plan, which was heralded as a sea change and a necessary change for black Chicago students is presently on hold because of federal pushback on targeted programs that address racial gaps in education. And so this is one of those elections that I'm looking forward to. How is it that this new school board will navigate this critical time where the federal initiatives to slow or to eliminate the programs that address the racial disparities that are not nearly a matter of prejudice, but are systemically embedded in how it is that these institutions are created. I really would love to see the creative ways that they're going to work around our present times.

Reginald Hardwick (25:15):
And Professor Anderson?

Kevin Anderson (25:16):
I'm really interested in this. I'm interested in the national elections because there's a possibility that it'll have a huge impact on Illinois. And principally, I'm looking at Senate races in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas simply because I think Lieutenant Governor Stratton has a very good shot at winning the Senate seat here in Illinois. And if the Democrats can win control of the Senate, she'll have the opportunity to introduce some legislation that would be of significant benefit. So watching her race to see how well she does in the race is going to be important, but seeing what the composition of Congress will be to see what they might be able to push through through the legislature. So everything from issues of healthcare, potentially some criminal justice reform, a lot of things come into play are possible if not only Lieutenant Governor Stratton can win, but the Democrats can win a large enough majority in both houses to either introduce, maybe it might be a little difficult to get a veto poof majority and get it past the president, but they can put certain issues on the radar so that there are either things that you're going to see significant votes being taken on or that they become the foundation for what becomes the 2028 presidential election. So that's one that I'm sort of watching and I'm keeping my eye on some of the other races as well.

Reginald Hardwick (27:06):
If Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton is successful, she'll become the third black person elected to the US Senate from Illinois. The first was Carol Mosley Braun and the second was Barack Obama. You're listening to Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick. We're speaking about the state of Black voters ahead of the 2026 midterm election on November 3rd. And we're talking with Dr. Jaira J. Harrington, an assistant professor of Black Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Dr. Kevin Anderson, who teaches courses in American government, political theory and African American politics at Eastern Illinois University. More with our guest in a moment, including whether we'll ever see another Black US president. You're listening to Dialogue, an exchange about culture straight from the Soul.

(28:12):
From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick, News and Public Affairs Director at Illinois Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. The midterm elections are less than a month away, so today's guests are sharing their perspectives on Black voters who vote in wide margins for the Democratic Party, but may not feel heard by that party. Let's continue our conversation with Dr. Jaira J. Harrington, an assistant professor of Black studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Dr. Kevin Anderson, who teaches courses in American government, political theory, and African American politics at Eastern Illinois University. I'm going to ask about election security. How concerned are you, and I'll start with you, Professor Anderson, about election security.

Kevin Anderson (29:15):
I have sort of a divided answer on that, in that I'm a little concerned because I'm just not totally sure what the administration is going to do in terms of... There was a legislative attempt to sort of change rules for voting and all that with the SAVE Act. That's not going to pass, so that's not necessarily going to be in effect here. But broadly speaking, I don't necessarily have that overall concern. I apologize for a small bit of self-promotion here, but myself and two of my friends from graduate school, we published a book. Years ago called State Voting Laws in America. And one of the things we did was we went back and we tried to find examples of significant voter fraud and we could not do it. Just looking different states across the country and we just couldn't do it. And what we were kind of discovering was that the idea of voter fraud sort of worked almost as... It was almost like a campaign tagline. It was something to motivate and inspire voters. And it had the sort of impact of inspiring both sides because you had one side that says, "Well, we have to get out to vote to protect the integrity of the election, so we're going to vote for our side." And then you had the other side saying, "Hey, they're trying to take away your right to vote." And this sort of dramatically brought attention to the issue and it actually motivated turnout sort of on both sides. So in regards of, am I worried that there's going to be some sort of significant voter fraud? No. Am I concerned that there might be the use of the idea of voter fraud to try and justify some actions that might curtail access to the ballot? Honestly, yes, I am concerned. I don't think we'll see anything significant, but the possibility is out there.

Reginald Hardwick (31:26):
How about you, Professor Harrington?

Jaira J. Harrington (31:29):
Yes. So speaking of voter fraud, trust in elections, I would say that voter suppression efforts have diversified. So earlier this year, federal courts have gutted and narrowed the protections of the Federal Voting Act. And this instills a level of distrust that is specific to black communities. It brings to mind the Jim Crow poll taxes and literacy tests and just barriers to access to voting. So between ID verification, gerrymandering that has happened, voter fraud is I think lower on the list of my concerns, but a general distrust in the overall political process is something that does concern me. And this is discouraging to voters who are seeking to cast their ballots and to have their voices heard.

Reginald Hardwick (32:30):
What would you say to someone who's like, "I'm black. I live in a blue state of Illinois. Why do I need to even be concerned about this? Or everything's going to be decided anyway because there's so many Democrats here. Why should I vote?" What would you say to that person, Professor Harrington and then Professor Anderson?

Jaira J. Harrington (32:52):
I would say that there are many ways to participate. So first I would suggest that consider a down ballot. Some of the Senate elections, for example, as we said, Juliana Stratton is highly likely to win in the state of Illinois, but there are other decisions to be made. So as I mentioned in the city of Chicago, there's the Chicago school board. And so that's a way to participate in the democratic process. Very often outside of that, throughout the state, there are initiatives on the ballot where voter participation can make decisions around funding. And I will also encourage someone who really thinks that the process of political participation begins and ends at the voting booth is to get involved in one's community throughout the year. Let's not rely on election cycles to get what it is that we need. So that's what I would say to that person.

Kevin Anderson (33:54):
I think I would start off first of all with more of a moral argument than an intellectual or political argument because I would just look at them and say, you understand the sacrifice others had to give in order for you to have that right. Whether you're thinking of the voting rights march in Selma or any number of protests and efforts that it took to grant the right to vote. But Professor Harrington is 100% right to talk about it's not just the elections that get all of the attention and the media coverage, but there are small local elections. There's elections for county commissioner and school board that you have a direct impact on. And in my classes, I always tell students that the great committee in Chris Rock had one of the best explanations of it. And he said when he started out, he had jobs, he was working for the minimum wage. And he said, "You know what your boss is telling you when you work for the minimum wage that I'd pay you less, but it's illegal." And so minimum wage laws, all these type of things, they're the product of decisions that start at local levels. So when you don't vote, you don't have any influence on people who are making decisions that are directly going to impact your life. So that's kind of my argument for why voting is necessary.

Reginald Hardwick (35:27):
You're both in the college classrooms, Professor Anderson at Eastern and Professor Harrington at UIC. What are the concerns that your students are expressing and what are you telling them about this moment? And Professor Anderson, I'll start with you.

Kevin Anderson (35:43):
I think students have any number of concerns. Probably the most dramatic one that I've talked to students about is the cost of college and the idea of am I going to be able to pay back these loans? I've had several students tell me that they didn't necessarily want to major in certain things, but they had to think about, okay, well this is going to lead to a job. I can become an accountant. I can become a chemist and I know that I can get a job and do that. And so you have those kind of immediate concerns, but you also have students come back and they're just a little bit like, do we have the ability to fully express ourselves and to fully protest things that we see as unjust and unfair? Because a lot of them have some concerns that there could be a backlash against protests for what they perceive as unfair police activities or unwelcoming attitudes on campus. And a lot of students are uncomfortable with just sort of pushing back. And what I've sort of said to them is that if you honestly believe in these principles, you cannot be afraid to utilize them. You can't be afraid to speak your mind to call out what you deem to be unfair treatment. Yes, there is a potential for backlash, but that's the only way to draw attention to something that is uncomfortable, that is unfair, that you perceive as a barrier to your education, to your life. And getting students to sort of understand that their education is an opportunity to, not just to acquire knowledge and develop skills and all that type of thing, but it's an opportunity to redefine the possible and to step forward and say, okay, this is what I think and this is what I believe is necessary to make changes.

Reginald Hardwick (38:23):
Professor Harrington, what are you hearing from your students and what are you telling them about this moment?

Jaira J. Harrington (38:30):
As I am also experiencing this moment, I think that this is a time for me as an educator to demonstrate some vulnerability that the kind of existential questions that students have about their futures within the economy that we have. We often talk about climate change. And so in Illinois this past summer, of course, there was this brutal heat and floods and destructive winds and tornadoes and all of this. And so some of my students in my classes, which do take up questions explicitly about racism, anti-blackness, intersectional issues with gender, class, et cetera, they often reflect on their own experiences. And so they're thinking through big questions around how racism intersects with structural environmental injustice and how poverty and blackness and students of color and immigrant populations are experiencing the kind of extremes of our present day environment at the extremes. So we're constantly having those dialogues and discussions. And I think for me as an educator, again, just being vulnerable, letting them know that I don't have all the answers, that they themselves are part of that answer, that their curiosity about the world around them and their interrogation of the systems that are oppressive and are unfortunately resilient, they are also a part of the change that they want to see. So equipping them with more information, allowing for space to have conversations about what's going on and connecting them to the systemic ways that inequality, that racism, oppression shows up in our everyday lives. I think that they are far more equipped to manage and navigate the world that is before them. So they see themselves as a part of not only a local environment in Chicago, but as a part of a state and an international and global community and making those kinds of inroads for them to think about their experiences makes them feel more empowered to make a change.

Reginald Hardwick (40:57):
This year, the Obama Presidential Center opened on the south side of Chicago.

Barack Obama (41:03):
The exhibits in the center are not meant to evoke nostalgia for some gauzy bygone era, some unattainable past that we can dream about and say, "Oh, we miss you, Barack." They're meant to remind us of who we can be, to remind us of what's possible so we can forge ahead, clear eyed and confident and do the work that still needs to be done.

Reginald Hardwick (41:47):
So as we think about Barack Obama, the first black US president and Kamala Harris, the first black US vice president, I asked our panel, will we ever again have another black president?

Jaira J. Harrington (42:03):
Okay. I'll just speak from my perspective. The first Obama administration, I was out there making calls on the campaign. It was the first time that I was voting. I was incredibly excited about the opportunity of having something different. And that kind of hopeful nature waned over the years in part because the structures of the United States government and political structure is so resilient. The thing is there's no singular leader that will shape black futures. There's no singular policy that will determine where it is that we're headed when the country that we live in has structurally been designed against our benefits and against what it is that we need. And so I imagine that it could be possible. I mean, anything's possible. It's happened once before, but speaking of the Obama Center and thinking about that, as a Southsider now, I often think about the kind of ways that reinvesting our energies into communities, how it is that the Kamala Harris campaign earns so many hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think about all of those in the broader black community that maybe could use that money to live and to access food and to have grocery stores. We had seven clothes in the city of Chicago on the south and west sides of Save A Lot. We have pharmacies that are no longer active that were closed because of low sales. And so these kinds of disparities I think are a little bit more proximate to our day to day where president that is black, not black woman, a lot of people are more concerned about how it is that their lives are transforming under systems that seem to constantly keep us down. So that's where it is that I am.

Kevin Anderson (44:12):
Okay. I'll say it like this. The short answer is, I think the answer is yes. I think we will see another African American be elected. And Professor Harrington, feel free to correct me if you think I misperceived this, but I think part of what made President Obama sort of effective is the fact that he understood the system that he was operating in very well. And so he understood how to gain access to the system, how to get elected to the Senate and then later elect the US president by not challenging the broader structures of the entire thing. And so there was an element and there's some scholarship in political science that sort of argued that Obama was very much the height of symbolic politics. I think at one point there was a t-shirt that had Obama's picture and it was basically like, this is why Rosa Parks was arrested and this is why Martin marched and all this kind of thing. And it's like that can't be the sum total of it. Rosa Parks was a much more complicated activist. Martin Luther King Jr. obviously was much more... And they weren't necessarily moving toward the symbolism of an African American in the ultimate seat of power. They were working toward a more just society. And oftentimes the way democracy and capitalism works in the United States, it frustrates the idea of a more just society. But if you have someone who understands that and can move it incrementally very, very slowly in that direction, I think that's sort of what Obama represented. And I think there are others who have that potential to do that. To be honest, I think I was a little frustrated by the fact that it felt like sexism was the thing that just really undermined Kamala Harris to a point that her policy positions weren't radically different. There wasn't anything about her that was scandalous in that way. And it was hard for me to figure out, okay, why are some people just... We can't have a woman president. That to me was frustrating. It was not surprising. It was just frustrating. But because at a certain point you kind of think if we can get past the problem of an African American being in symbolically the most powerful position, what difference does it make if a woman is there? If she's competent, if she's courageous and willing to do it, that should have been enough. And the fact that it wasn't, to me, it was just illustrative of how much further we have to go.

Jaira J. Harrington (47:31):
I just wanted to add that I definitely agree. Kamala Harris did not have a policy position that changed much from Biden, and I think that's why some voters who were dissatisfied with the Biden administration would decide that she was probably not a candidate that would be appealing to them. What a lot of people, and I think that's what made Obama so successful in his first run for presidency, is that he seemed to be someone who literally brought hope and change as a part of his markers of strategic campaigning. And for Kamala Harris, who of course the issues of not exclusively gender, but race and the intersection of gender. So this is a black, Indian, South Asian woman. Those kinds of factors also play into it. However, I think that because she didn't quite distinguish herself much from the Biden administration at the time, which was relatively unpopular, a lot of people didn't gravitate to her platform because they were uncertain how it is that she was set apart. And so I think that that figured into her unsuccessful campaign, but this is just also to say that people can be wonderful statesmen. I would definitely say that I struggled with this at the turn of the first Trump administration when I was teaching in SCI Phoenix. So this is the largest men's maximum security prison in the state of Pennsylvania. And I've introduced them to them a conversation about black presidents and what they think about it. And these men who are incarcerated kind of came to me with questions that someone like George Jackson would ask, like what good is reform when we still experience fascism every day?

Reginald Hardwick (49:34):
Professor Harrington from University of Illinois, Chicago and Professor Anderson from Eastern Illinois University. Thank you so much for this enlightening conversation.

Kevin Anderson (49:45):
My pleasure to be here.

Jaira J. Harrington (49:46):
Thank you so much.

Reginald Hardwick (49:49):
And that's today's Dialogue. Our editor and producer is University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student Curtis Beasley IV. Jill Clements is the Illinois Soul Station Manager. Our theme is composed by Lamont Holden. Dialogue and Illinois Soul are part of Illinois Public Media, a service of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I'm Reginald Hardwick. Don't forget to register to vote and we'll talk with you again next time.