Black Women Proved They Are the Backbone of the Democratic Party This Election
Photo: Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The election is finally over and the people have spoken. Former Vice President Joe Biden will be the 46th President of the United States.
When Joe Biden took the stage to give his acceptance speech after being announced the project winner of the 2020 election, he thanked his supporters, which he called “the broadest and most diverse coalition in history.” And finally, he said this: “Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the The African American community stood up again for me. You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”
But it was one group in particular that went above and beyond when it came to showing up for Joe Biden: Black women.
Exit polls show that 93% of Black women cast their vote for Joe Biden this year–more than any gender and ethnic subgroup. Because Black women showed up in large numbers and overwhelmingly cast their vote for Joe Biden this election, they may have single-handedly tipped the vote in his favor.
If you’ve followed the news closely, you know that it was key battleground states like Georgia and Pennsylvania decided this election. These states have major metropolitan cities like Atlanta and Philadelphia that have large Black populations. The Black women of these battleground states put in the work of organizing, campaigning, and rallying for the Democratric nominee.
As the news rolled in that Georgia–a state that has reliably gone red since 1992–was projected to flip blue, pundits and online commenters felt the need to give credit to Stacey Abrams. Abrams was the 2018 Democratic candidate for Georgia’s gubernatorial election.
After Abrams lost the election, she founded Fair Fight Action, an organization that aims to promote “fair elections in Georgia and around the country, encourage voter participation in elections, and educate voters about elections and their voting rights.” Since its inception Fair Fight Action has registered an estimated 800,000 new voters.
The promising news is that it appears that Black women will no longer have to carry the Democratic party alone. In Arizona, Latinas also organized en masse, mobilizing their community with the express goal of getting Trump out of office. Latina activists helped to flip Arizona blue [note: as of November 9th, the AP still projects that Arizona will go blue).
The model of grassroots organization goes back to Black female activists like Stacey Abrams who believed in her community enough to fight for it. Abrams knew she was only one of thousands of women like her who wanted a better country, so she set about mobilizing her community of like-minded people. And because of Abrams and Black women activists like her, we have a new president.
