Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios.
Speaker 2: I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher,
Speaker 2: where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Rams' job.
Speaker 3: He is Rams' job, I am q Ward. You are
Speaker 3: tuned into Civic Cipher, Yes.
Speaker 2: You are, and you know we've been putting it off
Speaker 2: long enough. We've been teasing it long enough. Of course,
Speaker 2: q is now back despite having you know, committed to
Speaker 2: having him back on the show for some time. He's
Speaker 2: now back with us. So the family is complete, and
Speaker 2: we bring a very special gift for this episode. We
Speaker 2: hope that you will be as enlightened as and as
Speaker 2: informed by the conversations we've been able to have with
Speaker 2: our guests today as we have been. Our guest, of course,
Speaker 2: is the one and only doctor Christopher Twer, who is
Speaker 2: an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at
Speaker 2: California State University, Sacramento. He is the director of the
Speaker 2: Back the Black Voter Project, the co founder of Black
Speaker 2: inn Sites Research, and the editor in chief of the
Speaker 2: Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics.
Speaker 1: So welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here
Speaker 4: excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're very much looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: And for those that may not know what all of
Speaker 2: that means, and I'm sure that you know, you'll get
Speaker 2: into it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Doctor Tayler works with data.
Speaker 2: So you know, a lot of times us as journalists
Speaker 2: and you know, people politicians, et cetera, derived conclusions from
Speaker 2: you know, their own experience, from you know, the way
Speaker 2: the world feels to them, whatever. But a lot of
Speaker 2: times that information is really siloed and people don't really
Speaker 2: know it. And so what doctor Taller has been able
Speaker 2: to do is kind of give us a global view
Speaker 2: of where we are as a people, where we are politically,
Speaker 2: what our goals should be, and what our goals no
Speaker 2: longer should be. And we're again, we're very much looking
Speaker 2: forward to the conversation we're about to have. But before
Speaker 2: we there, it is time to start off with some
Speaker 2: ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall. So today's
Speaker 2: ABNY excellence comes from the Black Information Network and I
Speaker 2: will share a seventeen year old Georgia student has received
Speaker 2: over sixty college acceptances and one million dollars in scholarships.
Speaker 2: Good morning, America reports. Montavius Lebron Presley, a student at
Speaker 2: Douglas County High School in Georgia, said he started applying
Speaker 2: for colleges on the first day of his senior year
Speaker 2: in the hopes of pursuing medicine and later becoming an anesthesiologist.
Speaker 2: Presley juggled dual enrollment courses and work based learning while
Speaker 2: completing as many applications as possible. He also held leadership
Speaker 2: roles in the National Honor Society and Future Business Leaders
Speaker 2: of America as he worked at a local pizza restaurant.
Speaker 2: Presley said he received his first college acceptance from the
Speaker 2: University of Alabama, one of his top school choices, in October.
Speaker 1: The offers continued to pour in.
Speaker 2: As of last week, Presley received sixty one acceptances and
Speaker 2: was awarded over one point one million scholarships. The teenager
Speaker 2: said he was determined to attend college from a young age.
Speaker 2: Quote when I was a little boy, I always said
Speaker 2: that I would go to the university because people in
Speaker 2: my family will always talk about how much they love
Speaker 2: their college life and how much it really impacted them.
Speaker 1: So I always thought.
Speaker 2: When I was a little boy that I would just
Speaker 2: go off and do something amazing. So again, Montavius Presley,
Speaker 2: you are our example of e any excellence this week,
Speaker 2: especially when we talk about the amount of scholarship money
Speaker 2: you've received, that in and of itself is a testament
Speaker 2: to just a great accomplishments that you've already achieved.
Speaker 1: And hopefully the things that are to come.
Speaker 2: And so the segment is the segment here exists to
Speaker 2: highlight people that we think are doing great things and
Speaker 2: to remind other folks that we aren't just the worst things,
Speaker 2: you know, and often enough we are the best things.
Speaker 2: In today's example is you now, doctor Tyler again, welcome
Speaker 2: back to the show. You know, for folks that you know,
Speaker 2: for what we didn't cover, you know, go ahead and
Speaker 2: give an introduction of you know, kind of the work
Speaker 2: that you do, the nature of the work that you do,
Speaker 2: and a little bit more about yourself, just so folks
Speaker 2: have a little bit more of an idea of who
Speaker 2: they're talking to today.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, as I said, pleasure to be here. I've been
Speaker 4: studying black politics for over a decade now. A lot
Speaker 4: of my work has focused on collecting accurate and reliable
Speaker 4: data of the black community, something that really doesn't exist,
Speaker 4: not just in today's political world, but even in the
Speaker 4: academic spheres, and it's something that I've taken pride in
Speaker 4: doing really for the last six to seven years as
Speaker 4: part of the Black Voter Project, where I've periodically collected
Speaker 4: data sets, both nationally regional data sets, statewide data sets
Speaker 4: of just black people to try and get a sense
Speaker 4: as to how Black attitudes and opinions might be similar
Speaker 4: and different from those of the rest of America, attitudes
Speaker 4: that oftentimes aren't captured in mainstream surveys and work that's
Speaker 4: done in mainstream publications in mainstream media. This past election cycle,
Speaker 4: I had the privilege of having a project funded to
Speaker 4: collect four waves of election data from Black Americans, waves
Speaker 4: that were of the same people at four different points
Speaker 4: in time throughout the election, and then one wave after
Speaker 4: the election to see how things have changed or shifted
Speaker 4: once the election took place.
Speaker 5: And so a lot of.
Speaker 4: My recent sort of work and ideas come from that
Speaker 4: data set, But that data is built on a number
Speaker 4: of years of different projects collecting other types of data,
Speaker 4: again all focused on Black Americans and the black experience
Speaker 4: and trying to understand how attitudes and opinions and behaviors
Speaker 4: of black people are shaped in ways that are similar
Speaker 4: and unique to general America.
Speaker 5: Really pushing for.
Speaker 4: A clear path to having a narrative for black political
Speaker 4: power and having pundits and politicians understand what Black America
Speaker 4: is thinking when they otherwise might not really have the
Speaker 4: data to do so.
Speaker 3: Doctor Tyler, There's an interesting thing that happens hosting this show.
Speaker 3: Because of the type of stories that we cover and
Speaker 3: our position with our listeners, we spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time talking about very, very difficult subjects. A counterpoint to
Speaker 3: that is that oftentimes we get to talk to people
Speaker 3: who we admire and respect and who we are honored
Speaker 3: to have a conversation with.
Speaker 1: And today is one of those times.
Speaker 3: So you know, if you can see my smile, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to fight my smile off. Very very excited and
Speaker 3: honor to be speaking with you today. A wonderful thing
Speaker 3: that happens in your space is the use of data
Speaker 3: in facts and ramses. And I in our travels have
Speaker 3: heard many times that facts don't care about your feelings,
Speaker 3: and using data to tell stories is just a far
Speaker 3: more effective way to do it than how sometimes I
Speaker 3: get very emotional. So thank you for providing that balance
Speaker 3: for us as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, happy to do it.
Speaker 3: We've asked before, and it had conversations before about the
Speaker 3: idea of black men defecting from the Democratic voter base.
Speaker 1: Is that something that you noticed.
Speaker 3: And a second question would be, have you seen that
Speaker 3: black men are regretting or those who did vote for
Speaker 3: President Trump regretting the decision that they made.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question and one that kept coming
Speaker 4: up throughout the election cycle. I think, first and foremost,
Speaker 4: it's important to point out that the data that I've collected,
Speaker 4: some of the largest data sets on Black Americans, in
Speaker 4: what I consider some of the most reliable data out
Speaker 4: there when looking at black public opinion, kind of puts
Speaker 4: to bed these narratives that a lot of black folk
Speaker 4: defected and voted for Trump. There's nothing in the data
Speaker 4: that suggests that the turnout did decline slightly, and I'll
Speaker 4: get into that in just a second. But when it
Speaker 4: came to who black people voted for, I found that
Speaker 4: just as many black people voted for Kamala Harris about
Speaker 4: eighty six percent, as they did for Joe Biden in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, and almost the exact same amount of the
Speaker 4: black community, right around twelve percent voted for Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and so there was no major defection, no racial realignment
Speaker 4: of Black people moving towards Trump or the Republicans in
Speaker 4: this election cycle. When it comes to black men, My data,
Speaker 4: because it's unique, and then I collected data over time,
Speaker 4: shows that in the beginning there might have been some
Speaker 4: truth to the idea that black men were not very
Speaker 4: excited about voting for the Democratic candidate, especially when it
Speaker 4: was Joe Biden. Early on in April, when I asked
Speaker 4: people who they were going to vote for, only about
Speaker 4: fifty eight percent of black men said that they were
Speaker 4: going to vote for Joe Biden. By the time I
Speaker 4: asked people to get in August and Harris had moved
Speaker 4: to the top of the ticket, the number of black
Speaker 4: men who said they were going to vote for Harris
Speaker 4: jumped to sixty three percent and ended up all the
Speaker 4: way at eighty two percent saying that they voted for Harris.
Speaker 4: After the asking them after the election who they ended
Speaker 4: up voting for. That number rose tremendously throughout the election cycle,
Speaker 4: showing that black men came.
Speaker 5: Around to the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: There was not much defection, if at all, and we
Speaker 4: actually see that there's a slightly higher percentage of black
Speaker 4: men at eighty two percent, that voted for Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty four than the seventy nine percent of
Speaker 4: black men according to exit polls, that voted for Biden
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty and so kind of both of these
Speaker 4: narratives fly in the face of good, accurate data that
Speaker 4: black people, and especially black men, actually defected much, if
Speaker 4: at all, this election cycle.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've noticed there's been a lot in the
Speaker 3: way of counter programming and loud contrarian opinion with regard
Speaker 3: to where black people stand in the current political climate.
Speaker 3: Where from what you see, does the overall black public
Speaker 3: opinion like now post election, now that those those votes
Speaker 3: have been cast, we are now in this current administration,
Speaker 3: What does the data say about where our opinion, our
Speaker 3: public opinion collectively stands today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. There's tons
Speaker 4: of misinformation out there. I'm finding that it's especially affecting
Speaker 4: younger black cohorts because they rely a lot on social
Speaker 4: media and YouTube and podcasts, more so than older Black
Speaker 4: people who pay more attention to sort of television and
Speaker 4: traditional media. However, all Black people that I've talked to
Speaker 4: after the election are far more disillusioned and apathetic than
Speaker 4: they were even.
Speaker 5: You six months prior to it, when Biden was still
Speaker 5: the candidate.
Speaker 4: Over the election cycle, the data that I collected suggested
Speaker 4: that there was some sense of positivity building amongst the
Speaker 4: Black community when it came to the Democratic Party, primarily
Speaker 4: because of Harris elevating to the top of the ticket,
Speaker 4: and so initially about twenty eight percent of Black people
Speaker 4: said that they felt that the Democratic Party was welcoming
Speaker 4: to Black people. That rose up to forty two percent
Speaker 4: right before the election when asked in October, after Harris
Speaker 4: having successfully sort of mounted a campaign that looked like
Speaker 4: she was very competitive going into election day. However, when
Speaker 4: asked again in December after the election, that number dropped
Speaker 4: from forty two percent back down to thirty five percent,
Speaker 4: reversing course right and so there were significantly less people
Speaker 4: saying that the Democratic Party was welcoming to Black people
Speaker 4: after the election, showing this sense of sort of disillusionment
Speaker 4: and apathy with party. We also asked people looking forward
Speaker 4: whether or not they felt like a second Trump president
Speaker 4: was going to motivate them to participate or if a
Speaker 4: second Trump presidency would prove exhausting and they kind of
Speaker 4: just want to be left alone. And when we ask
Speaker 4: people this question, about twenty three percent said that they
Speaker 4: were motivated compared to a whole forty three percent who
Speaker 4: said they were going to be they felt exhausted and
Speaker 4: wanted to be left alone. And when we looked at
Speaker 4: that in some different breakdowns in the beauty of collecting
Speaker 4: sort of these large data sets of just black folks,
Speaker 4: as you can actually look at things based on age
Speaker 4: and gender and have real ideas as to what's taking
Speaker 4: place instead of having to do cuts with small sections
Speaker 4: of data and other surveys that aren't designed to measure
Speaker 4: black opinion. And when doing so, when it comes to
Speaker 4: looking forward, we found that a whole fifty one percent
Speaker 4: of black women said that they were exhausted and really
Speaker 4: just wanted to be left alone after the election, kind
Speaker 4: of building on this sentiment that you suggested where people
Speaker 4: are really tired, right and they feel like this selection
Speaker 4: really beat them down, building on a lot of the
Speaker 4: memes that we see where especially black women are ready
Speaker 4: to just you know, sit back and watch the world
Speaker 4: burn if need be.
Speaker 3: A very interesting mixture of frustration, apathy, and just kind
Speaker 3: of a lack of enthusiasm is what Ramses and I
Speaker 3: have noticed. People being feeling hopeless has led to conversations
Speaker 3: that we've noticed where there's a blatant false equivalence. You know,
Speaker 3: people are like throwing up their hands like, hey, neither
Speaker 3: party cares about us, which Ramses and I thought was
Speaker 3: a dangerous trend because even if that's how you feel,
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty obvious that one side of the
Speaker 3: aisle is more of what we've been hearing people call
Speaker 3: for years an existential threat to democracy, and the other
Speaker 3: why do people feel black people specifically so unenthusiastic about
Speaker 3: what the Democratic Party brings to the table currently, Because
Speaker 3: we've seen people just kind of tapping out on the
Speaker 3: whole process and throwing their hands up and saying aloud
Speaker 3: that neither party cares about us, So why should I care?
Speaker 3: When we see that again, one side of the aisle
Speaker 3: is just far more dangerous than the other.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's two things that I want to say here.
Speaker 4: I think first it's important to point out you're exactly right.
Speaker 4: The danger of building this false equivalency is real, and
Speaker 4: I think it happened before the election took place. As well,
Speaker 4: A lot of the rhetoric around certain black people voting
Speaker 4: for Trump, or black men in particular moving towards Trump,
Speaker 4: rhetoric that does not bear out in the data, tried
Speaker 4: to build this false equivalency and really make it seem
Speaker 4: like there's not much difference between the two candidates or
Speaker 4: the two parties. And although this doesn't didn't necessarily cause
Speaker 4: people to actually vote for or Trump or vote against
Speaker 4: the Democrats, it did drive apathy and it caused people
Speaker 4: to stay home and to not vote altogether. We absolutely
Speaker 4: saw that numbers suggest black turnout was down in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four compared to twenty twenty, compared to twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: and especially compared to the Obama years, and in states
Speaker 4: like Georgia, the only group to have turnout fall is
Speaker 4: black voters.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Every other group, White voters, Asian American voters, Hispanic Latino voters,
Speaker 4: they all saw increases in turnout from twenty twenty to
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four. It was black voters who saw a drop.
Speaker 4: And I really feel like that comes from building this
Speaker 4: false equivalency. And so there's really two things here, right,
Speaker 4: One it's the idea that the Democrats aren't doing anything
Speaker 4: for black folk, and this has to be a misnomer
Speaker 4: that is fought by breaking down some of the policy
Speaker 4: that's taken place in real simple terms. But to do so,
Speaker 4: you have to first meet a lot of black voters
Speaker 4: where they are with their disillusionment. You can't kind of
Speaker 4: talk down to people and tell them, hey, we've done
Speaker 4: all this stuff. You should like us, Like are you dumb?
Speaker 4: Why don't you know this? You have to understand that
Speaker 4: a lot of people are working from a historical understanding
Speaker 4: of politics where black people have been alienated and left
Speaker 4: out for generations, and so it's not surprising that they
Speaker 4: approach party politics with skepticism. So you have to meet
Speaker 4: them where they are before you try and sell them
Speaker 4: on any real accomplishments, especially with how complex a lot
Speaker 4: of policies are, and it doesn't always easily translate down
Speaker 4: to an individual's life. You might not exactly see how
Speaker 4: some of the larger policies, especially things such as environmental
Speaker 4: policy or healthcare policy, fit into one's everyday life. So
Speaker 4: that's the first thing. The second thing is I think
Speaker 4: Democrats failed to make as strong of a case they
Speaker 4: could as to the dangers that Trump and the MAGA
Speaker 4: movement represent to the Black community.
Speaker 5: In the surveys that I've conducted, a lot of people were.
Speaker 4: Not necessarily sure if Trump was going to follow through
Speaker 4: on some of his threats. They didn't necessarily believe Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five was a real thing, right, And this
Speaker 4: again I see as more of a failure of Democrats
Speaker 4: to really message as strongly as they possibly could, to
Speaker 4: convince as many people that this is a real threat,
Speaker 4: This needs our attention, and we need to vote to
Speaker 4: protect ourselves from this. And all of the modeling I've
Speaker 4: run before and since the election suggests that convincing people
Speaker 4: that you need to vote to protect yourselves in this time,
Speaker 4: in this political environment is the most effective and efficient
Speaker 4: way to get people out to vote in thinking that
Speaker 4: politics is important and relevant to their own lives.
Speaker 3: You know, doctor Tyler, I wondered if the public, black
Speaker 3: people and those who supported you know, Democratic candidates throughout
Speaker 3: you know, the last let's say ten years, felt like
Speaker 3: the party was crying wolf when it came to Project
Speaker 3: twenty five. I said the word existential threat before, but
Speaker 3: that wasn't the first time you heard that, and that
Speaker 3: wasn't the first time A lot of voters heard that
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: I think when you come and you say.
Speaker 3: That again, after people have already been through a Trump presidency,
Speaker 3: they think, well, maybe it's not going to be that bad.
Speaker 3: And the messaging about how afraid people should have been
Speaker 3: of what the possible outcome could be with this election,
Speaker 3: I think may have fallen on death ears because of that.
Speaker 1: As black people are looking.
Speaker 3: Forward to what we can do now, what we can
Speaker 3: do next, and what politics and society can look like
Speaker 3: in the future, what do black voters, black citizens, black
Speaker 3: Americans have to look forward to as we see the
Speaker 3: promises of Project twenty twenty five coming to life. Right
Speaker 3: the first time that Project twenty twenty five got the
Speaker 3: type of attention that we'd hoped, I think it was
Speaker 3: Taraji p Henson at a BT Award ceremony where she
Speaker 3: kind of threw that term out into the stratug sphere
Speaker 3: and people started reacting to it in real time. And
Speaker 3: you know, the Republican ticket denied and denied and denied
Speaker 3: that they had anything to do with it, even though
Speaker 3: that was clearly a lie. I think some people bought
Speaker 3: into that, so as we look forward, how do we
Speaker 3: deal with this sense of hopelessness and apathy and look
Speaker 3: forward to what we can do next.
Speaker 5: For me, it's twofold right.
Speaker 4: On the one hand, it's really important that we understand
Speaker 4: that the political dangers are real when it comes to
Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five, when it comes to the Trump administration,
Speaker 4: and that we don't just kind of sit out our
Speaker 4: hands and wait for other people to see how real
Speaker 4: it is and to act in our behalf right. The
Speaker 4: black community has seen time and again different electorates, different
Speaker 4: populations would rather take policies that hurt themselves and take
Speaker 4: material hurt if they feel it's going to allow for
Speaker 4: black people to gain less right, they'd rather see the
Speaker 4: Black community hurt than benefit themselves. And so as black people,
Speaker 4: we have to really stand up and find ways to
Speaker 4: get our voice heard. We have to look for representatives
Speaker 4: that we support, especially black representatives, who we feel are
Speaker 4: speaking for the community, and prop them up and get
Speaker 4: behind them, whether it's at the local or statewide level.
Speaker 4: I think we have to look for other ways to
Speaker 4: have our political voice heard too, beyond just voting right.
Speaker 4: We're coming to a time where voting itself is becoming
Speaker 4: more and more tenuous, and there's going to be even
Speaker 4: more questions about access to voting and what type of
Speaker 4: power the vote has, And so we have to make
Speaker 4: sure that we have our voices heard political otherwise in
Speaker 4: other realms, right, And so we see a number of
Speaker 4: boycotts being organized. I think those are really important to
Speaker 4: pay attention to right to use our economic power.
Speaker 5: To have a voice.
Speaker 4: There's other ways to have protest movements, sign petitions, find
Speaker 4: ways to continue to speak your political voice with and
Speaker 4: beyond voting, and really make the case to those, especially
Speaker 4: those who are disengaged, who don't follow politics, who don't
Speaker 4: pay attention to politics, that this is really going to
Speaker 4: be a turning point in American history when it comes
Speaker 4: to the road forward for the black community, and there's
Speaker 4: an opportunity here to continue to fight, to continue to
Speaker 4: push forward and sort of push back the authoritarian press,
Speaker 4: if you will, trying to move us back towards an
Speaker 4: era of Jim Crow, an era of less rights for
Speaker 4: the black community, rather than allowing for those rights to
Speaker 4: be infringed upon and having to work for generations again
Speaker 4: just to get back to where we are right now.
Speaker 3: Once upon a time, it seemed like our collective voice
Speaker 3: was more singular. We were all fighting for the same
Speaker 3: things and one of the same outcomes. It doesn't feel
Speaker 3: like that anymore. Before we close out this segment, I
Speaker 3: just wanted to get your opinion and on what the
Speaker 3: data might show regarding how we collectively feel we can
Speaker 3: work together for a better future for all of us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've noticed that too, and especially when looking at
Speaker 4: sort of connections to party politics and solidarity within political identity.
Speaker 4: There are younger generations of black people coming up today
Speaker 4: who are different, who are more independent, who are more
Speaker 4: ideologically moderate, less likely to attach themselves to the Democratic
Speaker 4: Party than older people older Black communities, And to me,
Speaker 4: it comes with the relationship and the connection to the
Speaker 4: civil rights movement, the struggle in such a way that
Speaker 4: these stories need to be told, that connection needs to
Speaker 4: be maintained and people need to know what we've done
Speaker 4: for each other right to continue to build and to
Speaker 4: bring the youth back into the same cohorts that we've
Speaker 4: had for generations sticking together