Reply #37: An interesting question...

[qwlauren35]

I've been taking a poll on Black Voices in order to try to get a good answer to the "What do black people want?" question. 67% say jobs/economy. But what they mean may not be the same as "mainstream America". Typically, black unemployment decreases lag behind the rest of the country's. Even though it may seem as though we've come out of our slump, there are still too many African-Americans who are unemployed. So when Kerry speaks of addressing unemployment, African-Americans may want to know if he's going to address this gap.

Another thing that African-Americans tend to care about (15%) is racial issues. This includes unfair sentencing practices, police brutality and the shoot-first" mentality, jail overcrowding, I mentioned the discrepancies in unemployment numbers, first fired - last hired employment practices, ethnic discrimination in hiring and housing, erosion of Affirmative Action practices and difficulties in trying EEO cases.... there's certainly a lot of concern about what happened in Florida in 2000, but also in how the CBC's concerns about voter disenfranchisement were not addressed in congress.

The African-American conservatives (some of whom will vote for Bush) care about "moral/pro-family" issues. They consider homosexuality to be an abomination and abortion to be murder. Many believe that there are unfair adoption laws that prejudicially move black babies into white homes because of income and age disparities. They would prefer to see adoption laws that favored relatives of the child, even those with flawed backgrounds, instead of putting the child into the hands of pristine strangers. Many want to see a president with strong moral fiber.

11% considered homeland security to be a major issue. Many of these folks are also moving toward the Bush camp; some associate Democrats with decreased defense spending.

I heard about the ads run by the Kerry campaign. They gave the impression that African-Americans care about the same things that everyone else does, and that an "American" solution will somehow miraculously impact them proportionately. But it never works that way. So unless Kerry shows publically that he recognizes the discrepancies and gaps that leave African-Americans disenfranchized, he will be considered as not "our" Presidential candidate.

I'll attempt to dig up more than rhetoric if you want more factual information.