By Lamin Njie
Millions of African Americans have began having their say in the 2020 US Presidential Election – a high stakes affair between incumbent Donald Trump and his democratic challenger Joe Biden.
As America decides next Tuesday Nov 3, the participation of African Americans is being viewed as significant as the issue of race rages and continues to be a key issue in America and around the world.
But African Americans are best known for leaning towards the democratic party – and according to distinguished Professor and Chair Emeritus of Political Science at Howard University, Dr. Lorenzo Morris, this attitude is based on ideological reasons.
“It responded along with the Irish who were considered on the lower end of the spectrum at the time, the Italians, the Jews in different ways to the New Deal in the 30’s,” Dr. Lorenzo Morris said.
“It responded to those ideological movements but nothing happened as dramatically as today where the black vote is around 90% Democratic until the 1960s.”
Gambian Americans have been casting their votes in this year’s US elections – Pa Nderry Mbai, Gambian-American journalist and editor Freedom newspaper urges fellow Americans to vote in a post on his Facebook page.
“Please go and vote. I just voted,” Mr Mbai wrote on October 19 shortly after voting.
Another Gambian Musa Jeng is one of them who says he will be voting on election day itself.
“The upcoming November election is a choice for maintaining democracy as we know it in the US, a country seen as the beacon of hope with democratic values, or voting for abandoning those values. Voting for Trump, the Republican candidate will be a vote for the US creeping into dictatorship,” Mr Jeng who’s in his late 50s and lives in Atlanta, Georgia says.
He adds: “I am a Democrat and has always voted for the Democratic party, and this is driven by their policy prescription that are much more supportive to new immigrants. Let me be clear, I became an American during a Republican government, under President Reagan.
“It was during Reagan’s amnesty program that most immigrants, and Gambians for that matter, in the eighties became Americans. I do not subscribe to the sweeping statement that the Republican party is anti-immigrant, but there is no doubt that there is a constituency within Republican supporters that have anti-immigrant tendencies. Donald Trump became president by exploiting the anti-immigrant prejudices within the Republican party.”
But prior to the 1960s, there were a lot of African Americans who were Republican party sympathisers, according to Dr Morris.
“In fact, in 1952 and ’56, when Eisenhower was elected, the black vote was 40% Republican,” Dr Morris while discussing the importance of the African American vote and its impact on the 2020 elections with foreign reporters said.
