I spent a week with Black Republicans

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Just a few (long) weeks ago, President Joe Biden was still running for re-election, grappling with persistently negative national polling. One major concern for Democrats—and a source of surprise and delight for Republicans—was the apparent shift of young Black male voters towards former President Donald Trump. This will-they-won’t-they question dominated the summer, culminating at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee at the end of July: Could Trump make significant inroads into a voting bloc that traditionally supported Democrats?

That narrative shifted dramatically with the entry of Vice President Kamala Harris into the race. Suddenly, a much higher percentage of Black voters told pollsters of their intent to vote, a big increase from July when Biden was still on the ticket.

When the Mother Jones team reported from the RNC last month, Video Correspondent @GarrisonHayes was on a mission to unravel these complex cross-currents of identity, policy, and political strategy. "I learned a lot about Black Republicans during these conversations—their motivations, their stories, their goals," Hayes says in a new, indepth video showcasing several substantive interviews with Black convention attendees. “I wanted to know what draws a black person to identify with this Republican party.”

Hayes uncovered old-school appeals to rugged individualism (with elements of historical revisionism), traditional anti-abortion viewpoints, and a rejection of government interventions. Ultimately, Hayes concluded that—for a party that so openly courts racists and racism enablers—having more Black people in the ranks could be, surprisingly, beneficial. "The only way the Republican Party becomes this ideologically conservative but racially inclusive big tent party,” Garrison says, “is if there is a fundamental rejection of the people, policies, and practices they currently hold as sacred in their political vision.”

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