Harris Plan For Black Men Fails To Address Sharks, Batteries, Windmills

Call us when you're serious, MA'AM.

Photo: Gage Skidmore 2019, Creative Commons License 2.0

Kamala Harris unveiled an economic plan aimed at specifying how she’ll “deliver for Black men” as president, with a focus on measures that will help Black men start businesses, get good jobs, and achieve economic security for their families. On the whole, it seems a lot more comprehensive than Trump’s effort to reach out to Black voters by playing up his mugshot.

The measures come partly in response to polling showing that some Black men, particularly those under 50, are considering not voting, or even voting for Donald Trump. The Washington Post talked to Black men in Pontiac, Michigan, who feel unseen and unheard.

The agenda document notes that it was developed in response to a national listening tour Harris made earlier, during which she met with Black men in cities like Atlanta, Detroit, and Charlotte.

Among the chief pillars of the plan are a proposal to provide one million loans of up to $20,000 to Black entrepreneurs through the Small Business Administration; the loans would, as with other SBA loan programs, be forgivable if certain conditions are met.

For example, these loans can help entrepreneurs rent office space and industry-standard software to launch a cybersecurity company, pay for permitting fees and purchase a van for a catering business, set up a studio and buy advertising for a new architectural company, buy professional hairstyling equipment and chair space for a barber shop, buy lawn mowers and tools for a landscaper, and more.

Harris also pledges to eliminate barriers to banking and investment that can keep Black men from building credit and wealth, citing her experience as California’s attorney general; that’s when she went after predatory lenders, who make tons of money off people who are shut out of the conventional banking system.

Along similar lines, Harris notes that her existing call to bring some much-needed regulation to cryptocurrency markets would benefit Black investors, since “[more] than 20% of Black Americans own or have owned cryptocurrency assets.” (Not incidentally, crypto scams have disproportionately harmed Black men.)

Another big one: Harris calls for a “National Health Equity Initiative for Black Men,” aimed at addressing healthcare conditions that disproportionately affect Black men, like prostate cancer and diabetes — and here, Harris reminds everyone that she plans to expand the current $35 per month Medicare cap on insulin prices to all Americans, and to similarly cap out-of-pocket expenses for drugs at $2,000 annually for everyone with insurance.

Also, because only one percent of public school teachers are Black men, the plan proposes building

a pipeline of Black male teachers, including by investing in programs under the Department of Education, which Trump wants to eliminate, to collaborate with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) […] that will empower Black men and others to enter and succeed in the teaching profession, where they can serve as role models and mentors to students and improve academic outcomes.

Other planks of the plan include grant programs for mentorship and leadership, in conjunction with public schools and HBCUs, and building on the Biden administration’s efforts to help farmers and ranchers who have faced past discrimination.

As with her economic plan for rural America, Harris’s agenda notes that quite a few of the policy proposals she’s already made would be beneficial for Black men. For instance, her call to make recreational marijuana legal nationwide would also include measures to make sure Black entrepreneurs can get into the legal trade. The document also acknowledges that Black people have been overpoliced and disproportionately punished for weed-related crimes, and that in Donald Trump’s first term, he threatened to sic the Justice Department on legal weed businesses in states that had decriminalized it. (Even if marijuana is rescheduled, actually expunging criminal records for nonviolent marijuana offenses would have to be done at the state level, although as Joe Biden has proposed, the federal government can help states standardize that process.)

---

YESTERDAY!

Can Harris-Walz Policy Win Back Rural Voters? Rural Jurors Still Out.

---

Similarly, the plan notes how Black men will benefit from Harris’s proposals to expand the Child Tax Credit, help new parents with a $6,000 tax credit for a baby’s first year, and a $25,000 tax deduction for starting a small business, among others.

Harris-Walz deputy principal campaign manager Quentin Fulks told HuffPost that the plan gets at some central concerns for the Black community:

“Black men care about economics. A lot of African American men specifically care about the cost of inflation, health care, housing, all of those things. When it comes down to it, another thing that’s always underlying data is: How do you create generational wealth? How do you begin to build? A number of these policies attempt to answer that.”

Also too, we’ll close with a reminder from Nation columnist Elie Mystal that while it’s true that “the difference between 85 percent and 90 percent [of Black votes] could be the difference in Harris winning or losing a critical state or two,” the people who really are causing trouble in this nation are not the few Black voters who may not stick with Democrats, but rather the majority of white men and women who keep supporting Donald Trump:

The “problem” in this country is how the majority of white people vote. The force holding this country back is the majority of white people. The people who have turned against democracy are the majority of white people. The global force destroying the environment of this earth is the majority of white people. […] Go deal with the white people in your life instead of placing the burden on Black folks to save this country from the majority of white folks yet again.

Why, yes, as usual, Mystal nails it. America has always had a white people problem, not to mention a misogyny problem, and if Harris is underpolling with some Black men, that may have more to do with the fact that men in general are leaning toward Trump too, in virtually all demographics, Mystal points out — “except perhaps Black queer men, who appear to be all in for the VP.”

Music to our ears. Let’s do all we can to elect Harris and dismantle patriarchy, for fuckssake.

---

Can Harris-Walz Policy Win Back Rural Voters? Rural Jurors Still Out.

Black Farmers Finally (FINALLY) Getting Some Cash Money For USDA Discrimination

Biden DOJ To Reschedule Marijuana, Stoners All Ask 'For When, Man?'

---

[Kamala Harris campaign / Huffpost / Nation]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you prefer a one-time donation, this button would love you to push it in a good direction.