Black Minnesotans are mixed in their support for presidential candidate Kamala Harris

Calandra Revering, a Black attorney, is excited that Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.

“I think that she’s going to be powerful and beneficial to all communities, especially the minority communities,” she said.

She sees Harris as a uniter, someone a surge of young voters can relate to in a way they can’t relate to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Her husband thinks very differently.

A pastor and finance and operations officer, Mark Revering is opposed to Trump but is disenchanted with the two-party system and is considering voting for a third-party candidate.

“I tell him, ‘Don’t throw away your vote,’ because to me a vote for the independent party is diverting a vote from Kamala,” Calandra Revering said.

The St. Paul couple reflect a diversity of opinion among Black Minnesotans when it comes to supporting Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump falsely claimed during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on Wednesday that she had only recently begun identifying as Black. Interviews for this article were conducted before Trump’s appearance at the convention.

Black Americans have long been a key constituency of the Democratic Party, with 92% voting for President Joe Biden in 2020. But the Pew Research Center reported in May that 18% of Black voters and 29% of those under 50 supported Trump. About half wanted to replace Trump and Biden with different candidates. The latest Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota poll, conducted before Biden left the race, found that 22% of nonwhite registered voters backed Trump and 63% supported Biden. Now that Biden has dropped out and Harris is trying to build enthusiasm as his replacement on the ticket, interviews with Black voters in the Twin Cities revealed a range of excitement, doubts and questions about her agenda.

“I don’t know much about Harris because she didn’t really speak or say anything in the spotlight throughout Biden’s four years,” said Ty Allen, a forklift operator who lives in St. Paul.

He’s concerned that many immigrants have crossed the border and received taxpayer help, especially in cities like Chicago and New York, while Biden and Harris led the country. “You’re giving away taxpayers’ money and not giving taxpayers the opportunity to the things that benefit them,” he said.

While immigrants deserve an opportunity to build a life, Allen said, he’s concerned that they are taking jobs away from lower-class African Americans. He opposes Trump but thinks the Democrats are not looking out for him, either.

North Minneapolis activist John Martin, a Trump supporter, also questioned why so many immigrants were permitted to cross the border under the Biden administration and given aid while the system had not given the same level of assistance to Americans who are homeless, including veterans.

Martin also criticized Harris for putting Black people in jail for selling marijuana when she was a California prosecutor, then acknowledging years later that she has smoked marijuana before. (Harris now supports rescheduling cannabis to a far less harmful category and says no one should go to jail for smoking marijuana.)

“People think it would be nice if Kamala Harris was the first Black woman president,” Martin said. “Well, she was the first Black vice president and she didn’t do anything.”

Trae Williams said it had been tough to decide whether to vote for Biden, who he thought was declining, or Trump, whom he did not support. He believes politics is a lot of smoke and mirrors and doesn’t think any president will do good for the Black community, but he wants a candidate whom he considers likable, family-oriented and trustworthy.

“Kamala Harris makes it easier to be like, ‘OK, we’ve got a candidate to believe in,’ ” said Williams, a singer and songwriter in Minneapolis.

Mary K. Boyd, retired assistant superintendent for St. Paul Public Schools, praised Harris as intelligent, respectful and inclusive. When Biden was running, “the energy was kind of flat,” said Boyd, a Roseville resident. “And now the energy is just over the top. It’s like something has come alive.”

Civil rights leader Nekima Levy Armstrong said that the country will see stronger voter turnout as a result of the energy that Harris’ campaign is bringing. But she doesn’t expect radical change if Harris is elected.

“She is an establishment candidate for a reason,” Levy Armstrong said. “And it’s important to remember that so that folks don’t get their [expectations] too high, but there is power in terms of the optics of representation, and I’m thinking about all the little girls in America … particularly young girls of color, who will be inspired seeing a woman of color and the first woman in the position of president.”

For the first time in her life, Marcia Howard was surprised that so many other African Americans had been loudly disenchanted with the Democratic Party, many because of opposition to the Biden administration’s actions in the Israel-Gaza War. Some people told her they were not planning to vote at all.

However, within minutes of Biden passing the baton to Harris, she said, “I saw an upswell of enthusiasm and hope amongst the grown Black folks that I know — and reservations and wariness among the young ones that I know, because they said, ‘What about Gaza? What about Rafah? How is she going to be different than Joe Biden?’ ”

Howard, an activist in George Floyd Square, is also president of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59. While attending Harris’ speech at the teacher union’s convention in Houston, Howard observed that the vice president “hit all the right notes and I could feel a palpable energy in the air amongst folks of all ethnicities in that crowd.”

But, to Howard’s disappointment, the speech didn’t mention foreign policy.

“Representation matters, but representation without true policy and true change is meaningless,” Howard added.

Chauntyll Allen, leader of Black Lives Matter Twin Cities and a St. Paul school board member, is concerned about Harris’ track record as a San Francisco prosecutor and attorney general of California.

“I just don’t see her moving the needle at all to prevent the incarceration of Black and brown people. As a matter of fact, they have extreme mass incarceration issues going on in California right now because of her policies, and that concerns me,” Allen said.

She said her heart is with progressive activist and academic Cornel West, whose philosophy is “rooted in loving Black people,” she said. While she realizes the chances for the third-party candidate and his running mate. Melina Abdullah, are slim, their ticket represents the issues she cares about.

Mark Revering said that Harris is the best candidate for the Democratic Party this late in the game. But if she had competed from the beginning, he’s not sure she would have been the party’s choice.

He’s concerned that Harris has treated Black men in the criminal justice system unfairly, and he questions how much she’ll do for the Black community at large. He’s still researching and reflecting on whom to vote for.

Because Harris was picked without competing in primaries, “It’s almost like it’s being forced upon us,” he said. “It’s almost like we weren’t even given an option.”