fivethirtyeight | It’s not surprising that prominent Black political figures aren’t aligned on every issue — and there’s nothing new about that at all. But these particular divides are illustrative of major shifts happening within Black politics, by which I largely mean the world of activists, elected officials and other power brokers in the United States who are Black.1 We are in an era where one man (Barack
Obama) is no longer the center of Black politics. So among the major
power centers are the activist movement linked to Black Lives Matter
that is as skeptical of Black elected officials as non-Black ones; a rising left wing of the Democratic Party that includes many Black voices; and a Black establishment that is arguably more powerful than ever before on Capitol Hill.
There are now, in my view, at least seven fairly distinct camps among
Black political figures — concentrated in the Democratic Party but also
stretching into the GOP. These groupings — which come from my own
reporting and talking to experts, rather than any specific data set —
are mostly informal. But the idea is to explain some common patterns and
themes we are seeing, not necessarily to perfectly describe the
politics of any particular person or faction in the party. I should also
emphasize that these camps do not correspond exactly to rank-and-file
Black voters, although I will talk about some places where there is overlap between activists and voters.
I have tried to order the camps by size, from largest to smallest. They are:
