As the Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once cautioned, there’s danger in a single story. Those words of wisdom could be readily applied to black women and their voting motivations in this election cycle. For black women in Chicago on Tuesday night, their reasons for voting—and who they voted for—spanned the spectrum.
On the south side, black women voters at precincts in Ashburn and Hyde Park were as much motivated by voting for a woman president as they were by mobilizing against a Trump presidency.
“2008 was my first vote, and it was very emotional,” she said. “My grandparents got a chance to vote for the first black president before they passed away,” she said. The same was true for her mother. “I wanted to vote for [Clinton] tonight because I know they would’ve wanted to.”
“What have the Democrats done for black people? Nothing,” said Sophia Love, 62. “Obama had a lot of opportunity to do something for this country, but he didn’t.”
“I like Hillary but she’s been in politics for 30 years, and black people are worse off now than they were then,” she said, citing Clinton’s support for the 1994 crime bill as particularly detrimental to black communities, while expressing skepticism about immigration reform. “[Trump] is the first white man at his level that I’ve heard say black people are struggling and that he’ll help with jobs. . . we should give him a chance.”
