What’s Driving Black Candidates to the Republican Party?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Republican Party has recently attracted an almost unprecedented number of Black candidates to its fold—more than at any time since the Reconstruction era. “In a moment where the Party . . . has really wholeheartedly embraced white-grievance politics,” Leah Wright Rigueur tells David Remnick, “they are endorsing more Black candidates than they have in the past twenty-five years.” Rigueur is a historian at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican.” The G.O.P., she argues, is exploiting a moment when the long-standing relationship between Black Americans and the Democratic Party is weakening, and it aims to capitalize on an “everyday conservatism” among voters. “It actually makes sense that in the aftermath of Barack Obama—with Black people’s levels of support and warmth for the Democratic Party in decline and the belief among a small sect of African Americans that [it] is just as racist as the Republican Party—that actually frees some people up to actually vote Republican.” Plus, the staff writer Emma Green, who covers the pro-life movement, discusses how individuals’ positions seldom reflect the furious partisan divide, and she shares some nuanced sources that have informed her reporting.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.
0:10.4	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:13.5	The Republican Party has made it very clear that it has no place for black activism.
0:18.8	At every level, leaders of the party demonize the Black Lives Matter movement and what
0:24.2	they characterize as the teaching of critical race theory in the schools.
0:28.9	The GOP opposes affirmative action and almost any effort to redress discrimination in the
0:34.5	present.
0:35.7	In some quarters, simply acknowledging that racism exists is considered unpatriotic.
0:43.8	And yet recently, the Republican Party has also attracted increasing numbers of black
0:47.6	candidates to its fold.
0:49.9	The website 538 recently published a report that was headlined a record number of black
0:55.6	Republicans could be headed to Congress and it cited some 80 or more candidates.
1:00.9	That's a very stark contrast to the current statistics, two black representatives, and
1:06.4	one single senator in the GOP.
1:09.6	So what exactly is going on?
1:12.8	To get some perspective, I spoke with Professor Leah Wright-Rigurr, a historian at Johns
1:17.9	Hopkins University.
1:20.0	She's the author of the Loneliness of the Black Republican, a book that covers the period
1:25.0	from the New Deal through the Reagan administration.
1:28.8	Professor, you wrote some time ago a book about black Republicans.
1:32.4	I'd love to know what is the trend among the African-American community with a Republican
1:38.2	party is concerned.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.