MONITOR: Election 2020

The ‘Black Vote’ Is Much More Complex Than People Think

The idea of all Black people voting the same way is not only racist, it’s misleading

People vote in the Super Tuesday primary at Centreville High School March 1, 2016, in Centreville, Virginia. Photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Former Vice President Joe Biden won a landslide victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary on February 29. Voter turnout surpassed that of the 2008 Obama primaries and blew the state’s meager 2016 turnout out of the water.

It was a victory that Biden, a one-time frontrunner, desperately needed in order to salvage his campaign, which had been slipping in polls nationally and in statewide contests. His electability argument was floundering until South Carolina.

As the results poured in Saturday night, pundits on every major news network rallied behind their new frontrunner with a familiar, outdated, and racist refrain: The myth of the elusive “Black vote.” And since Biden’s sizable wins in Super Tuesday states like Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the opinion and punditry about the “Black vote” have only gotten worse.

The New York Times reported that Black voters had single-handedly revived Biden’s fumbling campaign. The New Yorker contended that Jim Clyburn — an influential but somewhat conservative Democratic congressman from South Carolina — was a literal…