Throughout our history, Black leaders have championed the idea of a multiracial coalition that would upend the white-dominated American political system.
In “Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880,” W.E.B. Du Bois bemoaned the lack of economic and political solidarity between Black and poor white Americans.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he had already embarked on the Poor People’s Campaign, which he called “the beginning of a new cooperation, understanding and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity.”
When Jesse Jackson announced his 1984 presidential campaign, he said: “Women cannot be free until Blacks and Hispanics are free. Blacks, whites, women, Hispanics, workers, Indians, Chinese, Filipinos — we must come together and form the rainbow coalition.”
And in 2008, Barack Obama marshaled that spirit and turned it into a coalition that elected America’s first Black president. But 16 years later, this coalition failed to coalesce for a Black woman seeking the Oval Office.
Yes, it’s a different era, with different candidates. (And yes, Republicans are crowing that there’s still a multiracial coalition, but now it’s just forming on their side of the aisle.) But the results of the 2024 presidential election might be a sign that the lift-all-boats approach that Jackson called for — a simultaneous fight for the rights, aspirations and dignity of all Americans, including women, people of color and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community — is no longer the galvanizing force that many liberals were counting on.
