Both presidential campaigns are making their closing arguments in the final days leading up to the election.
Conversation online about Black men not willing to vote has spiraled after former President Barack Obama pushed them to cast a ballot.
Like many residents in Champaign County, McKinley Phillips told Pierce he and his family are just trying to get by financially.
It’s one of the main reasons why he hasn’t voted since 2008 when Barack Obama became president.
“Well, I told my father before, I don’t really believe in that type of stuff, because they don’t do nothing for the lower class or anything,” Phillips said. “So I was like, ‘I didn’t feel obligated to go do it.’ And he was like, ‘Well, it’s going to be our first black president. You should just go on up there and go do it’,”.
Phillips still doesn’t know if he’ll vote. However, he added that if he does, it will be for former President Donald Trump.
The Republican questioned the first Black president’s birth certificate and now he has questioned the identity of Kamala Harris.
“I’ve known her a long time indirectly. Not directly very much. And she was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago this summer. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black? So, I don’t know. Is she Indian or is she Black?”
During a meeting with Pennsylvania voters last month, Obama criticized Black men for being apathetic.
“And so now you’re thinking about sitting out or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you?,”he asked.
Harris has crisscrossed the country to be interviewed on talk shows hosted by Black men including, “All the Smoke”, The Breakfast Club, and NFL Hall of Famer, Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay.
“If you look at my work over a period of years, my focus again on something like maternal mortality is long-standing, which directly impacts black men and black women. And the black family,” She said during the October interview with Sharpe.
If you look at the work that I am doing that is about small businesses, you know the person who helped my mother raise us who was a second mother to us was a small business owner. I have always focused for such a long time on what we need to do knowing that our small [businesses] are part of the culture of our communities.”
Harris’ efforts may be paying off. According to an October 27 ABC News/Ipsos poll, 11% of Black men likely to vote will show up Trump. Meanwhile, 85% of Black men say they will vote for Harris.
Reverend T.A. Burks is one of them.
“It’s important for black people to go out and vote for the simple fact that black people have to realize and understand that people have lived and died so that they can have the right to vote,” Rev. Burks said.
“They have suffered and been beaten, so people can have the right to vote and for you to sit back and say, ‘well, my vote don’t count.’ That’s not good enough.”
But the Black experience in America also includes immigrants. Tariowei Sofiyea was born in Nigeria. His family came to the United States for a better life.
Now that he is a U.S. citizen, his parents are urging him to exercise his rights and vote for the first time.
“But my parents said, like, regardless of that, just like, your voice needs to be heard,” Sofiyea explained. “And especially like, if it’s not just like the overall arching, like presidential election, there’s also smaller elections too.”
Sofiyea is also voting for Harris. The ABC News/IPSOS poll says Harris has more support from Black men than Joe Biden’s 79% following an exit poll from the last presidential election.