{"id":21283,"date":"2026-11-06T14:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T14:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=21283"},"modified":"2026-11-06T14:42:40","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T14:42:40","slug":"different-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/06\/different-boats\/","title":{"rendered":"Different Boats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps we should begin to think of racial solidarity as a luxury item<\/em>. \u2013 <\/em>Eugene Robinson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Many candidates and issues asked for Black votes this fall, and some voters answered with a question: What’s in it for me?<\/p>\n

To a party that has long counted on those votes, the question sounds like disloyalty. To the voter waiting on an answer, the silence is the betrayal.<\/p>\n

In my youth, I saw Black doctors sit in the same church pew as sanitation workers, and the world outside the church treated them all alike. It was fitting for us to speak in one unified voice. That is no longer the case.<\/p>\n

Eugene Robinson named the result in his 2010 book, Disintegration<\/em>: four Black Americas, a middle-class Mainstream, a small Transcendent elite, an Emergent group of mixed-race and recent immigrant Black Americans, and an Abandoned minority with less hope of escaping poverty than at any time since Reconstruction ended. He writes that “Black Americans at the top of the scale, with incomes of more than $100,000 a year, were most likely to cling to the more traditional view that ‘blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.'”<\/p>\n

One Boat<\/strong><\/p>\n

When everyone was in the same boat, loyalty cost nothing, because what was in it for me and what was in it for us were the same question. People paid for it. Adam Mahoney of Capital B reported from Opelousas, Louisiana, on Oct. 29 that more than 200 Black people were killed there in 1868 for organizing to vote. This spring the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais weakened the Voting Rights Act, and Mahoney reports that at least three majority-Black congressional districts have been dismantled across the South since. Some now want to know what the ballot buys.<\/p>\n

Different Boats<\/strong><\/p>\n

The answer depends on the boat. In Toledo, a Black household brings in about $33,912 a year, compared with $49,724 citywide. The city says its food contract with Al Peake & Sons is worth $150,000 of a $3 million Swayne Field development. Local Black growers such as Sonia Flunder-McNair of SONIA Organics and David Johnson of Johnson Produce Market were passed over, as I wrote in “Build Bridges, Not a Bypass.”<\/p>\n

A historian told Mahoney the divisions go back to land and complexion, long before integration. Pew\u2019s October survey found 70 percent of Black registered voters backing Democrats for the House and only seven percent backing Republicans, but one in six said they weren\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

In Michigan, a Senate seat that could decide control of the chamber turns in part on Black voters, whom CNN reported on October 20 are “pivotal to any Democratic victory.”<\/p>\n

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, beat Rep. Haley Stevens in the August primary by about a point, and Black voters around Detroit largely backed Stevens. Republican Mike Rogers opened a campaign office on Detroit’s Livernois Avenue.<\/p>\n

“It only takes this much of Detroit to defect. It only takes this much of Flint to defect,” the Rev. Charles Williams II of Historic King Solomon Baptist Church said, holding his fingers an inch apart. Naura Evans, a Black Republican in Sterling Heights, told CNN that Democrats have taken Black voters for granted: “We’re not just giving the vote away.”<\/p>\n

Then, on the Sunday before the election, the Associated Press reported that Stevens sat in a pew at Perfecting Church in Detroit beside Rogers and endorsed him, while El-Sayed worshipped at another church a few miles away.<\/p>\n

Who Rows<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even after the votes are counted, some things won’t change. Lucas County will still be $27 million short next year, and every department will still have been asked to cut 13 percent. The sheriff and the prosecutor are pushing back, citing legal claims on their money. The community funding line that paid for reentry, violence-intervention programs, and funded community grants is gone for next year. Small nonprofits that live and operate closest to the ground zero of poverty and pain are waiting to learn if they can absorb the loss and even survive.<\/p>\n

Toledo can’t afford to guess which boat a voter is in. Marcy Kaptur won her last race by 2,382 votes, in a district since redrawn about four points toward the Republicans, and Lucas County finished second to last in Ohio in turnout in 2024. Any candidate who wants those votes has to say out loud what the seat will make possible, and for whom.<\/p>\n

Robinson says perhaps we should think of racial solidarity as a luxury item. In a city where the median Black household brings in $33,912, it is no luxury for anyone. Loyalty has to run both ways: a party that asks for the vote owes every voter an answer, no matter which boat they are in.<\/p>\n

Many asked for Black votes this fall. Go to their meetings and make them say what they did with them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at <\/em>drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D. The Truth Contributor \u00a0\u00a0Perhaps we should begin to think of racial solidarity as a luxury item. \u2013 Eugene Robinson   Many candidates and issues asked for Black votes this fall, and some voters answered with a question: What’s in it for me? To a party that has long counted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[373],"class_list":["post-21283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21284,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21283\/revisions\/21284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21283"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=21283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}