I sat trying to figure out how I would cover law school costs this fall when my phone rang. It was a campaign worker with a reminder that Virginia voters had a Democratic primary election this week and I had yet to decide who would get my vote. It was the typical campaign call, nothing really remarkable about it. The worker wanted to know if I planned to support a conservative — not Republican — candidate at the polls. “Are you African American?” she asked. I replied in the affirmative. “I know that many African American voters are conservative when it comes to social issues like abortion. Would you describe the candidate you plan to support as conservative on the issue of abortion?”
In recent years conservative political strategists have painted African Americans as being more opposed to abortion than the white population. They have cited numbers as high as 59 percent.
But a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll found that 49 percent of black Americans — considered more religious than the U.S. population as a whole — favor keeping abortion legal in most or all cases; just 44 percent of black Americans want abortion to be illegal in most or all cases.
Experts say there is declining black support for conservative social policies like abortion. The reasons vary.
Christopher J. Metzler, an associate dean at Georgetown University who writes regularly on issues of race and politics, attributes the drop-off in support to pressing economic conditions that black Americans face.
The unemployment rate for African American workers is now at 14.9 percent, almost double the national average. “It’s just not one of our top issues,” said Metzler.
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