Why did any Black Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election? That's the question of Black Lives Matter leader and organiser DeRay McKesson.
While he nervously waited for the election results with the rest of the United States, and world, McKesson told TVNZ1's Breakfast today he's hopeful Democrat Joe Biden will win.
However, after an extraordinary and unprecedented night, votes on who the next president will be are still being counted.
As at 6.45am NZT, in the race to the 270 electoral votes needed to win, Biden has 238 while Trump has 213. But there are still some major states to be counted.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden are neck and neck in key swing states. (Source: Other)
But McKesson said the fact it's even close means there are a lot of Americans who support racist policy.
"What we've got to reckon with, is even if Biden wins a ton of people still voted Trump. And it's not like 2016 support where he'd never been in office - we didn't really know what he'd do.
"It's like, you supported him after the kids in cages, after the xenophobia, after the bigotry and after the racist policies and that actually is something we will have to reckon with.
"I think that we see that there are a lot of people who are racist and a lot of people who still support racist policies and make excuses for them.
"People were afraid to say they were supporting Trump but they were not afraid to vote for Trump. So I think there were a lot of lessons we'll need to reflect on."
What was more telling, McKesson said, was looking at who it was voting for Trump.
Forty-seven per cent of white young people voted for the Republican.
"When people say it's the old people, racism's going to die off, it's like white young people supported this racist policy and president," he said.
"I think we need to take a step back over the next couple of weeks and really think about what that means for us, think about how we organise in communities.
"We look at the map and we're like, there are places that I think people thought would be a little more progressive and they weren't."
McKesson was also concerned at the number of Black and Latino voters supporting Trump.
"You look at Black men, it's something like 20 per cent of Black men supported Trump. You're like, 'What does that mean?
"Latino - like 30 per cent of Latino men supported Trump. You're like, 'He is actively working against you.'"
McKesson said, based on focus groups, Black men were susceptible to misinformation and disinformation.
"They hear more of what Trump says, they don't see as much of what he does and that we actually lose in that scenario."
The Black Lives Matter movement is an international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, which is dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality.
According to the official Black Lives Matter website, "BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 is a campaign aimed to maximize the impact of the BLM movement by galvanising BLM supporters and allies to the polls in the 2020 US Presidential Election to build collective power and ensure candidates are held accountable for the issues that systematically and disproportionately impact Black and under-served communities across the nation".
McKesson said what Black Americans care about is the end of racism and criminal justice, including police violence and mass incarceration.
“I’m still here. I haven’t left” sleepless US correspondent Anna Burns-Francis told Breakfast today. (Source: Other)
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