Attention DNC: Black men want to be treated as a valuable voting bloc.

It has already been established that Black women vote in record numbers and as such, the Democrats seem to value this. Now, Black men are saying don’t forget about us.

The indifference to Black men by Democrats in the 2020 election led to more Black men voting for Donald Trump. Support for the Democratic presidential candidate dropped a new low among Black men in 2020, according to the NBC News poll of early and Election Day voters.

While 80 percent of Black men did vote for Joe Biden, this was way down from Barack Obama’s 95 percent of Black male voters in 2008, NBC News reported.

Popular Black blogger Delano Squires recently sent a message out to the Democrats — “Stop treating Black men like they are stupid.” 

“It is deeply insulting to assume Black men in general are less attuned to their own political interests than any other group is. But that’s what leading Democrats keep doing,” Squires wrote in an article for The Federalist.

Squires is the creator of the blog Truth, No Chaser, and has also written about race, religion, relationships and culture for Black and Married with Kids, The Root and The Grio.

He complained about Democrats who chastised and ridiculed Black men who considered voting for Trump, calling them “sellouts.”

“One Democratic candidate for Congress said one in five black men voted for Trump because ‘they hate Black women,” wrote Squires, in reference to a tweet by Pam Keith, former Democratic nominee for Florida’s 18th Congressional District. In November, Keith tweeted, “91% of Black Women voted for Biden because we love everyone. 20% of Black men voted for Trump because they hate Black Women. Thank you to the 80% of Brothers who stand with and for us.”

Squires called out former President Obama who, in an interview with The Atlantic, blamed the increase in Black male support for Trump on the Black man’s attraction to “the bling, the women, and the money.”

“Hearing such a simplistic and dismissive explanation from someone as politically savvy as Obama was disappointing but terribly predictable. Therein lies the problem,” Squires wrote.

Squires pointed out issues that he says many Black men find important and how they seem to align more with the Republicans’ stance on issues such as education, gay marriage and anti-abortion.

He explained, “Today’s Democratic Party relies more on marshaling votes based on identity rather than ideas. That clearly didn’t work for many Black men.”

Take education, for example. It’s an issue Black men care about as much as Black women. According to Squires, Obama — who sent his daughters to private school in D.C. when he was in the White House — attempted to defund the program poor DC families use to give children access to private schools. But, Squires pointed out, Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos boosted funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and supported charter school expansion. Biden, however, “has pledged to eliminate the voucher program once in office and his supporters in the National Education Association oppose charter schools that are extremely popular with Black parents,” Squires wrote.

According to Squires, some Black men have always leaned conservative and Trump’s record on the pre-covid economy and other important issues were more important to these voters than his tweets, brash persona, and frequent accusations of racism.

“A smart, self-interested Democratic Party would ask itself whether Trump’s increase in non-white support may indicate a larger trend underway. Unfortunately, the party’s intellectual wing and its allies in corporate media are among the most incurious and condescending people in this country,” Squires wrote.

Other Black men seem to be in agreement with Squires, claiming the DNC treats Black voters as a monolith and not individuals. Noel King, who interviewed three Black men for NPR, found that the men didn’t feel the DNC spoke to them or for them.

Demetre Coles from Waterbury, Conn., voted for the Green Party presidential candidate. He turned away from the Democratic party because of a lack of trust. Coles was initially a Bernie Sanders supporter.

“I view the Black community’s relationship with the Democratic Party, for example, as sort of like a domestic violence relationship, you know. We’ve been giving our vote to them loyally for 55, 60 years, and we have got nothing in return. And as for the Republican Party, I don’t feel as if they care about me at all, you know. But it’s just more blatant,” Coles said.

John Settles is 59 and lives in Seattle. Settles told King he too was a Sanders supporter but ultimately voted for Biden. “Really, what mattered for me in this election – I loved Bernie Sanders’ platform. I really was looking for someone to dispose Trump. I didn’t want to squander my vote on a position that would dilute that power. And so that was more important to me this cycle.”

Tim Graves, 58, of Jacksonville, Fla., said he voted for Trump after years of empty promises.

“No. 1 – after almost 40 years of promises from every president up to Donald Trump, historically Black colleges for the first time got long-term funding. No. 2 – the lowering of Black unemployment is absolutely incredible. Of course, we know that it is the top that it’s ever been in the country, prior to covid. And No. 3 – as he said, I mean, what do we have to lose?” Graves said.

Graves continued, “I mean, from the point that Johnson and the Democratic Party back in the late ’60s and early ’70s made policies that take Black men out of the house with welfare, and that’s been one of their goals since then is to make sure that Blacks in general remain on government assistance, and they can keep that vote.”

But if the Dems want to take the two Senate seats in Georgia, they will need Black male voters to turn out. And the campaigning is going hard.

“With hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into twin Jan. 5 Georgia runoff elections to determine control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats and a constellation of allies are waging an all-out campaign to mobilize as many Black voters as possible,” Reuters reported.

The Black Male Voter Project is reaching out to Georgia’s 460,000 registered Black men who have not voted for years, founder Mondale Robinson told KFGO.

“Antipathy is different than apathy,” he said. “If we engage Black men as though they are apathetic, we’re already losing.”

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.

If Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler win, their party would keep its Senate majority. Running against Perdue is Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker and journalist. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, is facing Loeffler in the run-off.

“High Black voter turnout is essential to a Democratic victory,” said Andra Gillespie, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. “If their turnout rate is lower than it is for other groups … that’ll help dig a hole that Democrats won’t be able to dig out of.”