In New Hampshire, Racial Issues Take a Back Seat
This is the first of a two-part article on race and the New Hampshire primary.
By Natalie Manley
On the morning of February 2, nine days before the nation’s first primary, former Governor of Massachusetts and presidential hopeful Deval Patrick paid a visit to New Hampshire’s Black Heritage Trail in Portsmouth.
One of the only Democratic candidates in the state at the time, Patrick was joined by the media and a few of his supporters as he toured the city and learned about its black history. Days earlier on January 31, Patrick also visited a Concord mosque.
Both those events were significant, not only for what they said about Patrick, but also about his opponents. According to an article published the Concord Monitor, he was only the second candidate (after Beto O’Rourke, who has since dropped out of the race) to publicly visit a mosque in New Hampshire.
“I wanted to make the point that I see you,” Patrick said to the nearly three-dozen worshippers at the mosque.
Addressing race and diversity is not a top priority for presidential candidates campaigning in this largely homogeneous state. According to a 2018 poll published by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, 90 percent of the state’s population is white, down from 95 percent in 2000.
Nonetheless, although New Hampshire’s minority population is significantly below the national average of 40 percent, residents of color are adamant that they have a voice in the “Granite State.”
“Contrary to popular belief,” said James McKim, Manchester’s NAACP president, “we do have diversity here in New Hampshire.”
Viola Katusiime, an African American, who was happy to talk about the subject while eating lunch in a Manchester cafe, agreed.
“New Hampshire has a growing minority population,” she said. “There are over 10,000 Hispanic voters, 3,000 plus black voters and a group of Asian voters too. Although we only make up 10% of the state, we are a population that actually makes a difference. We have a voice.”
When critics attack New Hampshire’s claim to the first primary of the campaign season, its lack of diversity often tops the list of negatives; opponents say it doesn’t represent the country as a whole.
Whether New Hampshire deserves to be the “first-in-the-nation” or not, it’s hard to deny that many candidates have failed to make race and race relations a significant talking point in their campaign, especially in the weeks leading up to the primary.
Pete Buttigieg, who has been routinely criticized in recent weeks for his lack of support among black voters, talked of the general need to “bridge the gap” between groups in the U.S. at his town hall meeting at Londonderry Middle School on Sunday night.
“We can not further divide a polarized nation,” said the former mayor of South Bend, IN. “We need to make sure we’re having a conversation.”
Although he touched upon his overarching goal of uniting the country, Buttigieg mentioned race only once that night, briefly addressing the need to ensure that “race has no bearing on health wellness or safety.”
Another moderate in the race for the presidency went further.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who currently leads among black voters nationally according to a recent Quinnipiac University Poll, spoke movingly at the St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manchester on Monday night.
“Close your eyes, remember what you saw in Charlottesville,” Biden said. “Most folks coming out in the fields carrying torches…their veins bulging, carrying Nazi banners, chanting the same anti-sematic bile chanted in the streets of Germany in the 30’s, accompanied by the Klu Klux Klan and white supremacists.”
Biden then went on to attack President Trump’s actions following the events, saying, “the press asked him, ‘Mr. President, what do you think?’ He said something no president in the history of the United States has ever said. He made a moral equivalence. He said, ‘there are very fine people on both sides.’”
While Biden harkened back to the Charlottesville incident, businessman Andrew Yang — who dropped out of the race the night of the primary — looked more to the future when he spoke at a town hall meeting at the Red River Theatre in Concord on Monday.
When he asked those in attendance why they thought Donald Trump won in 2016, “racism” was one of the responses. An audience question prompted him to go further, tying his signature proposal of what he called “The Freedom Dividend,” — a universal basic income of $1,000 month- to the issue of race.
“There are massive racial inequities in this country,” Yang said, noting that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was an active proponent of universal basic income. “If we were to put money in the hands of every American, the people that would benefit the most would be the people frankly with the least, and the people that are getting marginalized and unrecognized by the market economy right now. It would be a game changer for millions of people of color who right now are on the outside looking in.”
“To me,” Yang continued, “it’s a lot easier to address the economic inequities than it is the other structural elements of racism, but, I would get rid of private prisons, I would legalize marijuana nationwide, and then I would pardon everyone in jail for a non-violent drug-related offense. So there are other ways beyond the economics, but economics are a very fast way to start moving in the right direction.”
The frontrunner in New Hampshire, Sen. Bernie Sanders barely addressed race at his Tuesday night victory rally held in Manchester at the University of New Hampshire.
In his brief ten-minute speech, Sanders said that “the reason that we are going to win, is that we are putting together a multi-generational, multi-racial political movement.” He also promised attendees that he would help “end a racist and broken criminal justice system.”
Despite the fact that New Hampshire’s residents of color long to be addressed by presidential hopefuls, few candidates made reaching out to marginalized groups and detailing race-related policy a priority. That may be because the focus of the majority of the state’s citizens is elsewhere.
“For New Hampshire folks, race is not the only issue,” said McKim. “Race is not even the predominant issue.”
It seems like most of the Democratic candidates agree.
