What Black Male Celebrities Are Saying About Kamala Harris That She Isn’t Saying Herself

PHILADELPHIA — It’s Wednesday night at A King’s Cafe in Northwest Philly, and the hookahs and the Hennessey are flowing freely. DJ Aktive is cranking the tunes. At the door, beefy security guys inspect bags and pat down guests (“arms open wide like an airplane”) while a buxom hostess hands out tickets for free drinks and free food. (Wings and fries, or fish and fries; “fry” being the operative word here.)

At first blush, it looks like a regular weeknight at the local hangout, where folks, some young, some not so young, bump up to the bar to let off a little steam before heading home. But tonight is a little different, a campaign event designed to not look like a campaign event.

Though it’s been organized by the Kamala Harris campaign, there are no Harris-Walz signs to be seen, no buttons or brochures. But tonight is about partying with a purpose: a “Black Men Huddle Up,” featuring Black men who happen to be celebrities talking to other Black men who are not about how Vice President Kamala Harris can improve their lives — and the lives of their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters — if they would just get up off the couch and vote blue.

Sitting on the impromptu stage in the back of the club are an array of VIPs, many of whom are beloved in the Black community: actor Michael Ealy (“The Good Wife,” “Reasonable Doubt”); record industry veteran Kevin Liles, the man behind Megan Thee Stallion’s success; retired NFL quarterback Rodney Peete; Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Thomas Booker; former BET personality/journalist Jeff Johnson.

“We’re less than two weeks away,” Bakari Sellers, CNN pundit, former South Carolina state representative and the evening’s emcee, tells the crowd of 200 or so men and women. “The purpose of tonight is for you to go out and be apostles of hope,” to give tools to the “individuals who may think that their vote doesn’t matter, who may be on the fence or their head in the sand. … Give them a concrete why.”

As the men pass the mic, it’s clear that their why is somewhat different from the message that Harris herself is putting forward on the campaign trail. While Harris often downplays her race and gender — perhaps for fear of alienating voters who don’t care for identity politics — they, as her surrogates, are doubling down on identity, talking to Black men about the struggles of being both Black and male, and highlighting the historic nature of her potential win.

Yes, they mention former President Donald Trump. (“If I was Black and sent a bunch of friends to do what they did on Jan. 6, would I still be alive?” muses Liles.) Yes, they talk about Harris’ Opportunity Agenda for Black Men. Yes, they talk policy, from cryptocurrency to legalizing marijuana to policing to housing and entrepreneurship to the need to protect reproductive rights for the women in their lives. (“Let’s be real,” says Sellers. “How many Black men in this room know somebody that was glad that a woman had the right to choose?”) 

But they also talk poignantly of things that Kamala Harris herself does not discuss: What it’s like to be, as Sellers says, “living in this body as a Black man,” of the weariness of constantly being seen by the outside world as a threat, that often the only love they find is back at home. Harris, they say, knows that struggle. They — and their sons — got to see themselves in the first Black male president, Barack Obama. Vote for the Black woman in the race, they tell the packed house, so your daughters can see themselves in her.

“We have the chance to normalize the first Black female president ever,” says Ealy. 

Their idealism is laced with an acknowledgment that many Black men are also deeply skeptical of the political process and the promises candidates have made — and left unfulfilled. But the smart response, they say, is to stay engaged and make a strategic choice, to “play chess instead of checkers.”

“I’m tired of lying-ass Democrats,” Johnson, the former BET host, tells the crowd. “And I’m tired of lying-ass Republicans. Brothers don’t trust anybody. … I don’t need to like a candidate. I just need to know who’s going to hurt my family the least.

“And I trust Kamala Harris more than I trust most Democrats.”

Rysheem Murph wasn’t expecting to see a Harris-Walz event when he rolled up here fresh from the gym. Nursing a drink and watching the 76ers face off against the Milwaukee Bucks on the big screen, he wonders, maybe he should go home and change. Murph, 33, is actually exactly the kind of person the huddle was designed for. He tells me he has always voted for Democrats — they care about middle- and lower-income people, he says — but he might sit this election out. He’s worried that electing a woman president will make us look weak to the rest of the world. 

Murph, a behavioral specialist who works with at-risk children, doesn’t have a problem with a woman president, he hastens to assure me. But “in most places, you know, men feel like they superior to women.”

But Mexico just elected a woman president, I tell him, ticking off a list of female world leaders, past and present. Murph looks relieved. “See, I didn’t know that,” he says.

These days, the ongoing narrative is that Black men are peeling away from the Democratic Party in droves, eschewing the party of Obama for the brashness and brio of Donald Trump’s MAGA world. Polling shows there is indeed a drift, particularly among young Black (and Latino) men, though in the final days of the campaign, there are signs that Harris’ support among Gen Z Black menis on the rise.

But the men gathered here tonight push back on the narrative that they are shifting to Trump (“I call bullshit,” Sellers tells me) pointing out that next to Black women, Black men remain the most loyal of Democratic voters. And he’s not wrong; according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, among likely voters, 85 percent of Black men say they intend to vote for Democrats/Harris, compared to 38 percent of white men or 63 percent of Hispanic men. Harris, they insist, isn’t battling Trump so much as she’s battling inertia and disenchantment, the pervasive feeling among Black men that life hasn’t improved — and won’t improve — for them under either party, whether they vote red or blue.  (Indeed, research shows that Black men tend to vote at slightly lower rates than Black women, between 5 to 9 percentage points.)

“Young Black men don’t feel like they’re being represented by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party,” Booker, 24, tells me.  

Backstage, a weary-looking Ealy talks about how he’s been barnstorming the country for Harris, hitting up four cities in the past seven days. “Based on what I’ve seen, it’s not true. It feels like there’s a need for a scapegoat,” he says as a female fan interrupts with a selfie request. “I’ve met people that have issues with the Democratic Party. But they’re still going to vote for Kamala.”

“I rarely hear that someone is going for Trump in our demographic,” says Chad Williams, the co-owner of A King’s Cafe. “The base is energized. I can feel it in the city. There’s never been such a fever pitch, ‘Let’s get out the vote.’”

Even so, Harris’ campaign is acutely aware of the need to shore up support among that demographic. Hence the small army of Black male celebrities — among them Don Cheadle, Steph Curry, Fat Joe, Samuel L. Jackson, Magic Johnson, Spike Lee, John Legend, Delroy Lindo, Tyler Perry and Wendell Pierce — who have been barnstorming battleground states, speaking at rallies and hosting huddles and barbershop talks. (And other celebrities, from comic D.L. Hughley to Charlamagne tha God to the rapper Plies, have been vociferous in their support of Harris, without formally joining the campaign.) The idea: to create “safe spaces” for Black men to have tough conversations about their concerns, from policing to generating wealth.

Most of the men and women gathered here tonight are “the choir,” says Ryan Butler, deputy director for Entertainment & Culture for the Harris campaign, “but you can hear the choir outside.” The goal of tonight, he says, is to give the choir members the tools they need as they “maneuver through the hood” trying to convince the unenthused to vote.

But will this be enough to win over Black men sitting on the fence? Democratic Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, who’s running unopposed for reelection in Philadelphia’s District 200, has his doubts. Rather than celebrities showing up for a one-off event, he says, it’s far more effective to enlist folks on the ground in their communities to recruit the reluctant. 

Good vibes aren’t enough, he says. “Vibes with strategy and deep investment in these communities is the winning algorithm. Anything less is dangerous.”

As if responding to Rabb’s unspoken concern, Sellers offers some advice as the evening begins to wind down.

“How many of you all have not voted already?”

Roughly half of the men and women in the room raise their hands.

“What we need you all to do is make a plan to ensure that you get to the polls.”

In 2016, Sellers reminds them, Pennsylvania was lost to Trump by 30,000 votes, including by just five votes in one precinct (Clinton actually lost by 46,000 votes). Michigan and Wisconsin were lost by even less than that. If you can’t get to the polls, he says, votetolive.org is offering $30 Uber credits to get you to the voting booth. 

“Imagine if you take five people with you to the polls, those people who haven’t voted since Barack Obama, or the guy who’s at the gas station, who has the brown paper bag, and …  your homeboy who sits on YouTube all night and goes down those deep, dark rabbit holes. We need all of them to show up to the polls. 

“Let’s go out here and win this thing,” he says, “so we can actually focus on Nov. 6.”

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