A Rutgers University professor has a simple message for Black Americans: stay in majority-Black churches, or risk voting Republican. And apparently, that second part is the nightmare scenario. I thought you had to be smart to teach at a college? Obviously not. But hey, what did you expect from the ‘School of Social Work?’
Professor Ryon Cobb, who holds the very impressive title of “inclusive excellence in research” scholar, wrote an essay for the Brookings Institution arguing that church integration is costing Black voters their Democratic loyalty. He calls it a “loss” when Black Americans drift toward the Republican Party or, heaven forbid, become independents who think for themselves. According to Cobb, “While 84% of Black adults identify as Democrat or lean Democratic, that number hides what congregational diversity costs Black politics.”
The whole argument, basically, is that Black Americans need to be kept in the right pews to keep pulling the right lever. Democrats have spent decades insisting they’re the party of freedom and autonomy, and here’s one of their favorite academics literally arguing that Black people need to be steered away from certain churches to protect their political identity. You can’t make this stuff up. Rutgers professor on Black church politics
Cobb writes that “white congregations convert Black members to Republicanism, while multiracial congregations pull them out of partisan politics altogether.” He describes multiracial churches, which he defines as congregations where no single racial group holds a majority in leadership or membership, as places that drain Black members of “the political identity Black-majority congregations build.” He also warns that these integrated churches operate by “defaulting to white cultural norms,” though he never actually explains what that phrase means in the essay or in his full academic paper. Real rigorous stuff.
He also claims that Black members of multiracial congregations become less politically engaged overall, but admits he has no data showing they vote less, follow the news less, or skip local civic meetings. He just asserts it. Peer review is doing a lot of heavy lifting out there.
What makes this even richer is that taxpayers helped fund this research. Cobb disclosed receiving federal money through the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, via a grant that supports a University of Michigan urban research center. So your tax dollars went toward a Rutgers professor arguing that Black Americans need to be sorted into the right congregations for optimal Democratic voting output.
Cobb wraps up with what he clearly thinks is a profound conclusion: “Integration and political power are not the same force, and right now they move in opposite directions.” Translation: if Black Americans are free to worship wherever they want and meet whoever they want, some of them might stop voting Democrat, and that is the real emergency here.
The Democratic Party has built its entire brand on inclusion, diversity, and tolerance. But when a Black American sits next to someone of a different background on Sunday morning and starts reconsidering his party registration, their scholars call it a crisis. The most integrated thing about the modern left is how consistently they tell minorities what to think.
