Shortly before Kamala Harris replaces Joe Biden Several national polls and first election results suggested that Donald Trump, because the Democratic Party's presidential candidate for 2024, had alienated considered one of its most reliable voting blocs – people of color – from the party.

This was the case with surveys indicate that Trump was expected to win more black voices than some other GOP candidate in modern history. Other polls suggested that more Hispanic voters Support for Trump despite his anti-immigration policy and infrequently racist rhetoric.

Each of those apparent policy shifts occurred at a time through the Democratic primaries when President Biden was losing support amongst Arab-American voters – one other reliable Democratic political bloc.

Although Harris’ candidacy has delighted Democratic voters Across the country, she continues to be not resistant to the impact of Trump's appeal to voters of color. Pew Research Center survey from August 2024 found that 77% of all black voters supported Harris, while 13% supported Trump.

Among black voters under 50, Harris was still ahead with 68 percent approval, but 19 percent supported Trump.

In a presidential election The result’s prone to be close, but in lots of swing states the mobilization of voters of color will again be crucial for victory, just like the 2020 election, which Biden won. Biden won by lower than 45,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsinthe three states during which he had the sting within the electoral college.

To win in 2024, Harris and Trump must mobilize communities of color which can be already inclined in large numbers to vote for Harris – despite the slight progress that Trump on this often fragile political coalition.

Similarity principle

Since 2020 my Research laboratory at UCLA conducted five nationwide experiments with black, Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern, and North African voters to look at the psychological aspects that influence the voting decisions of individuals from these different groups.

In addition, we conducted two additional large-scale studies to look at the aspects that undermine these shared perspectives.

Our findings suggest that, despite their quite a few political and social differences, communities of color usually tend to vote for candidates who support policies that help eliminate racial injustice against all groups, not only their very own.

In fact, an in depth take a look at several studies of nearly 3,500 adults from across the United States suggests the precise opposite of the poll results showing Trump's gains amongst voters of color.

Part of the explanation for that is the so-called Similarity principlethe tendency of humans to love others who’re just like them. Based on this principle, we asked participants in our experiments to read an article concerning the discrimination that one other ethnic group had experienced.

In one study, for instance, black adults examine how Latinos were treated as second-class residents. This was an experience that the black participants could relate to. In one other study, Latinos examine how Asian Americans were labeled as “foreigners.” This is an experience that many Latinos share.

These shared social experiences even have a political component.

After different groups examine other groups, we realized that black supportive of measures that profit Latino voters, similar to Expand rights for undocumented Latino immigrants. In return, Latino voters supports Black Lives Matter more stronglywhile Asian Americans, Middle Easterners and North Africans supported cuts within the variety of border patrol agents and federal spending on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The most significant thing is that this solidarity relies on a standard identity as individuals with a unique skin color and is independent of whether the individuals are ideologically liberal or conservative.

A solid multi-ethnic coalition

This racial solidarity stays unbroken despite attempts by some politicians to undermine it by stoking divisions inside communities of color.

In one experiment, for instance, we drew attention to the problems that may sometimes fuel conflict between different groups, similar to immigration, positive discrimination or reparation.

But more vital than these problems were the similar types of discrimination experienced by each group. Both Asians and Latinos were treated as “foreigners,” although a lot of their family roots within the United States went back several generations. Both blacks and Latinos were discriminated against as socially “inferior” groups, although parts of those populations made visible socioeconomic progress.

Our findings show how negative experiences will be transformed right into a net political gain – a resilient political coalition.

But in the true world, messages designed to advertise solidarity amongst these racially diverse voters must achieve this without triggering political conflict between them – a Divisive tactics which Trump has used explicitly and with some success.

In the 2020 election, Trump increased his gains amongst all groups of minority voters in comparison with 2016 and captured 1 in 4 voters are of coloured origin nationally. Trump won the votes of virtually 1 in 5 black menand roughly one third of Asian-American And Latino electorate.

However, our research shows that solidarity amongst people of color is deep-rooted, and politicians would do well to take advantage of this solidarity in the event that they wish to win on the ballot box.

65 years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at New York's Metropolitan Hospital. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a close-by charity hospital for drug abuse after which lay on a stretcher within the hallway for hours. undetected and unsupervisedHer assets amounted to 70 cents within the bank and a roll of banknotes hidden with them, their share of the payment for a tabloid interview she gave on her deathbed.

Today, Holiday is revered as one of the crucial influential musicians of all time. Time Magazine called their 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” the song of the twentieth century. “In this sad, somber song about lynching in the South,” wrote Time in 1999, “the greatest jazz singer in history grapples with history itself.”

Abel Meeropola New York teacher and songwriter who used the pseudonym Lewis Allan, wrote “Strange Fruit” after seeing a photograph of a lynching that shocked and persecuted him: “Black body sways in the southern breeze / Strange fruits hang from the poplars.”

Holiday's interpretation of Meeropol's song is as stunning – and haunting – today because it was when it was first recorded. “It hits hard,” wrote columnist Samuel Grafton shortly after the record's release in 1939. “It's like a game of “Let's pretend” has come to an end.”

I’m a scholar of American religion, literatureAnd The artsand I'm involved in the way in which that even powerful secular works draw their energy from religious narratives of justice, injustice, truth-telling, and redemption. Strange Fruit is example for me.

Unflinching Translation of texts

Like so many composers whose songs Holiday has recorded – George and Ira Gershwin, Irving-Berlin, Jerome Kern – Meeropol got here from a family of Jewish immigrants in America who fled anti-Semitic violence in Europe.

Two major migrations shaped America within the early twentieth century: from the agricultural south to the economic northAnd From the Old World to the New. Both were drivenpartly by the will leave racial terror behind.

Together, these migrations enabled a few of the most enduring musical collaborations of the twentieth century. Thematically, the joint productions of black and Jewish musicians – Broadway productions of “Show boat” And “Porgy and Bess”, Holiday’s performances with Benny Goodman And Artie Shaw – tended to avoid the brutal reality of prejudice and as a substitute deal with the luxuries of unusual happiness and unhappiness.

“Strange Fruit” was different. The song looks unflinchingly on the “strange fruit” of the title: hanged, burned and mutilated flesh rotting on a tree.

Until the twentieth century, there have been white vigilante groups Thousands of black Americans were murdered with impunity: Lynching after which displaying their bodies as a terrorist spectacle.

Seapol first wrote down the lyrics and music of the song on the back of a cabaret programme from 13 November 1938 – 4 days after Kristallnacht, the night of the murderous anti-Jewish rampages throughout Nazi Germany, which became the turning point for the Holocaust.

For Meeropol, a labor activist and secular Jew, Black and Jewish Americans marched shoulder to shoulder for freedom from injustice. In one other poem He linked violence against blacks with the persecution of Jews:

I’m Jewish.
How can I determine that?
The lynched Negro
Reminds me well
I’m Jewish.

Black Christ

Just as Meeropol linked prejudices against blacks and Jews, many black Christians also linked their very own suffering to that of the Hebrew slaves within the Bible – and to the suffering of Jesus.

Accordingly Theologian James Cone“Black ministers preached more about the death of Jesus than any other subject because they saw in Jesus’ suffering and persecution a parallel to their own experience of slavery, racial segregation, and the lynch tree.”

In the last decade wherein Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit,” WEB Du Bois, Count Cullen And Langston Hughes all works focus on the figure of crucified black Christ.

Most African-American Christians belong to Protestant churchesbut Holiday didn’t. As a baby she was baptized Catholic in a convent reform school, Baltimore's Good Shepherd House for Colored Girlswhere she was sent twice by the court. She remained an ambivalent Catholic throughout her life.

The filled cross

Protestant churches often display the “empty” cross, which shows Jesus' instrument of execution, but not his body. The message of the empty cross is resurrection and latest life. According to Christian history, Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead to redeem humanity from sin.

In the Catholic world, one is more prone to find the “filled” cross: the body of Jesus nailed to the wood with outstretched arms, hands and feet. The crucifix emphasizes the agony of Jesus' death and his solidarity with all who are suffering.

The accomplished cross also conveys the message that the crucifixion of Christ – God in human form – just isn’t a one-time event.

“When [Meeropol] showed me this poem,” Holiday said of “Strange Fruit,” “I dug it out immediately” because it “seemed to explain everything that had killed Pop.” Her father, jazz guitarist Clarence Holiday, died on the age of 39 while on tour in Texas. She believed he was denied life-saving treatment due to his race.

Holiday's “Strange Fruit” evokes the finished cross and is a testament to the continued reality of lynching. “It still depresses me every time I sing it,” Holiday said. in her autobiography“But I have to keep singing it… the things that killed him are still happening in the South.”

Journalist Vernon Jarrett remembered seeing Holiday perform in 1947. She “sang this song as if it were reallike she'd just witnessed a lynching,” Jarrett said of “Strange Fruit.” “There was a sense of resignation, like, 'these people are going to be in power for a long time and there's nothing I can do about it except put it in a song.'”

Current will

Dealing with brokenness fairly than overcoming or overcoming it also describes Holiday's way of coping with others in precarious situations. Her apartment in Harlem, she saidwas a “combination of a YMCA, a boarding house for poor musicians, a soup kitchen for anyone with a bad story, a community center and an after-hours bar.”

A papal encyclical from 1943 described the Church itself similarly: a spot of shared pain, comfort and nourishment. Anyone who had no money “could go there and eat”, poets and jazz singers Babs Gonzales is recalled to Holiday's place“She fed everyone in New York for four years.”

Holiday ended her live shows with “Strange Fruit” from 1939 until the last months of her life. By making the song her signature, she offered solidarity and a faithful testimony to racial violence and injustice, not a cure. But her testament had extraordinary power.

Shortly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Bruce Springsteen, a Fellow Catholic with “concerns,” made a playlist for America. At the top of his list was “Strange Fruit.”

When asked if he was optimistic concerning the future, Springsteen responded within the spirit of Holiday: to witness, to not triumph. “I don't think anyone really knows where we're going from here,” He told author David BrooksBut everyone “can already see that the status quo is not right. And that is progress.”

The machinations of the Australian Labor Party machine are within the highlight again this week when Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman switched sides to support a Greens-backed motion calling on the Australian Senate to “recognise the State of Palestine”.

By switching sides, Payman violated the concept of party solidarity. She was subsequently excluded from the Labor Party parliamentary group for an indefinite period.

So what does this idea of party solidarity really mean within the Labour Party and the way did it come about?

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What is party solidarity?

Simply put, Committee is the group of MPs who make up a political party. It includes Cabinet ministers (or “frontbenchers”) and all others (“backbenchers”) in each the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Before the formation of the Federation and the Australian Labor Party at federal level, solidarity throughout the caucus had already taken root. The first meeting of the Labor Caucus was held in New South Wales in 1891. made a very important decision: The members would commit themselves to following the bulk decision and voting as a unified group.

The organizational structure of the party is formalized within the Constitution. It gives the Labor Party at federal level the ability to take decisions on behalf of the group in group meetings, particularly on questions or matters that will not be the topic of national program, conference or executive decisions. In this specific case, the “majority decision of the group” have to be “binding on all members of Parliament”.

In addition, there’s a proper obligation that requires all Labour MPs to support the bulk decision of the caucus, even in the event that they have individually voted against the bulk in a caucus meeting. This obligation has been in place because the formation of state Labour parties before federation, but was briefly formalised inside. Federal Ministry of Labour in 1902.

This enduring concept of factional solidarity has its origins within the party's trade union roots as a mass party, where collective majority decision-making required solidarity to drive the movement forward. This also explains why it’s a more institutionalised element of the Labor Party in comparison with other parties.

Other parties also allow this in a less formalised way. For example, neither the Liberal Party nor the National Party have a proper pledge prohibiting crossing party lines, although this is mostly politically frowned upon.

Theory vs. Practice

The same rules also state that the party is sure by the choices made within the Labor Party's National Programme, a set of theoretically binding political principles to which the parliamentary wing of the party must submit. The National Programme is the output of the Labor Party's triennial conferences, that are made up of federal and state party leaders, elected state delegates and Young Labor Party delegates.

On the difficulty of Israel and Palestine, the newest platform specifically calls on the Australian Government to recognise Palestine as a state and expects that this issue shall be a key priority for the Australian Government.

The tension, nevertheless, lies within the timing of the adoption of those measures, which is on the discretion of the Labor caucus and the party leadership. According to the party conventions, Payman could subsequently not override the bulk decision of the caucus, even when it was in direct contradiction to the party manifesto. Essentially, what the caucus says is what counts.

It could be very rare for Labour MPs to desert their group's solidarity and take the party side (when someone votes against their party on a specific issue by siding with a counter motion). Research shows Between February 1950 and April 2019, only 29 Labour MPs switched parties. By comparison, 185 Liberal politicians did so in the identical period.

When it is completed by Labour MPs, it’s more common for this to occur while Labour is in opposition. It can also be normally done in full knowledge that they may face expulsion from the party as a consequence.

All decisions have to be discussed in caucus before a final decision is made. Once the choice is made, all members in Parliament must vote for it, no matter their very own political position on the difficulty.

This just isn’t all the time easy for MPs. In recent years, the instance of same-sex marriage has been a specific sore point for certain MPs, akin to current Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Although Wong didn’t support the bulk party's opposition on the difficulty in 2004, she ultimately decided to follow party rules.

The concept of caucus solidarity has remained unchanged for over a century, but Labour today faces greater cultural and political challenges and a more diverse electorate than in its early years.

Payman is playing on the pressure points of a mass party that, one might say, must evolve. But this concept of ​​strict party discipline is inherent within the concept of a mass party like Labour. It raises questions on the longer term of a celebration that has its roots within the nineteenth century staff' movement and can shape key political and social issues within the twenty first century.