After Black Voters Drive Historic Win for Doug Jones in Alabama, Demand Grows for Policies That 'Do More' To Serve Them

Preliminary exit polls show that black voters in Alabama were vital to Senator-elect Doug Jones’s victory over his Republican challenger Roy Moore on Tuesday night—but alongside a flood of praise and gratitude for the people of color who “saved” the U.S. Senate seat from a right-winger accused of child molestation came calls for delivering policies and societal progress to the voters in heavily black counties who turned out en masse for Jones.

Polling by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, The Washington Post, and other media organizations revealed that 93 percent of black men and 98 percent of black women voted for Jones, compared with 26 percent of white men and 34 percent of white women.

While poll results generated an outpouring of appreciation for black voters, and particularly black women—who “carry this nation on their backs” by “saving the world and the Democratic Party”—the social media frenzy in turn provoked demands to recognize that black voters were casting ballots in their own interest, and as activist Bree Newsome noted, “protecting themselves by pushing back against systemic racism within their state.”

Calls for recognizing black voters’ abilities to discern what was at stake with this special election were coupled with declarations that, as Charlene Carruthers, national director of Black Youth Project 100 put it, “No amount of verbal appreciation will do us justice.” Instead of mere thanks, many used the moment to urge those who were celebrating Jones’s win to “do more” to support and serve black Americans.