Christian Hip Hop Artist Sho Baraka Explains Why He Cannot Vote For Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton As A Black Evangelical

With election day approaching in less than two months, both candidates are frantically trying to target vital demographics in order to gain momentum and ultimately win the presidency. Donald Trump, having no prior political experience, was able to defy the odds and defeat 17 other candidates to win the Republican nomination.

He used a bold and aggressive tone throughout the caucus season and the primary process to entice voters, including his statements about building a wall on the border the United States shares with Mexico to stop the flow of illegal immigration. Trump even said he would force the Mexican government to pay the bill for his wall, and he would order the deportation of nearly 11 million illegal immigrants. Despite creating a storm of outrage among Democrats, and old guard conservatives, Donald Trump managed to capture millions of supporters and created a wildfire of protests against his agenda. Somehow, his inflammatory rhetoric and abrasive style won him enough delegates to become the Republican Party’s candidate for the Presidency in the 2016 national elections.

Hillary Clinton sought to present a softer approach, promising to improve the rights of a wide variety of groups. Hillary focused most of her energy on gaining the support of African-Americans, women, and the LGBT community, as well as the pro-choice voters. Her stance on illegal immigration shared few similarities with the Trump campaign, and she promised to offer a pathway to citizenship to the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

One of her biggest hurdles was that she was under active investigation regarding a host of classified emails that were deleted from an unauthorized server in her basement, which showed a great level of disregard for the laws governing the documents created by the President’s cabinet officers.

Hillary elicited a significant decrease in trust from the voters as the FBI found thousands of her emails after she had testified under oath that she had turned over every single email available to her to the State Department. The server was wiped while the contents of her server were under subpoena. As secretary of state, she withheld nearly 15,000 emails from her colleagues, which was viewed as extremely careless, although later deemed as insufficient for any criminal charges due to the belief that they were not intentionally deleted. This still has created serious backlash for Clinton, as many are skeptical of her ongoing explanation of the incident.

Regarding demographics, the African-American population has always been a group that both parties have aggressively targeted in order to receive a significant number of votes. Traditionally, throughout much of the 20th and 21st century, the vast majority of Black voters supported Democratic candidates with as much as 90 percent of the Black vote going to the Democrats. While the Democratic party seeks to maintain entitlement programs and benefits and promotes themselves as the party of Civil Rights, the Republican Party is opposed to entitlements and focuses on crime, law enforcement, and the War on Drugs.

A subset of Back voters resides in the black evangelical community, with candidates working hard to gain their support, as well as endorsements from respected African-American pastors and ministers. The Black evangelical voter, however, tends to be more conservative, and a higher percentage of this influential group votes for Republicans than rest of the African-American community. As a case in point, George Bush received 13 percent of the evangelical vote in 2004.

Still, the Black evangelical vote is overwhelmingly in favor the Democrats. But there are some who are torn between the religious moral code which should be primary focus of Christian decision making when it comes to the ideal presidential candidate, and at the same time, the relentless onslaught of violence and injustice towards Black Americans has placed a high priority on supporting candidates who offer a greater hope for justice and equality. As a result, one person who is not buying into the plans of either Trump or Clinton is Christian Hip Hop artist Sho Baraka.

Recently, Baraka voiced his decision not to vote for Trump or Clinton in an article he wrote for Christianity Today. In the article, Baraka stated that as a Christian, he constantly struggles with giving allegiance to any political party being “marginalized by the lack of compassion on the Right” as an African American, and yet, he is also quite concerned about being “ostracized by the secularism of the Left.”

“I have had zero interest in either candidate this election. Many people are fearful about the next president, as they should be. Our newly appointed chief will likely nominate Supreme Court justices. The thought of either candidate appointing justices scares me. Many Clinton supporters seek a secular utopia that progresses past logic. Many Trump supporters want to resurrect bigoted ideologies. Neither of these Americas is great to me.”

Baraka speaks for many Black evangelicals when it comes to these serious issues of secularism vs. society. While on one hand, Black evangelicals seek to align with the candidate who has the greatest number of qualities that are in line with the Bible, which should indeed be a primary focus, the tug-of-war remains due to the reputed lack of interest of the Republican Party in reducing the injustice, poverty, and violence that has decimated the lives, hopes and dreams of Black and other minority communities, as expressed by the “Humble Beast” recording artist.

In Baraka’s case, the traditional decision to lean to the Left is not as important as maintaining his integrity as a Christian minister and holding true to the biblical worldview he represents. However, the alternative is not appealing with Trump at the helm of the nation.

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