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By:
AJABU AFRICA TEAM | |||||||||
| Posted:
Nov,08-2020 11:00:06
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UPDATED SUNDAY, NOV 8, 11.54 AM Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden and running mate, Kamala Harris today were declared winners of the just concluded 2020 presidential elections defeating incumbent Donald J. Trump. The Former Vice president, now president-elect, will become the 46th president of the USA after all major news networks that had been tracking the vote counting in the nail-bitter election projected him as the winner late Saturday morning. The sudden projection came 4 days after the November 3rd election when it became clear that Joe Biden was on track to win 20 electoral votes in the highly prized battle ground state of Pennsylvania. In addition, Biden was the projected winner of another 6 electoral vote from Nevada, putting him well above the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. By the time the call was made, Biden had so far garnered 279 electoral votes and a popular vote of about 75 million against 214 electoral votes and 70 million in popular votes for the incumbent Trump, with more left to count. The win was a stunning loss to president Trump who had for many years touted himself as a "big winner" who hates losing, especially to a candidate he sought to demonize as "weak and sleepy Joe". According news sources, president- elect Joe Biden immediately released a statement thanking the America people for giving him the new mandate to serve as president while urging them to put the harsh campaign rhetoric behind them and come together as one people to heal the nation. The herculean task clearly lies ahead as he tries to unite a deeply divided nation in need of a compassionate leader to reclaim America's lost glory and restore dignity to the office of the presidency. He left no doubt as to his ability and desire to take up the task. "With the campaign over, it's time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation," the president-elect continued. "It's time for America to unite. And to heal." However, the outgoing president remained defiant and vowed to contest the loss all the way to the Supreme court citing voter fraud according to a press release from the White house. Multiple media outlets reported that there has been no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud of a magnitude large enough to warrant a supreme overturn of Biden's hard fought victory. They however agreed that Trump's campaign has a right to their day in court if they decide to follow through with the threat. Trump's loss brought immediate jubilation to several million African immigrant citizens of USA who, together with African Americans and other minorities of color have persevered 4 years of insults and an increased mistreatment by a regime widely perceived as unfair and unresponsive to the issues of priority to them.
The jubilation extended beyond the African community to the Indian diaspora and motherland communities since Biden's pick for vice president has a Jamaican immigrant father and a mother from India. Indians have a major presence in Africa, especially in Kenya where the large community of Indian descent was recently recognized as the 43rd tribe of the east African nation. Among many of these immigrants from Africa have settled in are Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three battle ground states that have unexpectedly dealt Donald Trump a blow by slim but highly significant margins to end his presidency. According to data from the Immigration Policy Institute, there wera an estimated 2.1 million immigrants from sub-saharan Africa living in USA as of 2018, majority of whom were from east and west Africa. Based on how close elections have tended to be in battle gorund states, politicians can no longer afford to ignore this rapidly growing voting block. In Georgia, about 50.1% of the population is categorized as black or African, according to the 2019 Census Bureau estimates. However, community associations in Georgia indicate there are over 20, 000 thousand Kenyan immigrants living and working in the city of Atlanta and its suburbs, not withstanding many more from other African countries. While its not clear the number of these immigrants who have already naturalized hence eligible to vote, its clear that they already have over 10,000 of their American born children who have now attained the age of 18 and hence can vote. Although hard data is not available from US census records due to the blanket lumping of African immigrants into the larger "African American" category, community sources estimate there are over 150,000 immigrants from different African countries in Atlanta. In Pennsylvania, there is an even bigger number of Kenyans, Nigerians and Ghanaians in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, according to estimates based on community association and church sources. Other states with large African immigrant communities include Texas, Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey and more. According to reliable sources, a majority of these African immigrants in the battle ground states voted for Joe Bidden and Kamala Harris. However, there was also a percentage that saw Donald Trump as the candidate who would be more responsive to their issues. "Many of us Kenyans and other African immigrants came out to vote together with our children for Joe Biden. We have been very tired of the discrimination and hatred coming from president Trump," said a Kenyan female voter from Atlanta in a social media group chat. In Minnesota, where tens of thousands of African immigrants reside, the impact was also felt they joined other immigrant and local communities to re-elect Somali-Kenyan immigrant, Ilhan Omar to the US House of Representatives by 252,939 votes over Republican challenger Lacy Johnson who garnered 101,470 votes.
The African immigrants also managed to double the number of their community members in the Minnesota Legislature from 2 in the previous election to 4, according to reports by Mshale Community news website. Among those include Esther Agbaje, a Nigerian American woman who was elected to the Minnesota House seat 59B. 3 Somali Americans, were also elected, including Omar Fateh to the Minnesota Senate, while Hodan Hassan and Mohammed Noor, retained their seats. Top on the list of important issues that affect African immigrants and their rapidly increasing US born children care about is the legalization of undocumented immigrants and the perseveration of the Dreamers Act set up by the Obama-Biden administration to provide a pathway to citizenships for hundreds of thousands of young immigrant children brought to USA before the age of 5. Also ranking high is the preservation of the Affordable Healthcare Act popularly known as Obama care that guarantees medical treatment for everyone without having to bankrupt those who cannot afford--as well as affordable housing opportunities at any location anyone would like to live--including the suburbs. The outdated justice system which has seen many black men and women languish in jail has diminished opportunities to advance in life due to criminal records occasioned by frivolous convictions that are widley skewed against black men according to many records and media reports. Many have complained of institutional racial bias in conducting business with some state agencies where many African immigrant business owners have been slapped with unwarranted investigations due to minor infractions that end in business shut downs, rather than opportunities to remedy as accorded to many other white owned businesses facing similar circumstances. They hope that the incoming Biden-Harris government will help to correct the imbalance as they have promised to be more racially sensitive to all communities in USA. In addition, many African immigrants are often caught up in unfair police brutality and discrimination when pulled over for minor traffic violations in a manner that their white counterparts do not experience. The Obama-Biden administration had set in motion a justice reform initiative to protect minorities from unfair application of the law. Since he became president, Trump had sought to undo all the policies put in place by the first ever black president including ending the DACA and Obamacare initiatives. The reluctance by president Trump to address these issues made Trump a largely unpopular presidential candidate to many in the African immigrant communities among other local citizens. His outright insults to black people including labeling African counties as "shit hole" countries and the disrespect meted upon black athletes taking a knee to protest against racism, animated hundrends of thousands of African immigrants who had not come out to vote in 2016 register and vote for the 2020 elections. Many African immigrants have also been dismayed by the opposition by president Trump against teaching the real and accurate history of the African American experience during the slavery era as captured and published in the"1619 Project". Trump has instead insisted on teaching the American history as currently written while ignoring upgrades to include the role America played in powering the debilitating and dehumanizing the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. He also banned the teaching of racial sensitivity training to all US federal agencies and contractors which many felt had helped create a better understanding and of the racial diversity among US residents and how each community could deal with their biases.
However, a section of the African immigrants, primarily some in the evangelical and business community, have vehemently supported president Trump, citing his opposition to same sex marriage and abortion as the main issues they deeply care about. Despite the lop sided support for Joe Biden, most African immigrants have nevertheless credited president Donald Trump for appointing a new conservative Supreme court justice who may help uphold the conservative portion of their values that do not support same sex marriage and abortion. They viewed the 2020 election as a win win for ushering a democratic administration while expanding a conservative supreme court that has already denied Donald Trump's attempt to end the DACA immigration program. "Am happy today as decency, intelligence and sanity won over insanity and stupidity that we have seen for the last 4 years as well as thousands of deaths and unemployment, separation and hardship. To say the least, these could have been minimized and even prevented," said Margaret Wangui, a Kenyan national from Oklahoma. "I do not think everything will be fixed and normalized right away or in a day or in a year. Lots of work and healing needs to happen, but we are ready and will lift everybody up in prayers, especially the President-elect Biden and Vice president elect Kamala Harris. I hope we as a nation never lose our common sense ever again." | |||||||||
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