Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t on the campaign trail on Tuesday, but she did trot out her controversial “forgivable loan” plan for black men in a last-minute appeal during a radio interview.
In response to claims that the Harris campaign was neglecting black male voters, Harris unveiled new economic plans last month specifically targeting black men. The plan was met with controversy due to its explicitly racial character, but Harris doubled down in an interview with The Big Tigger Morning Show on V-103 on Election Day.
“First of all, I do realize that, and I have, you know, this is a lived experience,” she said. “This is not something I just figured out, that we still have a lot to do to recognize the disparities in what black men receive and what they are due in terms of access to opportunity.”
“So, to your point, even before I was running for president, I have what I call an opportunity economy agenda that, for black men, includes putting more capital into small businesses, giving folks who are entrepreneurs, who have a great idea, hard work ethic, but don’t necessarily have the money, a $20,000 forgivable loan for startup expenses to buy equipment and things like that for a startup business,” Harris continued.
She outlined other details of the plan, including increased access to colon cancer and prostate cancer screenings for black men. She also called for Medicare to cover in-home healthcare for black seniors.
Harris unveiled her “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” ahead of a campaign stop in Erie, Pennsylvania, last month. The agenda includes plans to provide 1 million fully forgivable business loans for black entrepreneurs worth up to $20,000, increased training programs for black men to enter high-end industries, support for a program that helps black teachers, and increased studies of sickle cell disease and other ailments that disproportionately affect black men.
The plan itself would be difficult to implement due to legal problems surrounding it. Some legal experts said the proposal would face challenges in court, as other similar Biden-era proposals have.
“If you’re giving credit to black entrepreneurs based on their race, that’s unconstitutional, plain and simple, and against the Equal Credit Opportunity Act,” Alden Abbott, senior research fellow at the libertarian Mercatus Center, told the Washington Examiner.
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Harris’s plan represents an attempt to increase black male voter turnout after Democrats raised alarm over dampening enthusiasm for the vice president.
Though still low, Trump’s support among black males has doubled since 2016. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 18% of black men viewed Trump favorably, an increase credited to several factors, including Trump’s masculine appeal and anger about immigration.
