SHAUN KING is a father and husband first and foremost, he tells me. He shares five kids with wife Rai, and they’ve been parents since they were teenagers.

He’s an internationally known civil rights activist and journalist hailing from a small town in rural Kentucky who now calls New York his home.

King is known for utilising social media to highlight cases of racial injustice at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. He’s also helped raise money for families who have lost loved ones to police brutality and who have suffered at the hands of the state.

The activist knows a thing or two about politics as well, and has campaigned for and worked closely with Bernie Sanders during the Democratic party senator’s presidential run.

Educated at the historic Morehouse College, King has been extra busy recently, highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people, who remain militarily occupied in their own country. At the time of writing, more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel.

History

There are many links between the United States and the United Kingdom – too many to discuss in one article – but not least our shared history, and the role both nations played in the slave trade.

One of the standout comparisons is both nations’ brand of politics and the power that Black voters have to shape it.

Several analyses have highlighted the fact that these voters in swing states in the US, and those in marginally held constituencies in the UK which with a sizeable Black communities can make the difference in deciding election outcomes.

Both countries will hold elections this year, and the stakes have arguably never been higher, for Black communities in particular. In 2020, US President Joe Biden won a narrow victory over Donald Trump.

Black voters played a significant role. Subsequently, in his victory speech, Biden promised to have the backs of Black Americans. And they have not forgotten.

But while many still support the Democrats, others are disappointed. Black people and Muslims especially are growing wary. And that’s probably putting it lightly.

“I think Biden should be judged by his failure to live up to that promise” King tells The Voice. “Biden won because of Black voters in Georgia and South Carolina who propelled him to the Democratic nomination.

“I’ve been a life-long critic of Joe Biden going back decades. My work on police brutality and mass incarceration goes back to the late 1990s. Even back then, Biden was seen as one of the forefathers of modern-day mass incarceration.

“He was always seen as someone who helped build the modern prison industrial complex. So I was always sceptical that Joe Biden the politician would deliver on promises to Black voters because he just didn’t have a history of doing that.”

The facts speak for themselves. President Biden authored what is commonly known as the 94 Crime Bill, a piece of controversial legislation, which has since been acknowledged as causing decades of mass incarceration, disproportionately impacting Black Americans.

The US currently has close to two million prisoners, including state and federal prisons accounting for almost 25 per cent of the world’s total prisoner population. While Black Americans make up 13 per cent of the US’ population, they make up almost 40 per cent of prisoners.

We see other attacks stopped before they’re ever allowed to happen, but you’ll see White supremacist attacks planned openly on the internet

Shaun King

In the UK, Black people form approximately three per cent of the population, but make up roughly 13 per cent of people in prison.

But King argues there is another reason Black voters turned out for Biden in 2020.

“He really only got support from Black voters because he was Vice-President to Barack Obama,” says King without missing a beat. “As President, Joe Biden has been the Joe Biden we’ve always known. He has not delivered on his most important promises to Black voters. I could start with police brutality.

“He just hasn’t fought on this. When it comes to something he wants, he fights like hell, whether it’s money for Ukraine or money for Israel.”

Pretence

Many also argue that Biden dropped any pretence of supporting reparations, once he was in office.

King’s point could be reflected in the polling. While Biden still enjoys support among Black voters, current data shows that he is also slowly losing it particularly among younger voters and Muslims.

Even the more centrist and left-leaning analysts acknowledge this. The question, is come election time, will dissatisfied voters circle back and vote Democrat?

If Biden has failed to deliver for Black people, the threat of the return of Donald Trump, and what he represents, could once again be a big factor in November at the polls. Many observers have argued that he emboldened an already existing problem.

White supremacy didn’t start and end on Jan 6th 2021, the day when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the United States Capitol Building in Washington. It has never been a left or right issue. It’s always been a staple of American life.

Just as is the case in the UK, FBI director Christopher Wray acknowledged White supremacy is the fastest-growing form of terrorism and the greatest threat to American security.

King argues that all administrations, including the current one, have failed to fully understand the reality of the threat it poses. He cites the shocking case of Payton Gendron, who shot and killed 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, in 2022 in an act of White supremacist domestic terrorism.

“Gendron had been openly stating White supremacist stuff online,” King says. “He had a manifesto. But because the United States devoted so little effort, budget, resources, staff, (to tackling this issue] we will see these attacks happen again and again, and the United States government will act shocked by it.

“If this is the single biggest threat to the country, show us your budget and show us your plan. And when are you going to release a plan? What we’ve come to realise is, in essence, there is no plan.”

He continues: “Even though White supremacy is the biggest threat to the country, that threat is not being taken seriously, at least not in any substantive way.

“We see other attacks stopped before they’re ever allowed to happen, but you’ll see White supremacist attacks planned openly on the internet. Filmed on Twitch and Facebook with Go Pro cameras. What you realise is, they were never being tracked.”

King has personal experience with this. In 2020 members of a law enforcement group on Facebook were openly plotting to kill him. The story made national news.

Although the FBI reached out to King for details, no one was ever held accountable.

Threats

When Biden took office the case was again presented to the FBI by King, who provided them with evidence and a case number. Yet again, the FBI said they would not further investigate the threats.

Black race equality activists in the UK say it’s a familiar tale. On May 25 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. The shocking video of the incident went viral and helped spark huge global Black Lives Matter protests The energy of those protests reinvigorated debates around police brutality, racism, accountability and reparations.

According to King, however, the reality is this energy can’t simply be replicated again because of the unique conditions that produced it.

If Biden has failed to deliver for Black people, the threat of Donald Trump could once again be a big factor

Shaun King

“People are way more responsive to injustice than they are in being proactive in combating it,” he said. “Sadly, we kind of organise from tragedy to tragedy and crisis to crisis.

“What I’ve found over the years is that when there’s a period without injustice, oppressed people just want to live and smile and take a breath.

“What we can do is say, when injustice happens again – and it will – here is how we’re going to respond in a way that we’ve never responded before.”

Online, the Black Lives Matter protests attracted hordes of criticism. But as King points out, using the situation facing people in Palestine as an example, oppressed people have two choices – to remain humiliated in relative peace, and accept things as they are, or respond and organise.

As we talk, the topic comes up of Professor Kehinde Andrews’ planned pan-African conference, scheduled for 2025. It will be held to coincide with Malcolm X’s 100th birthday. King argues that these events are crucial in building global unity to solve global problems.

“Malcolm felt like if he could position the struggle for justice in the United States alongside other global struggles, it would make everybody better” he says.

Struggle

“Dr Martin Luther King was thinking the same thing. I can point to so many moments of Black Panthers saying the same thing. When you take any struggle, that struggle only gets better when you strengthen those international relationships.

“The beauty is, 50 or 60 years ago, you had to travel around the world to build those relationships. Now, people thousands of miles apart can speak face to face because of technology.”

This is surely a positive framework to build on. Unity is important. Division has always been a tactic to break anti-racism struggles, and King has a strong concluding message.

“It is true that there are things unique to the United States, and those that are unique to the United Kingdom. But there are commonalities and lessons, best practices and encouragement that you can offer one another.

“It is short-sighted to try and do all of these battles in isolation. I’m sympathetic to people’s scepticism because nobody wants their movement hijacked. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“There’s way more good to come out of strengthening our relationships in the diaspora, if we give it a chance. We can build a better world” he says.

King’s rallying cry of action and unity will resonate with many and for good reason. The world is hurting right now, with Black people often at the steeper end of injustice.

But the power of Black activism is a unique force, as history demonstrates. It has, and can once again, shape events that are critical, not just to Black communities but to a better future for people of all backgrounds.