President Biden’s net approval rating among unvaccinated black voters has dropped a stunning 17 points since he announced plans to implement a federal vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 people, according to a new Morning Consult poll.
Biden’s favor among black voters dropped substantially between an initial poll conducted between September 6 and 8 — just before Biden’s mandate announcement on September 9 — and a second poll taken between September 18 to 20 of more than 1,000 black voters.
The second poll revealed that 71 percent of black voters approve of Biden’s performance, down 5 points since the mandate. The share who disapprove rose 7 points to 24 percent. Thirty-seven percent said they strongly approve of his performance, while 14 percent said they strongly disapprove.
The president’s net approval rating — a measure of the share who approve his job performance minus the share who disapprove — has dropped 12 percent among black voters.
Biden announced earlier this month that his administration would develop rules to compel large companies to mandate coronavirus vaccines for employees and to require weekly negative test results for any unvaccinated workers. He said the rules would be developed by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and apply to companies with 100 or more workers.
The plan was part of a larger initiative by the Biden administration that includes requiring vaccinations for all federal employees and workers for federal contractors, as well as for health care workers in most institutions that receive Medicare or Medicaid. The administration also called on all states to mandate vaccinations for teachers and other school employees.
Thirty-eight percent of black voters who say they have not received a COVID-19 vaccine disapprove of the president’s job performance — an 11 point increase since he announced the mandate.
Black Americans are the least likely of all racial and ethnic demographics to have received a COVID-19 vaccine. According to Morning Consult, 53 percent of black adults have received the shots — a lower share than that of any other race or ethnicity.
The survey results come days after Black Lives Matter organizers claimed that New York City’s vaccine mandate has disenfranchised black people.
“Being a doctor does not protect you from anti-blackness. Having a vaccination card does not protect you from discrimination. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits the actions of Carmine’s. It says it is illegal to discriminate against you on the basis of race,” said Chivona Newsome, the co-founder of BLM NYC.
Newsome’s remarks were made during a protest at Carmine’s restaurant in the Upper West Side where a fight broke out last week between three black women from Texas and a hostess at the restaurant when two men in their party were denied entry because they failed to provide vaccination documentation, according to the New York Times.
A lawyer for one of the women, Kaeita Nkeenge Rankin, who is a doctor, told the Times that the fight began when the hostess allegedly used a racial slur and made derogatory remarks directed at the female customers, accusing them of carrying fraudulent vaccination cards.
The NYPD arrested the three black women for investigation of criminal mischief and assault.
On Tuesday, Carmine’s owner Jeffrey Bank released the surveillance tape of the incident on Tuesday, which shows one of the Texas tourists, rather than the hostess, throwing the first punch.
Still, at the protest on Monday, Newsome noted that “72 percent of black people in this city from ages 18 to 44 are unvaccinated.”
“So what is going to stop the Gestapo, I mean the NYPD, from rounding up black people, from snatching them off the train, off the bus?” she said.
“We’re putting this city on notice, that your mandate will not be another racist social-distance practice. Black people are not going to stand by, or you will see another uprising. And that is not a threat; that is a promise,” she added. “The vaccination passport is not a free passport to racism.”
Kimberly Bernard, the co-founder of the Black Women’s March, also claimed during the protest that vaccine mandates are being weaponized against minorities.
“We are serving notice on the mayor, on the governor, on the restaurant industry that we will not allow for you to use this pandemic, vaccination cards, and masks as another reason to be racist, to put us in prison. Because there’s enough of us in there,” she said.
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