During the 2012 election campaign, we conducted an experiment in which we went to a historically black college and prompted black students to imagine we were giving them $100 to donate to Obama or his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. The students were told that they could divide the money up however they wanted. (No money actually changed hands.) Students were randomly assigned to three different groups. In the first group, students were just asked what they wanted to do with the money. As we expected, the overwhelming majority donated it all to Obama—in accordance with the partisan norm among African Americans.

We told members of the second group that, if they gave to Romney, they would get to keep some money. Indeed, the more they gave to Romney, the more they would get to keep. With this monetary incentive, many more students gave to Romney. Even students who reported high levels of black group consciousness were willing to defect from the partisan norm once money was involved. The third group was offered the same incentive to support Romney; its members were also told that we would have to publish how they donated in the historically black college’s student newspaper. What we observed in response was the phenomenon we describe as “racialized social constraint.” Contemplating public exposure, these students opted not to take the monetary incentive and instead gave the money to Obama at levels that were comparable to the donations of the first group. Awareness that others would bear witness to their defection from the group norm was enough to alter individuals’ behavior.

The same social pressures apply outside brick-and-mortar forums. Black Twitter, a large network of African American users of that social-media platform, has become a prime venue for challenging defiance of group political expectations. Several high-profile black celebrities have felt its power firsthand. In 2017, the African American talk-show host and comedian Steve Harvey was chastised on Black Twitter for his decision to meet with President-elect Trump before his inauguration. As news about the meeting spread, Harvey became a trending topic on Twitter. The backlash was so severe that Harvey decided to apologize on his morning radio show and later indicated that he would not be attending Trump’s inauguration at the insistence of his wife, who is also African American.

Ibram X. Kendi: The other swing voter

The rapper Kanye West might appear better positioned than Harvey to defect from black political norms without paying a high social cost. His wife and in-laws are not black, he lives in a predominantly white community, and he’s very rich. Still, West’s insinuation that slavery was a choice and his appearances in a Make America Great Again hat have prompted a vehement response on Black Twitter and in the black press. West has since apologized for his slavery comments and distanced himself from “Blexit,” an effort to persuade black people to leave the Democratic Party.