ABSTRACT
In the run-up to the 2004 US federal election, rapper P. Diddy (a.k.a. Sean Combs) drew the ire of conservatives, including African American groups, when his nonprofi t organization, Citizen Change, launched a three-day “Vote or Die” campaign to appeal to legions of non-registered African American youth in the swing states. For its detractors, the issue was not the push to get Black youth out to vote, but that the slogan itself was a decided effort to “scare and manipulate blacks” into voting for John Kerry. According to the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, “[m]ost of these so-called ‘disenfranchised’ people don’t care about the issues. All they know is what they’ve been told: Bush is evil. Bush hates blacks. He’s (Bush) going to bring back the draft and you (blacks) have to vote or you’ll die!”1
