MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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How the Black Vote Became a Monolith
By rmrd0000 on Tue, 10/06/2020 - 11:36pm |In the autumn of 2008, just a few weeks after my 33rd birthday, I cast a ballot for the first time. Up to that point, serving in the military seemed like more than sufficient civic engagement and provided a ready excuse for voluntarily opting out of several elections. By the time Barack Obama won the Democratic primary, I was an officer who’d spent more than a decade in the Navy and not a second in a voting booth. This apathy does not run in the blood. My parents are products of the civil rights era and the Jim Crow South, and as such religiously exercised their hard-won right to vote. In my formative years, the basic disposition of the house politics pressed together progressive demands for racial equality with the Black conservatism of marathon church services that stretched deep into Southern Sunday afternoons. We differed in degree on any number of issues, but elections were where our politics really diverged. Like much of Black America, my mother is a lifelong Democrat, staying true even as the party vacillated in and out of her good graces. My father is a somewhat perfunctory Republican, an heirloom affiliation inherited from Black Americans’ early-20th-century preference for the party of Lincoln and consecrated in the familial name carried by my grandfather, father and me: Theodore Roosevelt Johnson.
But in November 2008, all three of us checked the box for Obama, our votes helping deliver North Carolina to a Democratic presidential nominee for only the second time in 40 years. My father had crossed party lines once before, in 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president. Jackson’s business-size Afro, jet black mustache and Carolina preacher’s staccato cadence transformed the typically all-white affair of presidential contests. “If a Black man had the opportunity to sit in the Oval Office,” my father told me years later, “I wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines.”
Jackson championed a policy agenda nowhere close to my father’s conservatism. But his rationale for supporting Jackson hinged on a basic proposition, informed by generations of Black experience in America: The thousands of lesser decisions made in rooms of power can matter far more for racial equality than campaign promises and platforms. Senator Kamala Harris crisply captured this sentiment while campaigning last year, declaring a simple truth: “It matters who’s in those rooms.” My rationale for voting for the first time was much like my father’s two decades earlier. I was not going to stand idly by if there was a chance to put a Black man in those rooms
URL:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/magazine/black-vote.html
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A look at the GOP today
WHY DIDN'T WE RIOT?
A BLACK MAN IN TRUMPLAND
BY ISSAC J. BAILEY ‧ RELEASE DATE: TODAY
A Black journalist gives Trump supporters a powerful lesson in history and truth.
“Trumpland,” writes Bailey, “includes places throughout the United States where white people overwhelmingly support Trump in spite of—or maybe because of—his open bigotry and racism. They are places where black people have for decades been forced to swallow racist bullshit in order to respect the wishes and wants and feelings of racists, as well as those who excuse and apologize for the racists.” Black denizens of Trumpland have felt compelled to forgive and respect those who believe that the “illusion of civility” is more important than racial equality. The narrative is an incisive “corrective to banal commentary” on race in America from those who “scold people of color for…complaining about Trump too much.” Through a combination of poignant memoir and social and cultural analysis, Bailey tackles of range of hot topics as well as his own prior complacency. A masterful storyteller, the author introduces us to a White police officer who regrets not shooting a Black man in the head during what began as a routine traffic stop. Due to his decision not to shoot, he was derided by his fellow officers and lost a promotion. “The comfort level of cops,” Bailey observes, “is more important than black life.” From Dylan Roof’s slaughter of nine Black parishioners in a Charleston church to the horror of racial bias in the criminal justice system, Bailey pulls no punches, and he debunks the myth that White working-class “economic angst”—rather than racism and White supremacy—propelled Trump into office. Furthermore, White Evangelical Christians’ continued support of Trump is fueled by their “political and moral hypocrisy” and disregard for the well-beings of Black and brown communities. By no fault of Bailey’s, die-hard Trumplandians aren’t likely to be swayed; conscientious Americans will come away from this book further enraged by the pernicious, persistent pattern of racial injustice in this country
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/issac-j-bailey/why-didnt-we-riot-trumpland/
On how Bailey became an angry black man
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/opinion/sunday/black-racism-.html
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 10/06/2020 - 11:53pm
WHY DIDN'T WE RIOT?
Why doesn't he write a book Why Didn't We Vote. That's a lot easier than rioting and it wouldn't even have taken as many black voters as voted for Obama. But far too many decided that not voting for a woman or specifically Hillary was more important than letting the racist win. Don't want to face the fact that it was a large drop off of black voters that got us Trump do you? You want to be an angry black man? Look in the mirror to see who you should be angry at. That would be a powerful message of history and truth.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 12:21am
To be fair, "Why Didn't We Recognize Disinfo?"
An unprecedented microtargeting of Black voters in swing states to deter them from voting, thanks especially to Cambridge Analytics for stealing voter data on a hundred million Americans or so. Brad Parscale will quite possibly go to jail for overtly lying to Congress about this, but yeah, the Black community should also realize that "they ran a very obvious smear job to us about Hillary, and a significant percentage stayed home, working against our own interests".Now, lots of White voters are also swayed by misleading info, so I don't know who's the bigger patsy, but lots of patsies.
https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-...
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 1:16am
I know of black people who are conservative by most reading of what that means in practice - they live middle class lives, own guns,aren't eating gourmet or bougeois foods, have white friends that are more white working class than the high dollar types who claim to be in solidarity with them, some are even pro-life or anti-vaccine ... But all of that doesn't matter because their interests generally line up with Democrats. Black neighborhoods are often empowered by African and Asian immigrants who set up businesses in places and with people that white investors avoid or push out - Republicans week to either cut off or at least continually threaten to cut off immigration from those places. People types like Candace Owens or Colion Noir try to point out that black people are culturally conservative as reason why they should vote GOP but that's sort of irrelevant. And no matter how they are culturally, black people are going to get a sideways stare if they are ever in lily white conservative circles.
by Orion on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:04pm
But all of that doesn't matter because their interests generally line up with Democrats.
I don't think that's true. Blacks are more religious than white democrats. They are more likely to be anti choice, more likely to be homophobic than white democrats. In almost every way they are more conservative than white democrats. Blacks more often than not vote against republicans because of perceived racism in that party.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:06pm
You know, Blacks may be religious and conservative, but then they jam to Wet Ass Pussy and Cop Killer, so I'll just fess up that I haven't got a clue. I mean, even the cracker vote has me scratching my head at times.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:11pm
Yeah it's a puzzle. It's like every time they look at which states watch the most and the dirtiest porn it always turns out to be the most religious red states. Go figger.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:19pm
Most countries outside of western Europe, Canada, Australia or the U.S. would seem pretty anti-gay to someone from the west, but those countries are deemed "shit holes* by the GOP and people who make it here usually find a welcome home among progressives.
by Orion on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:21pm
The racism is not "perceived".
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:19pm
Yeah, not true at all, the Five Thirty Eight article is exactly about that. But then with the two parties we have, it's true for fewer and fewer for all people all the time. And people realize that, doh, as the "Independent" party registration becomes the largest one. The situation is probably something we should celebrate, as the more educated and informed the populace becomes, the less individuals will vote loyal party line like their nearly illiterate great grandparents did. The GI Bill dun it, everybody started to go to college. Party loyalty is for teh stupids. You have to ask for so many people's vote now, it's gotten tougher for candidates than the days of Boss Tweed and when you voted the way your labor union boss or preacher said or the way your parents did.
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:40pm
And unfortunate truth be told: our polling is racist. this kind of polling is racist. Our census is racist and will be until the race question is removed. If there's systemic racism in this country, it's not gonna be gone until those things disappear. They are reinforcing racism, that you judge tribal affliliations by color of skin, it's really that simple! Stop doing it and people will have a harder time stereotyping others by color of skin. Those of Hispanic and mixed heritage who chose to type themselves as "white" on official forms are actually at the forefront of fighting racism, not protesters, as they are sacrificing the possible benefits of minority status to be part of the majority of "human beings", and I say, good for them.
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 3:50pm
Barack and Kamala made a conscious decision to identify as "Black".
What makes identifying as "white" a superior choice?
In the near future, "whites" will not be the majority.
We will be a mix celebrating the differences.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 4:22pm
Like we need Whites out of the majority to celebrate differences? Sounds a bit racist. And why Whites in scare quotes and not capitalized?
PS - Obama and Harris have black/brownish skin. It really doesn't matter what *they* identify as - society has them classified.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 4:29pm
I responded to
My question was why "white" put them at the forefront.
"Black" seemed to do well for Barack and Kamala.
"Black" was in quotes as well.
The capitalization follows the style suggested
NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html
AP
https://apnews.com/article/7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 4:39pm
You wait for AP to tell you what to do? The vanguard of racism measures? Your gut can't just tell you the right answers, the right behavior? And th NYTimes gets it wrong all the time. Am important news source, but not a definitive guide to social behavior by any means.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 5:07pm
Many other countries have shed their legacy parties for new ones. The US is rather backwards with it's inflexible system. Even the UK had some renegade 3rd parties. But every little thing we do is magic... 156 years of exceptional stagnation (the 1860 election had the last of alternative viable competing parties, not that the largest southern one was an inspiration to retain)
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 5:25pm
This article is analyzing HISTORY, says so right in the title How the Black Vote Became
The Five Thirty Eight article is analyzing THE PRESENT
Where if you read it, you find out things like: 51% of "blacks" oppose affirmative action.
But everyone commenting on this thread is talking like they are one and the same, that nothing is changing and nothing has changed, as if the NYTimes article is describing the present.
That's partly because rmrd, continuously over years, day after day, cherry picks for articles to post on Dagblog reinforcing the idea there's an immense racial divide in this country no different than in 1960. And that there is a cohesive black community and that he is here on Dag to splain how it thinks.
In that, he's just like Trump, he's into reinforcing the divisions. He predated Trump into doing that! Been doing it longer!
Which flies in the face of a reality which lot of people who are not prey to Trump-like divisiveness see, something MLK never dreamed would happen so quickly: we had a two-term black president with a black family in the White House before there was a Trump retrograde blip into segregational thinking.
Despite rmrd's efforts to build a narrative, day in, day out, about nothing having changed for and about people with black skin, it's simply not true. I see a foolish and self-delusionary agenda and I no longer buy into it..
I actually think it's dangerous to buy into what he believes, sometimes he seems to be scaring himself silly by doing it.
especially since it doesn't jive with what my black sister-in-law says (an immigrant from Kenya) and what my half-black niece says (an MBA, raised in the inner city of Milwaukee.), what her black husband football player and coach says (raised in So. California by middle class black parents) not to mention what the latter's hopes and fears are for their new black boy baby, my brother's grandchild, and my grand nephew.
I have lots of sophisticado black friends in the art world, but let's not go t here, lest I be accused of the old trope "my best friends are black" and who is and who is or is not "woke" amongst them.
My more normal family that doesn't know nothing bout no art world, but they act and think post-Obama. It's reality.
Trump and rmrd can't make us and my extended family who grew up in segregation believe that President Obama never existed and it's still 1960. Nor that people who are not racist voted for Trump, including some people with black skin. That's reality too. We don't believe in going back to segregated tribes either, and we're living it. My greatest gen father (now deceased) father, raised quite racist, stood in front of a huge extended family at the funeral of his wife and my mother, and said that she taught him that how he was being racist. Both became extremely close with his half-black only great granddaugher, closer than me. Her black baby was born a day before my father died. As she's a very ambitious climber type, I wouldn't be surprised if she voted for some Republicans (which my father despised), I don't know, I don't ask, that's her business.
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 4:50pm
To take it out of this box but still stay within "culture wars" all you have to do is think about people who consistently vote Republican but are pro-abortion.
Our two parties don't mean a whole lot. It's bullshit, especially on culture wars issues, that we pretend they still do.
Heck, insert oceankat bitch here that a conservative type of older black person that is common in South Carolina is responsible for Democrats having Biden as a presidential candidate instead of someone more "progressive"....
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 5:03pm
Obvious that individual blacks have different priorities
It is also predictable that the overwhelming numbers of individual blacks who vote will vote for the Democratic candidates for President.
After all the verbiage and claim of cherry-picking, that will be the reality for the black Presidential vote in 2020.
That is the monolith presented in the article.
Do you have data that disagrees with the premise that the overwhelmingly majority of blacks who vote will vote Biden/Harris?
PSA: I post my viewpoint just as you post yours.
I am not in the evangelism game
I don't care if you agree or not
I stand by the statement that the black Presidential vote will be a monolith.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 6:06pm
I think it racist not to stress all the time that black people do not think alike. I find it offensively racist when you suggest that they do, which seems to me to be quite often.
Edit to add: I think we allow for people to be racist in this country as long as it is limited to speech. I think it's a good thing that we allow for hate speech and similar, as long as they don't act on it. I can tolerate racists without liking them.
I decided a few months ago, though, that people here on Dag have been waaaay too tolerant of your racist antics on this forum and I am tired of it. People need to stop pussyfooting around with your crap, and call out that we know what you are doing and that it is delusionary and to call you out on it with less of a light touch that we have been doing. After all, we don't even know if you do in fact have black skin. All we have is your written words and posts. They shouldn't be treated special just because you claim you are black. We don't in fact know that you even are! At least with a writer on like The Root, the identity is there. Here you post under anonymous user name and chose not to share anything about yourself or your personal experience. When you do opine, you rarely use the first person, you claim rather to opine for a whole tribe.
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 6:36pm
So you have no data to refute that the overwhelming majority of black voters will vote for the Democratic candidate for President?
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 6:32pm
you are now arguing against the raison d'etre of the NYTimes article you posted and also against what is said in the Five Thirty Eight article, not with me. It is a very strange thing for you to do, all of a sudden you are countering what you were pushing
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 6:39pm
You make no sense.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 6:55pm