A recent poll showed Barack Obama polling 94 to 1 against John McCain among black voters. Wow. I had no idea McCain’s politics were that much different from Obama’s. McCain has always seemed to me to act more like a Democrat than many Democrats. Which is to say, there are really two Democrats running for president.
Then I recalled that even during the Democratic primaries, among black voters, Obama polled 90 to 10 against Hillary Clinton. Politically, Obama and Clinton are two peas in a pod; they disagree on very little. Yet Obama was preferred 90/10 by black voters. Perhaps there’s something other than political philosophy influencing black voters. I wonder what it could be…
Oh, c’mon, let’s stop kidding ourselves. It’s a racial thing. Blacks tend to vote for blacks, period. When Jesse Jackson ran for president, he got 94% of the black vote. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of his Castro-loving politics.
The disturbing part is that everyone seems to think this is OK. Actually, the reeeaally disturbing part is that the same folks who are OK with blacks’ blatant racism in voting for black candidates would be loudly decrying any such blatant preference of white candidates by white voters. Can you imagine the furor if white voters showed a comparable preference for white candidates?!?
This is just one aspect of the racial double standard.
Years ago, when I was in the navy, one of my (black) shipmates had a black leather jacket emblazoned on the back with a giant, black, clenched fist and the words “Black Power.” He wore this jacket every time he left the ship in “civvies.”
Now, everyone leaving the ship on liberty was given a once-over to ensure that dress was appropriate. Cut-off shorts, sandals, shirts without sleeves — these kinds of things would not be permitted. No one ever seems to have found the “Black Power” jacket inappropriate.
Yet, I am all but certain that, if I’d had a similar jacket with “White Power” on the back, I would not have been permitted off the ship. Indeed, I would probably have been placed on report. I was not, at the time, sufficiently bold as to test my theory.
Years later, living in northern Arizona, living just outside the Navajo reservation, I encountered another small but telling example of the racial double standard. Two, actually. The state legislative district in which I lived included a large portion of the Navajo reservation. A non-Navajo simply could not get elected to the state legislature from our district.
An acquaintance of mine, convinced that he could break the racial barrier and be elected to the state legislature, started campaigning well over a year in advance of the primaries. He was a Democrat, as were most of the Navajos running for state office. He visited every chapter house, talked to all the Navajo people he could. From each meeting he went away convinced that he had the support he sought. He worked at campaigning, really worked hard, for over a year.
Come primary time, he was easily defeated by a Navajo candidate who did little or no campaigning.
One day at work, I used my lunch (half) hour to write a letter to my then state representative, a Navajo. On the way home from work, I stopped at the post office to buy a stamp and mail the letter. At the service counter, the postal worker, a non-Navajo, noted to whom the letter was addressed and said: “He used to come around here when he was just little. It’s so nice to see him grow up and go on to do well for his people.” I’m pretty sure that “his people” did not mean the people of our state legislative district.
We seem to accept that minorities will favor “their people,” and that’s OK. And no one calls these people racist. But let a white person favor white folks and all hell beaks loose.
I remember a network special about race, hosted, I believe, by Bryant Gumbel. It was a quiz about racial attitudes with “no right or wrong” answers. I recall two of the conclusions. The first was that it’s OK for blacks to think they’re better than white people (but not the other way around). The second was that one sign of a racist is that s/he denies s/he’s a racist.
You may recall Bryant’s 2006 remark that, due to the lack of competing blacks,”… the Winter Olympic Games look like a GOP convention.” I wonder if he’s even noticed that the NBA looks like a NAACP convention.
And then there’s that whole Affirmative Action thing, making racial discrimination legal again, as long as it’s in favor of blocks and not against them. There simply is no better example of how we embrace the racial double standard.