Says EastWest, “97% of black Democrats are voting for Obama. 3 percent are voting for Clinton. Yep. Nothing racist about that.” Of course, the implication is that such a large percentage of African Americans (AA’s) voting for an AA candidate is prima facie racism. Before one could agree or disagree with that, one would have to know how EastWest defines racism. Since (s)he offers no definition, one could presume that EastWest is going by a commonly accepted, perhaps dictionary, definition such as: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others; hatred or intolerance of another race or other races. Given that definition and its attendant connotations, you could surmise that EastWest believes that AA’s are voting for Barack Obama because he is also AA and therefore superior to Hillary Clinton because of race and/or AA’s are intolerant of European Americans (EA’s).
To analyze EastWest’s argument’s validity, you would have to poll every AA voter who voted for Obama and categorize his/her reason for such a vote as racist or not. Since such a poll hasn’t been conducted, you could either accept the argument at face value or dismiss it as unproven. In either case, its validity is undetermined. Nonetheless, it would be imprudent to dismiss it outright since it seems to have some resonance among various political thinkers this campaign season, and among a fair number of Clinton supporters in particular. I wonder why that is. Prior to this year’s primaries, you usually heard this type of argument coming from Republican mouths: “AA’s vote as a [monolithic] block for the Democrat.” “Democrats practice group politics -- look at AA’s and how they consistently vote in such high numbers for Democrats.” These statements are pretty much true, and the reasons are fairly simple: the Democrat party was the party that championed civil rights in the 1960’s. When AA’s finally got the practical right to vote (nearly 100 years after getting the legal right), they returned the favor by supporting those who supported them. The Democrat party has since embraced AA interests in most policy agenda, and has actively sought to include and empower AA’s within the party ranks.
Given the history, it’s not surprising that Clinton felt that she could count on the AA vote, what with her and her husband’s past support of AA interests, and the friendships and alliances that she’s cultivated with AA’s. So when AA voters abandoned Clinton after they perceived that her camp “played the race card,” Clinton supporters felt betrayed and attributed the migration to the Obama camp to racial/racist motives. But was the migration indeed race-based?
As with all of the hot button topics, the question is much more nuanced than one would presume. I suspect that it would be easier to understand current AA voting behavior if one thinks not in terms of race, but rather ethnicity. Race is a very simplistic, broad brush that glosses over and hides the subtleties that comprise and differentiate American social groups. Mainstream politics and the MSM would have us think in terms of black and white, which do no justice to describing the complex of communities and their varying interests that live in this country. If one thinks in terms of ethnicity, then a more granular, albeit complicated, model emerges. However, it is a model that better serves our understanding of why so many AA’s are breaking for Obama right now.
Most ethnic groups that have come to America have assimilated fairly easily in a relatively short period of time. Of all of these ethnic groups however, AA’s were the one that were brought here specifically because they could not easily assimilate into mainstream European society. Keep in mind, the first slaves in America were Native Americans, but because escapees were able to blend in with the larger Native American populations, it became impractical to enslave them. The next slave group was poor Europeans, the indentured “servant”; when these people escaped, they easily blended into the freemen population. It wasn’t long before dark skinned Africans became the population of choice for enslavement. When they ran away, it was pretty easy to pick them out in a lineup, so to speak. Assimilation into the larger society remained prohibitive even after emancipation. Even free AA’s before emancipation were forced to live together whether they want to or not. “Separate & Unequal” was not a postbellum invention of Jim Crow. So, what is the natural reaction of a minority group facing hostility, repression, and intolerance from the majority group? They band together for mutual support, comfort, and protection. They take care of each other; they promote each other.
African Americans have had this psychology beaten into them for well over 300 years. It is a mindset of any minority group, one that isn’t outgrown in 40 years. While AA’s are able to enter the mainstream more easily, racism (that 18th century pseudo-scientific construct) clearly remains active, and trust doesn’t come easily to those who can still be harmed. So when the Clintons were perceived as having played the race card (and I’m not here to confirm or deny that allegation) by AA voters, many of them apparently did what 300 years of abuse and exclusion taught them to do: they formed ranks behind one of their own. They saw the political game being played and their ethnicity being devalued. In response, they coalesced in solidarity to promote someone who is like them, who won’t use their ethnicity as a boogeyman (to drive unenlightened voters into his camp), someone who has a keener understanding of their condition and their history, and who can imbue in them a sense of pride and hope that they won’t be taken for granted in the usual political paradigm.
Now, clearly not all AA’s believe in Obama. Some still support Clinton, and even a few are supporting McCain for reasons that only they can explain. It is also true that many AA Obama supporters were in his camp long before the SC primary; their reasons for supporting him were often the same as any EA supporter’s reasons. However, it is ridiculous to describe an ethnic voting pattern as “racist.” When an ethnic group votes to support someone who may or may not be of the same ethnicity, but who has historically benefitted that group, it is not a racially based decision (one made out of hatred or superiority). When AA support was heavily in favor of Clinton, only the Republicans thought anything racial was involved. AA’s left the Clinton camp when they perceived that they were being taken for granted and thought of as expendable. It was only natural that those so alienated would seek to support another candidate. This time, they had an option to support one of their own ethnic kinsmen.
