Dean Esmay analyzes the two party system vis a vis its seemingly fixed relationship to The Black Vote.
Fact is Republicans have learned through hard experience that no matter what they say, no matter how much money they spend, black people will not vote for them. So why try?And why should Democrats ultimately really care what black voters want, so long as they know black people feel like they have nowhere else to go?
Gay voters need to learn the same lesson too. If Republicans know they can never get your vote, then quite seriously, why do they care what you think? I mean, other than to be nice? If you'll never support them, what motivation do they have to care what you think? About anything?
And you know, it really doesn't help much when the few blacks who do vote Republican get called Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimahs and sellouts.
He's being wry here so don't fret none. But his points are on target and generally observable. The parties are gaming the vote, and right now the party bosses don't seem concerned that their abstractions are incorrect because nothing seems to be changing.
He reminds us of some points made before as well:
To say that it's "natural" that blacks should only support Democrats means you're saying that the black man's opinions are predetermined. It says the black woman's vote is to be taken for granted. It says that the color of your skin pre-determines your position on all the big issues of the day. You can be pigeonholed because of your skin color.
So he shows that he understands an important point about, but there a couple other things missing in this analysis. and that is black apathy.
Political Diversity
One of the things we in the Brotherhood are doing is being constantly out here spewing our angles. And you cannot read across our blogs without recognizing that we come from varying perspectives. So if there's one thing that must be recognized, as blackfolks started to demand in the 80s, is that African Americans cannot be taken as a monolith. That means political monolith. So try this: don't say 'The Black Vote'. Say African American voters. At the very least you acknowledge that there are individuals out there. Again, since the Brotherhood is working to make visible the political diversity that already exists in African America, we're attuned to the costs of the assumption of singlemindedness.
There are regional differences in African American populations. My particular focus is on the class differences that trump the racial solidarity established by Black Nationalism. Nothing William Juilius Wilson didn't say a generation ago, but
Apathy & False Abstraction
I should also like to bring up the point that African American voters are not particularly more energized these days. The majority say both parties suck. They sit out elections. Most of my contemporaries tell me that they remain uninspired and cannot decide between which way to go not only because of the unattractiveness of the parties, but based upon their lack of faith in the political process itself. So when we talk about what 90% of 'The Black Vote' does, what we're really talking about is 90% of what something like 30% of us did which is a far cry from describing what any of us think. This extrapolation of what 30% of registered African American voters do as a proxy for what blackfolks think is the same kind of problem as Angry White Math. You know the old statistical tricks about x% of the population causing y% of the crime and saying it's a black problem, when it's not.
Nevertheless, while I be presumptuous in saying so, my contemporaries in the Old School are a highly influential group. The direction we take will be inordinatly significant.
Reductionism
Thirdly, I will invoke what I will coin the Drylongso Imperative. Don't second-guess what blackfolks do and assume you know the reasoning by which they arrive at what you observe to be their behavior. You just don't know. There are a wide variety of issues of concern to African American families which must be addressed in the context from which they arise. This also means that there are a wide variety of solutions to these problems.