Would blacks vote for Obama if he were white?

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Harold Jackson is an opinion columnist for my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Mr Jackson, in case you were wondering, is black. ( like he could be anything but with a name like Harold Jackson). Anyway, he wrote the following article about black folks voting for the O man because he is black:

"There's no way that I'd vote for Barack Obama just because he and I are both black men.
I grew up in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s and '60s. A third-grade classmate went to jail for marching. Another little girl at our school was killed when the Ku Klux Klan bombed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

I've known people who were beaten by Bull Connor's cops in Birmingham and whipped by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. And I don't think any of them shed blood for my right to vote just to see me cast my ballots based on skin color.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was the result of a convincing argument that black people were just as capable of making an intelligent decision about political candidates as any white person.

More recently, though, a lie has found favor in America. It's the falsehood that African Americans vote as a monolith, without regard to the issues or positions of the candidates. It's a lie promoted by those who don't want to admit that their preferred candidate was wrong on the issues that matter most to most African American voters.

Black voters' interests are so common because their circumstances are so similar. Even those with better educations, higher incomes, and more expensive homes are not too far removed from family or friends living modestly. Poverty is itself a recent memory for many middle-income African Americans. Some feel they are only a paycheck or two from returning to that status.

Blacks don't get credit for carefully weighing candidates' positions on the issues, even though they have shown that they will vote for a white candidate over a black one whose views are not to their liking. "

More here.

I agree with him. This notion that all those dumb blacks who are incapable of thinking through the issues, just mindlessly vote for the O man because he is black, is bull shit. Has it ever occurred to anyone that black folks just might vote for him because he is the best candidate?

Here is my theory about black folks: we are committed to a party, not skin color. We will vote for the white democrat over the black republican every time. Just ask Kenneth Blackwell, Michael Steele, or Lynn Swann. The last time I checked, I didn't see a whole lot of brothers and sisters here in Philly switching party registration to vote for Lynn Swann when he ran for Governor because he is black. He got his ass kicked among black voters by a white Jewish guy, because we happened to like his policies more. Mr. Swann ran as a republican, and that pretty much guaranteed that black folks weren't going to vote for his black ass. And that would have been true whether he was yellow, red, brown, or purple. If Alan Keyes crazy ass ran against any white democrat in A-merry-ca, please believe that he would not get my vote, period. The shit is that deep.

But I will say this: If all things are equal (all things, including party affiliation) black folks, and any other race for that matter, will vote for the person who looks like them over the other guy. Don't believe me? Do you think if this was Bobby Chin running for president he wouldn't get 99% of the Asian vote? Do you think if it was Bobby Sanchez he wouldn't get at least 90% of the Latino vote? Come on now, let's keep it real with each other. The only reason white folks can afford to make choices is because they pretty much dominate this shit. So having a white guy run for office is no big deal to the average white person. He or she can vote for Bobby Sanchez, Bobby Chin, or Bobby Johnson, and still feel like he will have a seat at the table, because everyone around the minority guy at the table will look like them. We don't have that option. Most of the time we pretty much have to just vote for the person who will hurt us the least.

So please, no more talk about this black people voting for Obama because he is black bullshit. Black people will vote for Obama because he is a democrat, and he happens to be better than the other guy. A guy, by the way, who is crazier than the craziest uncle we ever hid in the attic.

*Pic courtesy of feakingnews.com

Quiet Riot.

I read an interesting article from Harold Jackson, a man who is fast becoming one of my favorite newspaper writers. He wrote about a new kind of riot today in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I liked his analysis. It's not the first time we have heard about this new type of rioting among black folks. Barack Obama talked about it while on the campaign trail to become president as well.

Mr. Jackson wrote about the riots of the sixties and what fueled them. The statistics he gave were revealing: 160 riots in 1967 alone, eighty people dead (mostly in cities like Newark and Detroit) and over 200 million in property damage. He argues, and rightfully so, that most of the black shopping areas destroyed by these riots never recovered. He also argues that conditions described by the the Kerner Commission Report which followed the riots, have not changed much in the forty years since.

Consider, in 2008, according to Jackson's article, the black unemployment rate is 9% while for white A-merry-cans it's 4 percent. 24 percent of blacks live in poverty compared with 8 percent of whites. Among black folks, 20 percent lack health insurance compared to 11 percent of whites. The median household income of blacks is $30,858, while for whites it is $50,784. And after giving us these grave statistics he poses this question: Why aren't blacks rioting now?

We agree on the reasons he gives for this as well. Blacks have been leaving the ghettos and poor inner city neighborhoods due to the growth of the black middle class. Because in a "less-depressing residential environment they see the possibility of a better future. Unfortunately, the ones left behind, have no such options. In the sixties the anger was aimed at "whitey" but it ended up hurting the people who were living in the neighborhoods the most.

Some of the people who are inhabiting these poorer neighborhoods today are still blaming whitey and the government structure that's in place. They are angry and disillusioned. But instead of taking to the streets and burning and looting stores, they resort to "vandalism, drug abuse, murder, and other crimes disproportionately occurring in low- income black neighborhoods." Mr. Jackson uses this quote from the Kerner Commission: "The frustrations of powerlessness have led some Negroes to the conviction that there is no effective alternative to violence as a means of achieving redress of grievances and of moving the system." I have news for the Kerner Commission, that frustration is still manifesting itself today. But the folks who would have been rioting back in the day, are now sticking up old ladies in the neighborhood, robbing neighborhood stores, and killing each other over perceived slights and and disses.

Neighborhoods are now in a crisis mode, and the situation is getting worse every day-- Just look at the Killadelphia Murder Count on my sidebar. There is also another aspect of this that Mr. Jackson forgot to mention in his article. White guilt. There was plenty of it in the sixties which probably led to LBJ's attempted war on poverty, as well as the "Great Society Efforts." That guilt is no longer there. Most white folks feel like the immigrants who dominate Northeastern and rust belt cities. "We don't owe you Negroes a damn thing, my forefathers never owned slaves. My great grandfather came to this country from Italy, Poland, [place any European country of your choice here] and wherever, and look at them, they made it. And they didn't have any government handouts like you Negroes do." So because of this white backlash it's even tougher on those who were left behind in the neighborhoods. Now the backlash has gone mainstream, and thanks to outlets like FIX NEWS, politicians who have made a career out of fear mongering and demagoguery; and an entire political movement which started with the fake ass cowboy from California, the riot has been forced to get even quieter. But make no mistake, the anger is still there, it's just on both sides now. And the folks on each side have no idea how angry the folks on the other side can be.

Mr. Jackson says a new "national conversation" is needed,and it will take a renewal of the one started by Bill Clinton to get A-merry-cans to recognize it. He also says that it will take a renewed effort by congress to try and erase poverty. I agree with him there too, but good luck. The people on K Street ain't lobbying for some poor schmuck in North Philly or South Central L.A. So I am afraid that poverty is going to be around with us for awhile. Because of that, I am afraid that those quiet riots will continue to rage through certain parts of A-merry-ca. And when that silence finally gets shattered, I think we all better look out.