| Yesterday I made a clumsy stab at talking about the all the "demographics" buzz, which was an effort to try to split up the Democratic electorate into opposing camps based on class and race. My conclusion was that the numbers can be rigged to create all sorts of narratives, and in the end, it was pretty useless and destructive.
David Sirota also had a reaction to the demographics, but he concluded the buzz had the effect of discounting or minimizing the importance or value of African-American voters:
The news industry and politicians, on the other hand, are happy to discuss and exploit race, whether by manufacturing controversy (think Jeremiah Wright) or by promoting racists (think MSNBC hiring Pat Buchanan, or Republican senators re-electing Trent Lott to a leadership position). The media and political elites aren't ostriches - they behave like minstrel show producers, portraying African-Americans as subhuman, alien and unimportant, except for their entertainment value.
MSNBC's Chris Matthews, for example, differentiated between "regular people" and black people. Pundits refer separately to the "working class" and to African-Americans - as if they are mutually exclusive. Hillary Clinton this week claimed, "Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening" - the implication being that non-white Americans are lazy. These terms - "regular," "working class," "hardworking" - have become euphemisms for "whites," who are subsequently billed as the only ones that matter.
Think I'm imagining that last part? Then you weren't watching ABC's "Nightline" last week. The Jeremiah Wright brouhaha may be roiling the black community, correspondent David Wright said, "but the real question now is what do white voters think." That's right - according to "Nightline," painful questions in the black community aren't "real."
Such denigration happens all the time, and you can tell it is rooted in bigotry because the black vote is - by any mathematical measure - crucial. Political scientist Tom Schaller notes that if Clinton had won slightly more African-American votes, she might be winning. And black turnout for Democrats could decide general elections in many key swing states. Yet, we are still told "the real question" is only what white voters think.
To Sirota, the demographics do matter; it's the emphasis and value judgments that we make from them that are all wrong.
Of course, all this talk of demographics and race ignores the role that women have played in this election, too. Run through the exit polls, and you'll see that, universally, more women than men voted for Senator Hillary Clinton. (As much as 14 percent more in, say, Massachusetts, where, despite losing the state by 15 points, Obama won the majority of male primary goers.) In an election marred by as much, if not more, misogyny than racism, the silence about women voters and issues in this election is almost as damning as the racist bullsh*t staining the talk of African-Americans.
Discuss. (Nicely.) |
