Why Black People are not voting for John McCain.
I’m on Youtube a lot. I should be on it a lot less. I probably spend an hour a day on site. However, half of the time I spend on the site is spent reading comments.
Many of the videos I watch are about the upcoming election. Because I watch political video I see a lot of hate, bitterness, and misinformation. One comment I’ve seen a couple times has force me to ask the question “Why are Black People voting for Obama and not McCain.”
Most people that ask the question think black people are stupid and therefore are voting for Obama because he’s black. Though it would be foolish to say that no black people are racist, I think that answer to this 9 word question deserves about 1900 words in reply.
First let’s talk about McCain. John McCain has not been the typical Republican. He’s been the Maverick. But let’s look at McCain’s record with black people. Let’s focus on black wedge issues. In recent years I believe John McCain has come to embody many of the things Black people despise about the Republican Party.
McCain has endorsed infamous racists like Governor Wallace and has been connected to the CCC. In recent years, McCain has strayed away from black people. He did come to the black republican debate during the primary because the audience was “hostile.” When he spoke in front of the NAACP he told them he approved of a bill in Arizona that would remove Affirmative Action. On top of that, the Republican convention, he were he was nominated, was less than 2% African American.
This doesn’t look very good, but these little facts are not terribly important. Let’s get further away from “black” issues. Let’s look at what black people looks like on a census paper.
The average black person make in between 60-70% of what the average white person makes. Black people are more likely to contract AIDS. Obesity is common place. About one fifth of black people in the United States live in the ghetto and go to poor quality schools. More black men are behind bars than in college. Most of the black people in jail are there for not violent crimes. Most black households have only one parent present. Teen pregnancy is not uncommon. Black professionals are not so common. Young black men are more likely to join the military than their white counterparts.
Some of these trends are unique to the black community. However most of these trends are common to the American public as a whole. I’ve said for a long time that if ever what to see what wrong with the US of A, look at its black people. The problems that America is facing are exaggerated in the black community. Therefore the problems that were hidden before become explicit. Because the problems of the black community exaggerate the problems of America, John McCain is not the black people choice.
John McCain policies are not pro-black. He wants to give more tax cuts to the rich and to corporation and not to the poor and middle class. He has voted time and time again against the minimum wage. His wealth care policy of giving us a 5000 dollar tax credit would be disastrous for black health care. His pro-life stance would not benefit pregnant teens. He wants to continue the Iraq for an indefinite period of time. A community that is sicker, poorer, and deeply attached to the military cannot pretend that these policies are pro-black.
But even though his policies are not pro-black one could argue that McCain care about black people. For those who make this argument I want to point out one last thing.
August 29, 2005. On the day Katrina hit the gulf coast, when hundreds of poor black people were drowning, McCain and George W. Bush were eating birthday cake.
I could not think of a better metaphor to describe how I feel the Republican Party thinks of black people. It’s not that they are going out of their way to hurt black people; it’s that they don’t care. It is their apathy, not their past participation in racism that drives me crazy.
I was born in 1988. I didn’t live in the 60’s or the 70’s. I don’t have the same degree of bitterness that many of my black predecessors have. I don’t think that the Republican Party is out to destroy black people. But I do believe they use the black image to sway voters. I do believe that some people in the party are downright racist. But above all I do believe that the Republican Party is apathetic towards the black population.
The party doesn’t care about the black people. Instead they tell black people “tough nuggies.” “You lived in a tough neighborhood, well my father/grandfather was able to pull himself by his bootstraps why can’t you?” The entity that is the Republican Party is full of apathy: Apathy towards the poor, apathy towards the sick, apathy towards the black population.
This is why black people are not voting McCain. He hasn’t reached out. He has a vaguely racist record and he, above all, he doesn’t seem to care about black people.
Now let’s go to the second part of the question, why are black people voting Obama? Are the Democrats that much better than the republicans? Yes and no. Instead of apathy, the democrats have a segment of the party that suffers from white guilt. Unlike the apathetic Republican Party they offer sympathy. Now sympathy might seem like a great thing when compared to apathy, but as a black women living in California I can tell you that sympathy only goes but so far.
To be sympathetic is to feel sorry and to be a white person that feels sorry for black people is to be a person that suffers from white guilt. These people make my eyes roll in their sockets. I had a teacher that had a really bad case of white guilt. It made me realize just how counterproductive sympathy can be. When I wrote an essay on Affirmative Action, she criticized my opinion. I argued in the paper that nowadays Affirmative Action is not totally successful because it fails to take social-economic status in to account. I argued that rich Black people don’t really deserve Affirmative Action and poor white people do. She thought that even if poor black people don’t get affirmative action, giving it to rich black people was worthwhile. Talk about white guilt.
Such guilt doesn’t lead to much progress. White guilt does not prevent black people from getting AIDS. It doesn’t close the education gap. All it does is get Don Imus fired. At the end of the day I want an education and a higher life expectancy not a white guy’s dead career. In my life time, this is all I’ve seen. I’ve seen white guys get fired for off ball comment but the gap between black and white get larger and larger under the Bush Administration. Firing Don Imus might be a start in a vaguely correct direction but it’s not what I want. However, I take what I can get.
Because the democrats offer some sympathy and the republicans offer apathy, most black people prefer the democrats. As a result many black conservatives are afraid of vote for republicans. In most cases a republican get no more than 50% of the black vote. Typically, when a republican does get a lot of votes from black people it’s because the candidate has made significant effort to reach out to the black community. When they don’t reach out, most black people will default to the Democratic Party.
But why am I unsatisfied with the white guilt party and more specifically what am I looking for? It’s simple really. I don’t want apathy, because it’s corrosive. I don’t really sympathy because it’s not practical. I want empathy.
A person with empathy will do more for me than anyone else. Someone with empathy feels your pain. They know what you’re going through and therefore their conscience forces them to make choices in light of that empathy. To be empathetic is to not be monolithic. It is to look at person, walk in their shoes and then use that gain feeling and knowledge to make good decision. In the end, you might say tough nuggies. In the end, you might feel sorry for the person in question but normally your felling become complicated. This is where Obama comes into play.
At first black people were not enthusiastic about Obama. Polls in Newsweek showed that black people, more than white people believed that the United States was not ready for a black president. Black people questioned whether a black person could win the election. Some also believed that Obama was not “black like us.” Obama is the son of an African immigrant and a white mother. Most black people in the United States are descendants of enslaved Africans and have some white ancestry. People wondered whether Obama’s story of one of an immigrant or one of a typical black person. Between these two issues most black people were not sure what to make of this candidate.
Reporters seized on this as evidence that Obama was “not black enough.” They thought that Obama might not be black enough to persuade black people to vote for Obama. I don’t think this was the case. I listened to the voices and emails and heard a very different accusations. The black intellectuals, spoke with, read about, and heard from were afraid that Obama was too black, and therefore Hillary Clinton would crush him come the primary season.
Then Iowa happened. Black people began to realize that white people could and would vote for a black man. After this news many black people began to change their minds. Then another question began to creep up. Is Obama for black people?
The answer of whether Obama was or wasn’t pro-black was answered not by Barack but more so by the Clintons and Jeremiah Wright. The Clintons did a semi-decent job of alienating the black community. Comments about boys in fairy tales, Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, and Hillary’s speeches against large crowds of white women peeved many black people. It peeved me. Though I had laughed at Obama for running and though I had started out as a Hillary supporter, come Super Tuesday I was voting for Obama.
And then came Jeremiah Wright. A 6 year old video of Jeremiah Wright expressing anger about American racism and foreign policies hit the Fox news cycle. Obama was forced to face race.
March 18th 2008. Barack Obama gave a speech about race, his life, and a More Perfect Union. This speech talked about hope and asked for changes, but more importantly it was brimming with empathy. The speech was full of understanding; an understanding that you cannot fake for 37 minutes. This speech demonstrated that Obama didn’t just know, but he felt the people. He felt the black community.
Not every black person saw the speech, but that feeling understanding has surrounded Obama and I think most black people get that about Obama. Obama is no Clearance Thomas. He is not Condoleezza Rice. Obama isn’t just black; he’s a black person for black people. Black people might not know all of his policies, but they do know that Barack’s conscience will guide him to make policies he believes will help the African American community. That is why black people are voting for Barack Obama. Until McCain tries to combat that, he will never get more than 7% of the black vote.
Not all black people vote solely for the candidate that is going to better for the black community. They take over factors into account as well just like anyone else. Black people care more about healthcare, education, the Iraq war and the economy than they do about Affirmative Action. They care about the things that all Americans care about. That said, black people also have to take the black community into account when they enter the voting booth.
Now that my 1900 words are finished, I want to ask you this question: based on all the information I have given you about McCain and Obama, if you were a black person, who would you vote for?
