I want to pop in and say thanks, mhendo, for that graphic.
I would like to add one thing, in response to this and your previous post.
You correctly noted that whites in some of those Southern states voted very heavily for Bush over Kerry as well. And you also correctly note that the white vote for McCain was only slightly above the white vote for Bush in 2004.
But i do think it’s worth thinking about the broader context of those figures, as suggested by Captain Lance Murdoch.
This election represented a pretty big swing towards the Democratic candidate. Obama picked up a whole bunch of states that Bush won in 2004, he increased the Democratic margin in most states that Kerry won, and the Democrats have also picked up at least 6 Senate seats from Republican incumbents. Some of these new votes came not only from people who voted Republican in 2004, but from people who had been solid Republicans.
Against a background in which almost every geographic area, and almost every social group, gave more votes to the Democrat in 2008 than in 2004, i do think it’s worth asking why just about the only group in the country to not only remain solidly Republican, but actually shift slightly further to the Republican side, was whites in parts of the South.
I’m not arguing that this is solely, or even mainly, due to racism. But i don’t think we can discount it as a factor, given the way the trend among this group defied the overall trend, even among previously-Republican states and constituencies. I think you’re right that social conservatism is a key factor, but i also think it’s not too much of a stretch to argue that ideas about racial inequality have formed one plank of the socially conservative platform among some Americans.
You’re just reinforcing the point that while almost all of the US saw a movement of white voters towards Obama, Southern and Appalachian states moved the other way. They didn’t just stay the same, they actually moved in the opposite direction from the rest of the country.
It’s not just social conservatism - Utah is the most conservative state in the US, but it swung toward Obama. So did Idaho. So did El Paso county in Colorado, home of Colorado Springs and a host of social conservative organizations, and one of the reddest counties in the country.
North Carolina is both Southern and Appalachian.
The big difference between the South and other parts of the country in respect to race and politics is the relative size of the black population.
Everywhere in the lowland south, the black population is one quarter to one third of the sate population, with MS at just under one half.
This means that whites have to do some real sharing of political, economic, and social power with black people. It’s not an abstract notion of justice or fair play.
This is not just sharing between two distinct groups, but sharing between two groups who were recently mortal enemies of each other.
For many whites, this situation is a kind of double edged sword. They are faced with the negative consequences of the many problems which still exist in black communities - high crime, low educational standards, widespread illegitimacy, while at the same time facing ever greater competition for jobs, political power, and overall influence from the upwardly mobile segment of the black community.
Not that I excuse their racism, but at others have pointed out, you can find the same thing everywhere in the US. The main difference is that north of the Potomac, people keep these sentiments to themselves.
White people in my home state of MD, where the black population is also just over a quarter of the state, are also scared and angry, but the upwardly mobile segment of the black population has enough money and political power to bring sanction against anyone who is openly racist.
Blacks were only 6% of the voters in the California election, and they’re just over 6% of the population of the state as well. While it’s true that the 75% of blacks who voted for Prop8 contributed 4.5% of the vote which pushed it over, that could not have happened if 49% of white voters had not supported it.
In Arkansas the black population is 16%. Assuming that they constituted 15% of the voters, and assuming further that 3/4 of them voted against gay rights, that would mean that the BNP (black “no pooftahs”) vote was 11.25% of the total vote, a difference of… ooh, 5% or a tad over.
Meaning, the non-black populations of Arkansas and California are roughly equal in their dislike of gays and back’ards thankin’. So while blaming black folk for social backwardness is an interesting option in comparing other regions positively to the south, it’s not necessarily the right one.
So I’m a native Mississippian and I thought I’d like to add my input into this thread. I’m of two minds on this one. Btw, my politics haven’t changed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I was a Republican before but left the party because of that.
On the one hand, when I was living in Mississippi, I would have taken offense to it. Maybe it’s similar to how one self-censors their reflection in a mirror. Ever notice how seeing your likeness on TV is far more jarring? It’s an interesting phenomena. But I find this holds true for me when I lived in the South. I tried to convince myself that it indeed had some aspects of it that made it on the whole, at least workable.
But now after having been gone for a while, I realize more and more that this was just stupidity. Let’s face the facts, shall we? The vast majority of people in the deep South harbor feelings that are definitely considered backwards by the rest of the country. My home state is certainly a candidate for the worst in the nation. Just look at the statistics. Take any “good” metric and the South will be at the bottom. Take any “bad” metric and the south will be at the top. They are usually led by MS, AR, LA, AL, and WV. How could it be any less clear? The South is backwards, period.
Yes I realize they could probably find people to espouse such sentiments in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Haight-Ashbury if they wanted to, but that is neither here nor there. The South is clearly behind on nearly any metric you care to choose. Yet the average Southerner’s answer to such problems would be religion and a healthy does of anti-elitist attitude. People from the South get defensive when confronted with their inadequacy in a number of areas, insisting that they make up for it in “culture.”
I’ve given up on defending the South a long time ago because it’s indefensible. You Southern dopers ought to think about how the South truly is before defending it as some kind of place that has any respect for progressive values. Just ask a member of your local Southern Baptist congregation if Barack Obama is a Muslim. What kind of answer do you think you’ll get? How about the countless people who drop uninvited racist remarks in casual conversation? How about you go canvassing for Barack Obama in a state like Mississippi? How do you think that would turn out? I could go on and on about the types of people who are completely ignorant, but you get the point, I’m sure.
This is not to say that the rest of the country is some fucking Norman Rockwell painting. We have plenty of problems with racism and bigotry too, but just not on the scale of the South.
P.S. Why do you think that Virginia and North Carolina went Democratic this year? Simply because of the higher participation of the research triangle in NC and NoVA. These are two areas which are decidedly not “Southern” in character. Talk to someone from NoVA and they won’t have a southern accent, for example. Don’t fool yourself into think that actual Southerners are changing; they’re not. It’s just that the South is getting diluted by Northerners.
FWIW, I just heard a report on the local NPR station - KPCC - on an exit poll done by a group affiliated with Loyola Marymount. Their result was in sharp contrast to the AP poll.
This local org, which did more extensive sampling in black and Latino precincts in LA and Alameda County, says that the black vote for prop 8 was roughly the same as the Latino vote, 54 to 46.
I’ll see if I can find a cite.
I know it’s a common statement that there was racism in other parts of the country also, not just in the South. Of course that’s true. California has a pretty bad history. But the legal apparatus to promote racial discrimination was most prominent in the states that were part of the Southern Confederacy. I didn’t add up all the numbers, but when I look at the maps here: Jim Crow Legislation Overview - go to the bottom of the page, they have links to a “Jim Crow Inside the South Map” and a “Jim Crow Outside the South Map” - it’s pretty clear that the Southern States did the most to enact laws enforcing segregation.
So the exit poll doesn’t seem to show what the professor said it did, or maybe I misheard. At any rate, the poll only deals w/ LA County, and it shows 45 % of blacks and 48 % of Latinos voting yes on 8.
http://www.lmu.edu/AssetFactory.aspx?did=29861
Since a huge chunk of Cali’s black voters live in LA County, pretty much all the blacks in the state outside of LA and the Bay Area would have had to vote for Prop 8 to give the numbers claimed in the AP poll.
So I still believe the AP poll is way off.
Of course, the AP poll also shows white men voting yes on 8 at 51 per cent.
Noted and I see your point. I still think the Op was way over the top on this.
But they did it because they loved Sarah Palin for no reason I can truly fathom. 
Rather than supposing, lets look at the numbers.
Apparently African-Americans are less bigoted towards gays in the south than in California.
They were only 54% vs 58% for whites and of course in California it was a disturbing 70%. As usual age is shown to play a bigger overall factor then race and it looks like in a few generations we might have a very tolerant society. I think there is hope for all parts of the country. The younger generations seem to really be more tolerant.
I believe we are the same age Sampiro (42), I know very few 20 years old were tolerant when we were 20. This includes even myself to some degree. I would have probably voted for Prop 8 back then. Now I see how stupid an attitude I held.
I have not been following this whole thread, but I believe this is proper anecdotal evidence:
Police: Woman Slain as She Tried to Leave KKK Rite
I grew up in the South, and while there are some truly excellent people living there, the region also seems to have more than it’s fair share of nutball bigots. Heck, I know a couple from New Orleans who moved here to Las Vegas after Katrina who still bitch about anyone who’s skin isn’t white.
:mad:
Well, if we are going to do anecdotal evidence, apparently the south now stretches up to Washington state. http://www.wwltv.com/national/stories/wwl111108tpobamahang.1a29d73a9.html
“Five students at White River High School in Buckley are accused of hanging a doll of Obama with a rope by its neck in what appears to be a mock lynching.”
This doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the thread…I don’t know maybe it does, but anyhow, it got me to thinking about the time I first met a branch of my family when i was about 16 or 17.
They’re all from Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee. At that age I was convinced that everyone from the deep south was a far right wing racists (not that I’d ever been there mind you - I’m Canadian and hadn’t been further south in the US than Vermont at that point - also I knew that not all right wing people are racist).
So anyhow about 10 adults that range from mid forties to late sixties show up for dinner. All of which voted for Clinton and one of which was a College Professors (Science) and a number have advanced degrees. None of which are racists. It was an enlightening day and I’ll always remember it.
Incidentally, I ran into a few of them earlier this year during the primaries and all of them were voting for Obama over Hillary.
The sum total of your response is to point out that of six cites I gave you, you actually acknowledged one? Well, nice tr-- No, that’s not even a nice try, is it? So, “shit try” though.
Well, I also went on to point out that those instances are quite different than the pervasive, institutionalized, and ongoing schemes seen in many places in the South, but then again you could have seen that had you read my response.
]Just ask a member of your local Southern Baptist congregation if Satan placed fossils in the earth to test our faith. What kind of answer do you think you’ll get?
You can find ignorance anywhere you go; all you have to do is talk to the lowest denominator.
Ask your average conservative Catholic priest if the wine and wafer turn into the blood and body of Christ during the Eucharist. He will probably say why yes, indeed it does. Those who attend the church either accept this, pretend to accept it, or willingly socialize with those who accept it, thus hundreds of millions of Catholics are either stupid, crowd followers, or hypocrites.
Gee, this generalization of all people is fun and practically writes itself!
I don’t think this is true, I’ve asked something very close to that and the RCC Priest in question did not explain it that way and said it was a spiritual change and not a physical change. I don’t know what percentage of RCC Priests would answer it as you just did, but I would guess that it is a small percentage. Remember the RCC does accept evolution and even forgave Galileo.
The New York Times map showed results by counties rather than states. The county data was absolutely striking. By taking whole states into account the results are diluted in most cases as counties outside the Appalachia to east Texas area and counties in urban areas did not show this affect. Anyone looking at that map in the NYT will be struck by that red gash. Playing games with the data to diminish the appearance of the effect will not make it go away. If anyone has a credible reason why the Republican vote surged in this area and in no other part of America, well go ahead.
And like I said, there are very socially conservative states that did not show this trend. Not one county in Utah moved right. None in Montana. One in Wyoming and so on. And the counties that were red outside of the gash area were barely red. All the dark red counties were in the gash. Only Arizona and Alaska had significant rightward movement outside of the gash area and that could easily be attributed to having locals on the ballot.
I can understand southerners being defensive about there region. And if one looks closely at the map one will see that some of the deep south is not in the gash area while more northernly West Virginia is. So the “deep south” reference may be a bit of a misnomer. Nevertheless, the map is disturbing.