Viewpoint: Will Blacks Vote for Obama “Because He’s Black”?

[DonViejo]

The question itself is offensive and racist. Here's why

By TOURÉ


When the president said, “Can you say that a little louder, Candy!” after moderator Candy Crowley corrected Romney during a crucial moment in their second debate, sending the audience into laughter, I heard black barbershop dozens signifying. Or asphalt basketball court trash talking. Obama has not been shy about bringing black cultural signifiers with him onto the national stage — from fist bumping his wife in the 2008 campaign to refusing change from a fast food cashier by saying “Nah we straight.” An insightful new book, Articulate While Black by professors Samy Ali and Geneva Smitherman, catalogs Obama’s particular linguistic manner and the ease with which he verbally communicates blackness. It is these moments that begin to explain why the question of whether blacks vote for Obama just because he’s black is so dumb.

The question has become an Internet meme over the last week, fueled mostly by people like author Kevin Jackson, author of The Big Black Lie, who told Fox News, “Racists that they are, [blacks] voted for [Obama] because he’s black, not because he’s qualified.” Conservative author Ron Christie echoed him saying blacks voted for Obama because of “straitjacket solidarity.”

This is mostly conservatives complaining about why they can’t get a serious look from black Americans and break up the demographic firewall that Obama has because of overwhelming support from blacks and Latinos. It would be too psychologically difficult to blame their decades old problem with black and brown voters on an ideology that is anti-affirmative action, anti-choice, anti-the social safety net, pro-voter ID, pro-tax breaks for the wealthy, pro demonizing of welfare and accepting of birtherism. A party that engages in what many have called the Southern Strategy 2.0, which means trying to attract poor whites through enraging them via coded racist appeals like the “Obama is removing the work requirement from welfare” claim” that was widely debunked but still remained at the heart of a Romney ad.

But instead of looking at the Republican ideology and realizing that it is hostile to blacks, they call blacks racist for their supposedly thoughtless skin-color-based support of Obama. An August poll showed Obama leading Romney among blacks 94% to 0%, but this is hardly an historical outlier. Al Gore won 90% of the black vote in 2000 and John Kerry won 88% in 2004. Obama won 95% in 2008.


Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/19/viewpoint-will-blacks-vote-for-obama-because-hes-black/#ixzz29l4Emgjo

[bigdarryl]

1. Will whites back Romney because he's white? JESUS!!!!!

[DonViejo]

3. And let's not forget:

Will Mormons vote for Mitt because he's a Mormon?

[Zen Democrat]

2. Did Blacks vote for Bill Clinton because he was white, or because he was a Big Dog?

[NOLALady]

4. Will Blacks

(as well as Browns and Whites) vote for Obama because only idiots vote against their best interests.

[timlot]

5. No! Black people vote for Democrats.

Maybe in 2008 there was something to that among everybody not just black people, but by in large black folks vote for democrats because of the polices they promote. That's the reality. It doesn't matter that Obama is half black, if he started embracing something like the Ryan budget his support would drop among blacks dramatically.

[onenote]

6. There are more whites who won't vote for Obama simply because he's black

than there are African Americans who will vote for Obama because he's black.