Ok, here I go again, probably pissing someone talking about things I have no business talking about.
I have black friends. I have gay friends. The fact that Prop 8 passed in California pisses me off. What pisses me off even more is the notion being floated that the black vote for Obama caused Prop 8 to pass. My claim that the correlation was overstated pissed off my best friend. He simply cannot be convinced that that is not the cause. He’s pissed. How could people whose history is the struggle for human rights vote against other people’s human rights? And he’s right about that. But our disagreement and fight was over his anger at the black vote. Did a large African-American turnout play a part? Yeah, probably some. Did it seal the deal for Prop 8 to pass? No.
Do I have absolute proof? Nope, but neither does anyone else. You can only look at patterns and trends. Still, the figure I found was that the African-American vote was expected to be 6% of the total vote. The Hispanic vote was expected to be 15%. So, why simply target blacks for the ire? It is not just my friend, the media wants to stir this up. So, I tried to do a little research. Oakland is the city with the biggest African-American population among the large cities in the state with 36%. Alameda County voted against Prop 8 – 38.1% in favor vs. 61.9% against. That is just one statistic. We could go county by county and look at the population density of African-Americans and try account for every trend. We could find proof of both theories.
That would be a huge waste of time.
Ultimately, it simply doesn’t matter. Or, rather, it shouldn’t. It is a good story and it will float for quite awhile. Who wouldn’t want to try to pit two minority groups against each other? That’s fun tv to fill the 24 hour news cycle.
We can play these games all day, but they are really just a distraction. The truth is, Prop 8 passed. It is horrible. It simply manifests all the work that remains to be done. So, to get caught up in the distraction of laying blame on someone else is simply a waste of time.
Cog in the Wheel 
fight the distraction
Tags: +, Prop 8
Ok, here I go again, probably pissing someone talking about things I have no business talking about.
I have black friends. I have gay friends. The fact that Prop 8 passed in California pisses me off. What pisses me off even more is the notion being floated that the black vote for Obama caused Prop 8 to pass. My claim that the correlation was overstated pissed off my best friend. He simply cannot be convinced that that is not the cause. He’s pissed. How could people whose history is the struggle for human rights vote against other people’s human rights? And he’s right about that. But our disagreement and fight was over his anger at the black vote. Did a large African-American turnout play a part? Yeah, probably some. Did it seal the deal for Prop 8 to pass? No.
Do I have absolute proof? Nope, but neither does anyone else. You can only look at patterns and trends. Still, the figure I found was that the African-American vote was expected to be 6% of the total vote. The Hispanic vote was expected to be 15%. So, why simply target blacks for the ire? It is not just my friend, the media wants to stir this up. So, I tried to do a little research. Oakland is the city with the biggest African-American population among the large cities in the state with 36%. Alameda County voted against Prop 8 – 38.1% in favor vs. 61.9% against. That is just one statistic. We could go county by county and look at the population density of African-Americans and try account for every trend. We could find proof of both theories.
That would be a huge waste of time.
Ultimately, it simply doesn’t matter. Or, rather, it shouldn’t. It is a good story and it will float for quite awhile. Who wouldn’t want to try to pit two minority groups against each other? That’s fun tv to fill the 24 hour news cycle.
We can play these games all day, but they are really just a distraction. The truth is, Prop 8 passed. It is horrible. It simply manifests all the work that remains to be done. So, to get caught up in the distraction of laying blame on someone else is simply a waste of time.