Sunday, October 28, 2012

A question about modern day segregation in the Democrat Party

Anonymous and I have had a bit of a back-and-forth about the observation that majority white districts are more likely to elect black representatives to Congress if the white district is Republican than if it is Democrat.

Please see the post and comment string here for the details of the discussion.


But this raises a fascinating observation.

There are similar numbers of black Congressmen elected from majority white Republican districts and majority white Democrat districts.

Yet many fewer blacks self-identify as Republicans than as Democrats. So naturally there are fewer total Republican blacks in Congress than Democrat blacks in Congress (most black Democrat congressmen are elected from black districts).

The relative paucity of blacks in the Republican Party does not prove racism, of course, because blacks have identified with the Democrat Party in very large numbers ever since 1936, including decades of intense Democrat segregation and racism coinciding with decades of intense Republican opposition to segregation and racism.

Republicans, who have a much lower black party affiliation, have roughly the same number of black congressmen elected from white districts as do Democrats. But this raises a very interesting question: with the vast majority of blacks in this country being Democrats, why are relatively few black representatives (compared to the total of black Democrat representatives) elected in majority white Democrat districts?
Why?





4 comments:

  1. Again:

    Didnt a colonel Wilkerson (republican) recently announce:
    "Let me just be candid," he said. "My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander in chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that's despicable."

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    Replies
    1. Tell me, Mulder: should the law be color-blind?

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    2. I'll tell you what's an interesting question.

      Blacks comprise 12 % of the US population. The US House of Representative has 435 members. You would naturally expect that 12 %, or 52 representatives, would be black. The actual number, 43, is not far from that estimate. So far so good.

      There is one small wrinkle in the numbers. The vast majority of them are Democrats. Just 4 are Republicans. Why would that be so?

      Delete
  2. The republican affirmative action strategy allows crackpots like Egnore to say “look we have blacks too!”.

    -KW

    ReplyDelete