Race and Marriage

Yeah, I finally got around to it. This is what happens when you fall asleep reading at about 4 o'clock on a blustery Sunday afternoon and wake up at 2 am with no thought of going back to sleep. This is a "first thoughts" kind of post and is subject to updates and addenda: there's still a lot of material to digest.

William Saletan, with whom I almost never agree, has pulled together a lot of information in this piece at Slate. If his numbers are correct, he has some interesting observations:

The National Election Pool exit poll tells the story. Whites and Asian-Americans, comprising 69 percent of California's electorate, opposed Proposition 8 by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. Latinos favored it, 53-47. But blacks turned out in historically high numbers—10 percent of the electorate—and 70 percent of them voted for Proposition 8.

This is no fluke. Black support for Florida's ballot measure against gay marriage ran 11 points higher than white support and 7 points higher than Latino support. The adoption measure in Arkansas turned out differently—black support was 4 points lower than white support—but nationwide and over time, there's a clear pattern. In Maryland and New Jersey, polls have shown whites supporting gay marriage but blacks opposing it. A report from the pro-gay National Black Justice Coalition attributes President Bush's 2004 reelection in part to the near-doubling of his percentage of the black vote in Ohio, which he achieved "by appealing to Black churchgoers on the issue of marriage equality." This year, blacks in California were targeted the same way.

I think it's safe to say that blacks were targeted not to change their opinions on same-sex marriage, but to get them to the polls -- as if that were necessary in this election -- and to make sure they voted on Prop 8.

This post from Pam's House Blend is fairly typical of the objections to this line of argument: the poll is flawed, the sample is not representative, and, in its basic form, You. Can't. Blame. Blacks. For. Anything:

One last note: if despite the evidence, you want to take the CNN poll as representative, the numbers indicate that 3,185,452 white people voted for 8. That's almost a million more people than the entire black population of the state of California.

I'd say there's plenty of homophobia to go around.

No argument there, but the flaw here is that we're not talking total populations, we're talking margins. Whether blacks and latinos handed the Prop 8 forces the victory is an open question, but I'd guess that a small percentage shift in either of those populations would have made the difference. As for the reliability of that 70% number, here's a post by Nate Silverman at 538, whom many people have been citing as the numbers guru for this election, in which he addresses everything but the numbers:

Certainly, the No on 8 folks might have done a better job of outreach to California's black and Latino communities. But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters -- the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) -- voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56-44, however, providing for its passage.

Now, it's true that if new voters had voted against Prop 8 at the same rates that they voted for Obama, the measure probably would have failed. But that does not mean that the new voters were harmful on balance -- they were helpful on balance. If California's electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.

Furthermore, it would be premature to say that new Latino and black voters were responsible for Prop 8's passage. Latinos aged 18-29 (not strictly the same as 'new' voters, but the closest available proxy) voted against Prop 8 by a 59-41 margin. These figures are not available for young black voters, but it would surprise me if their votes weren't fairly close to the 50-50 mark.

Two things about this: note that he starts off by blaming No on 8. Yeah, well, failure is always evidence of fault, I guess. (And I'm not going to say that they didn't screw up -- they did, in a couple of major ways.) And note how much of his argument is based on "if" and "it wouldn't surprise me." Not bankable, in my book.

On the other side of this, see this post from Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin. He's been very careful about it, as usual, and while not damning, his comments should force a second look at this question.

I'm going to make an outrageous statement here: given the well-known propensity of respondents to lie to poll takers on exit polls -- telling them what the respondent thinks they want to hear -- it wouldn't suprise me to learn that the "yes" vote in the black community was even higher than 70%.

Terrance Heath resurrected a couple of older posts at Pam's House Blend (here and here) on the extent of homophobia in the black community. Given this kind of history, I think the idea that blacks did not play a role in our defeat in California is somewhat disingenuous. Should they be singled out? Not necessarily, because it's that old conundrum, and in that regard, at least, the PC left has it right: a significant shift in any population would have changed the outcome. The fact remains, however, that the response among blacks is disproportionate. This is in large part due to the churches, and there's where we get the intersection between conservative Christians and blacks: most black Christians are, in terms of religion, at least, very conservative, I think -- at least, insofar as I have any experience in that area. (It's one of those things that is subject to a wide degree of variation. My own black friends may be very committed to their churches and ascribe a great deal to the workings of their faith, but there seems to be some compartmentalization going on: they are all very supportive of equal rights -- including marriage -- for gays. I think that may be the Baptist tradition: I have an aunt, very religious, who at the end of her life just didn't go to church any more because she's argued with every pastor within reach. There's an element of independence there that you have to respect.) For a commentary on the role of the church in the black community, see this post from Pam's House Blend. I'm by no means endorsing a lot of what's in it, but it is instructive.

Update:

Lest anyone come away with the opinion that I'm looking at these groups as monolithic, I'm well aware that they're not. We had supporters among blacks in California, some of them quite prominent, as well as among national black leaders. One of the No on 8 campiagn's big flubs is that they were not enlisted as active members of the campaign. For an illustration of this part of the question, see this post by Fritz at Pam's House Blend.

And now back to the post:

I'm not blaming blacks and latinos, really, although I'm not letting them off free, either. I got a lot of crap for statements made in in this post, and I admit -- and have done -- that my remarks were intemperate. I was angry. However, the substance, I think, is still valid: we don't let people off the hook for things like this, we challenge them. In this case, we have to challenge them on this basis:

From prenatal hormones to genetics to birth order, scientists have been sifting data to nail down homosexuality's biological origins. As they advance, it will become easier and easier to persuade African-Americans that being gay is a lot like being black. The lesson of Proposition 8 isn't that blacks have stopped the march of gay rights. The lesson is that when they turn, the fight in blue America will essentially be over.

I think Saletan, for a change, has it right, or nearly so: the lesson is not that blacks have stopped the march of civil rights in America, but that they have to be shaken out of ignorance and hostility by the only means that will work: information.