response 89 of 217:

Jan 29 02:58 UTC 2003

Re #87:  Inequalities between groups can result from many factors,
which can be exogenous or endogenous.  Racism is exogenous, culture
is at least partly endogenous.

response 91 of 217:

Jan 29 04:22 UTC 2003

Hmmm...I think current black voting patterns probably have more to do
with the civil liberty battles of the 60's and 70's than they do with
slavery. Free slaves originally voted very strongly for "Lincoln's
Party".  But the black civil liberties movement found by far it's
strongest support in the Democratic party.

Does black support for the Democratic Party still make sense in 2003? 
Well, obviously an awful lot of black voters think it does, and I'm
inclined think that they know where their interests lie better than I
do, or the author of the articles referenced above does.

What's funny about the articles is that they are basically saying "you
dumb blacks and Jews are just voting from habit.  If you had the brains
to come in from the rain, you'd vote for my party, because we're
obviously the ones who really respect you."  Boy, it's good to hear
really astute political speech like that.

Interesting that the article strongly identifies the Republican party as
the Christian party, indeed the party of all religions.  That's
nonsense. There are lots of liberal Christians.  I doubt if you can show
any strong statistics that say Christians are mostly conservative.  If
you could, then that last election shouldn't have been so close, because
Americans are mostly Christian.

response 93 of 217:

Jan 29 14:56 UTC 2003

Re #84: What about Henry Ford?  Definately an American, but he wrote fan
letters to Adolf Hitler and published an anti-Semitic newspaper.  He got a
fair amount of support from other Americans on that issue.

As for the "blacks don't vote Republican" issue, it's a bit of a vicious
cycle.  Blacks don't vote Republican because the Republicans make no effort
to reach out to them, and the Republicans make no effort because blacks
don't vote Republican.  I forget who said it, but I saw a Republican
politician quoted once as saying, "how much effort should we really go to
for people who won't vote for us anyway?"  This is starting to change
because they've figured out that eventually minorities, taken together, will
be a majority.  No one who wants to keep winning elections can keep ignoring
them completely with impunity.

Re #88: So you're saying, basically, "We'll never solve the problem
completely, so we should give up on trying to improve the situation"?

Re #91: Yeah, I agree...what bothers me most about articles like that is the
pandering nature of them.  I hear that from Rush Limbaugh a lot, too -- the
suggestion that blacks only vote for Democrats because they're too stupid to
know any better.

response 95 of 217:

Jan 29 17:21 UTC 2003

        "Love thine enemy", anyone?  "Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you"?  "Blessed are the peacemakers"?  No usury?  Run that by me aain?

response 97 of 217:

Jan 29 18:23 UTC 2003

Re #96: I'd guess that a shorter average lifespan for blacks probably
comes from a higher infant mortality rate.  If that's true, then there's
no reason to assume someone who lives past being an infant won't live
long enough to collect as much as a white person would.

(This is something that's often misunderstood about "average lifespan"
figures.  For example, many third-world countries have average lifespans
down in the 30s, but you'll find plenty of people there older than 30
years.  The reason is there's high infant mortality, and all those
people who live 0 years pull down the average.)

I suspect many blacks oppose private social security accounts for the
same reason I do -- they've paid attention to what the stock market has
been doing lately, and noticed that it's a game where insiders hold all
the cards.  It's bad enough that I'm risking my 401(k) money at that
casino; I don't want my safety net to be counting on it too.

response 99 of 217:

Jan 30 02:13 UTC 2003

Re #93:  Bumper sticker:  "Listen to Rush Limbaugh?  No thanks, my
parents weren't related."

(Gotta love Instant Attitudes.)

response 101 of 217:

Jan 30 23:29 UTC 2003

      So as you do unto the least of them, you do unto me.


     I think that covers some serious terrritory. ( I also think I 
either heat the basement, or shiver in short sleeves while typing. 
I've managed to end my entries several times by inadvertently hitting 
the keybopard with my windbreaker sleeves)

response 105 of 217:

Jan 31 20:51 UTC 2003

During the era you're talking about, the Democratic party had a
split personality -- liberal and pro-civil-rights in the north,
conservative and segregationist in the south.  The filibustering
Senate Democrats were southerners.  The Republican party was
almost non-existent in the south.  I have a suspicion that those
Blacks in the south who were *allowed* to vote, voted Republican
in local elections to a large extent, at least when any Republicans
bothered to run.

But those days are long gone.  In the 60s the Republicans adopted
the infamous "Southern Strategy" -- playing to the fears of the
conservative White electorate -- to wrest control of the South from
the Democrats.  And they succeeded.  The Republicans are now the
party of entrenched reactionary fundamentalism down there.  It's no
wonder Blacks vote for the Democrats these days.

response 107 of 217:

Feb 1 05:25 UTC 2003

It has been claimed that the "conversion" of the South to Republicanism
came about because of the civil rights successes. That is a sad commentary
on the Southern society, but I suppose it was an inevitable consequence
of finally trying to be what our Declaration of Independence claimed.

response 109 of 217:

Feb 1 05:56 UTC 2003

And the biggest center of "Reagan Democrats" was in Macomb County (a county
which is only 2% black, and right across 8 Mile Road from Detroit).  My I hope
overly cynical explanation of that is that the people in Macomb County were
quite happy to be good union members and vote Democratic, as long as it didn't
mean living near black people.

response 111 of 217:

Feb 2 02:01 UTC 2003

re ersp:109: That's pretty cynical, so I guess I'd hope it's over-
cynical, too.

I don't recall racism being a big issue in that election.  I recall it 
as being focused on the hostage situation in Iran, the aftermath of 
Watergate, and the dismal malaise of Jimmy Carter versus the cheery 
optimism and hope of Ronald Reagan.

response 113 of 217:

Feb 2 03:16 UTC 2003

I did some web searching, and couldn't find any hint of the outcome (or
announcement) of this event.  I can't even confirm the existance of
anything called "Whittier College Republicans".  The Whittier "Richard
M. Nixon Republican Club" seems to exist, but has essentially no web
presence.

However, at http://www.shethinks.org/articles/an00181.cfm I found a
description of an affirmative action bake sale at the University of New
Mexico.  This talks a bit about the results (tepid) and suggests that
other college republican groups try the same thing.  Possibly someone at
Whittier College did a copy cat.