Jonah Goldberg is an editorial writer for the LA Times who tends to lean on the conservative wing of debates. Like many conservatives, if there can be one example of an argument in their favor, it will be exploited as a trend of biblical proportions, even if the vast evidents suggests otherwise. Another position that tends to happen, with a scant bit of evidence, is while praising diversity and change looking deeper into the writing suggests monolithic and blind following to a particular goal of proving the status quo that is against them to be wrong. In other words, if a poll came out that showed that a majority of red heads are against abortion, they would not only rejoice if they found one red head for abortion, but if they found three for it that would be considered proof the poll was incorrect and a shift was happening in the other direction. The underlying premise being you can't have the red head minority have different opinions within their ranks. It must be all or nothing.

Goldberg wrote a recent editorial titled The Shifting Ground of Race, which was about how blacks and to a lesser degree liberals both regard Obama as good and bad for black people. His conclusion is while blacks are mostly in lock step with Democratic voters, he sees the infighting within the black community and liberals as a sign there will be a shift in attitudes for the monolithic black vote.

His most telling argument has to do with Cornel West, whom he describes as 'the most famous black intellectual in America,' and his criticism of Obama, and I'll put this in terms Goldberg couldn't put them in, acts too white. He pits this against Rep. James Clyburn, who in a recent LA Times article said Obama problems have to do because of his skin color. Goldberg put these two men at opposite ends of the corner, feeling this showed the shifting ground of race we talked about in the title of his article. I'm surprised he didn't do better research in his opinion, but that would have meant delving into areas too complicated to explore in a short editorial. Yes, I'm being a little kind to him because I'm in a generous mood at the moment.

While his premise in interesting, it shows a lack of general knowledge about groups of people, which is they seldom think as a monolith. The concept of holding your nose to vote for the lesser of two evils comes into play, if you want to think about it in the negative aspect. Here's an example I know personally; I have friends who are not black who voted for Obama. They expected a great shift in the country when they voted for him. Last year, when the health care debate and a lot of negative criticism was brought on the President, they wondered why he didn't fight back. They wanted less Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and more Chuck D from Public Enemy. They were so angry they vowed not to vote for him again. Well, after 2010 things changed. They were reminded what a Republican administration might look like when they saw what happened in New Jersey, Wisconsin and other states. While they aren't completely happy with Obama's agenda, they like it more than the opposition.

The people I speak of are independent voters, a few voting for the first time, others who stopped voting many years ago and have come back. I wouldn't take their example and project them as being representative of all independent voters. I wouldn't see the strife with Obama as being an independent voter's trend. If you had Republicans during the Bush administration who were upset with the way he ran things and who expressed they would bolt from the party if things didn't change, they wouldn't be considered part of a monolithic trend in the Republican party.

Had Goldberg continued to research the LA Times, his own newspaper, he would have discovered the question of Obama's legitimacy as a black politician went back to the early days of his run for President. There was a number of reports talking about how Obama, initially, had a hard time connecting to black audiences because of his background. When I say background, I'm not just talking about his upbringing. Historically, black politicians had to go through the religious circuit to get to elected office. Being a religious leader in the community meant having a willing and loyal base of supporters. Obama was part of a small brand of young politicians who didn't start off as preachers. It was a change of the traditional and was met with some concern early on. Another concern about Obama was the 'it wasn't his time' syndrome. Clinton was supposed to be the likely recipient of the monolithic black vote. My parents, like many other blacks across the country, if you want to think of them as a voting block, were pretty much in lock step in voting for Obama until Iowa. When he won Iowa everything changed.

Another thing Goldberg talks about, which I can't let go, is his defense of the tea party movement. Again, he uses the one example rule to put aside overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and that one example is the most weakest of platforms; some of my best friends are black. He said that arguably the most popular tea party candidate for president is Herman Cain, a conservative black businessman. This is because of one focus group featured on FoxNews after the South Carolina debate. Polls since then have not supported this fact. A poll done May 3 with likely voters who identified themselves as tea party members, Romney had 20%, Huckebee 17%, Palin 14% and Gingrich 13%. Cain was around 4% in the general poll. With a poll in South Carolina on April 25, which was after the South Carolina debate so it would figure that Herman Cain would have name recognition after the debate, he scored 1% among likely Republican voters.

So Goldberg took what was said on FoxNews about Cain being this lighting rod, this surprising voice in the tea party movement, and ran with it and concluded attitudes had changed from the tea party of the Healthcare debate with the monkey pictures, the watermelons at the White House, the Muslim talk. Again, if you looked at recent history, such as the race in Illinois a few election cycles ago, when the Republican candidate for the U. S. Senate dropped out, he was replaced by Alan Keys, someone who is no stranger to controversy. For some reason it was assumed putting a black face on the ballot could counteract the Democratic rival. That rival was Obama.

The point that has to be expressed is Goldberg is using monolithic voting to assume all black people will vote as an harmonious block and that's just not the case. The Republican party has people of varying extremes under it's tent. Because a majority may be anti-abortion, or pro-life if you will, that doesn't mean you don't have people who are pro-choice and who will vote pro-choice. It doesn't mean there is a shift against pro-life. People in the black community arguing over the merits of Obama are like the same people in the Republican party who had issues with Bush.


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Stop Thinking of Minority Voters as Borg - May 31, 2011
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