Well, for ACORN it is about race....the more blacks

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

Interesting column from the Times, written by a black. I bring this here just as a matter of interest. I found it to be quite interesting.

Op-Ed Columnist
Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: November 29, 2008

We now know that blacks probably didn�t tip the balance for Proposition 8. Myth busted. However, the fact remains that a strikingly high percentage of blacks said they voted to ban same-sex marriage in California. Why?

There was one very telling (and virtually ignored) statistic in CNN�s exit poll data that may shed some light: There were far more black women than black men, and a higher percentage of them said that they voted for the measure than the men. How wide was the gap? According to the exit poll, 70 percent of all blacks said that they voted for the proposition. But 75 percent of black women did. There weren�t enough black men in the survey to provide a reliable percentage for them. However, one can mathematically deduce that of the raw number of survey respondents, nearly twice as many black women said that they voted for it than black men.

(1) Blacks are much more likely than whites to attend church, according to a Gallup report, and black women are much more likely to attend church than black men. Anyone who has ever been to a black church can attest to the disparity in the pews. And black women�s church attendance may be increasing.

According to a report issued this spring by Child Trends, a nonprofit research center, weekly church attendance among black 12th graders rose 26 percent from 1993 to 2006, while weekly church attendance for white 12th graders remained virtually flat. In 2006, those black teenagers were nearly 50 percent more likely to attend church once a week than their white counterparts. And it is probably safe to assume that many of them were going to church with their mothers since Child Trends reported that around the time that they were born, nearly 70 percent of all black children were born to single mothers.

(2) This high rate of church attendance by blacks informs a very conservative moral view. While blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, an analysis of three years of national data from Gallup polls reveals that their views on moral issues are virtually indistinguishable from those of Republicans. Let�s just call them Afropublicrats.

(3) Marriage can be a sore subject for black women in general. According to 2007 Census Bureau data, black women are the least likely of all women to be married and the most likely to be divorced. Women who can�t find a man to marry might not be thrilled about the idea of men marrying each other.

Proponents of gay marriage would do well to focus on these women if they want to win black votes. A major reason is that black women vote at a higher rate than black men. In the CNN national exit poll, there were 40 percent more black women than black men, and in California there were 50 percent more. But gay marriage advocates need to hone their strategy to reach them.

First, comparing the struggles of legalizing interracial marriage with those to legalize gay marriage is a bad idea. Many black women do not seem to be big fans of interracial marriage either. They�re the least likely of all groups to intermarry, and many don�t look kindly on the black men who intermarry at nearly three times the rate that they do, according to a 2005 study of black intermarriage rates in the Wisconsin Law Review. Wrong reference. Don�t even go there.

Second, don�t debate the Bible. You can�t win. Religious faith is not defined by logic, it defies it. Instead, decouple the legal right from the religious rite, and emphasize the idea of acceptance without endorsement.

Then, make it part of a broader discussion about the perils of rigidly applying yesterday�s sexual morality to today�s sexual mores. Show black women that it backfires. The stigma doesn�t erase the behavior, it pushes it into the shadows where, devoid of information and acceptance, it become more risky.

For instance, most blacks find premarital sex unacceptable, according to the Gallup data. But, according to data from a study by the Guttmacher Institute, blacks are 26 percent more likely than any other race to have had premarital sex by age 18, and the pregnancy rate for black teens is twice that of white teens. They still have premarital sex, but they do so uninformed and unprotected.

That leads to a bigger problem. According to a 2004 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women have an abortion rate that is three times that of white women.

More specifically, blacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn�t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women�s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. (In contrast, only 13 percent of the white men in the study said they had sex with both men and women, while 14 percent of the white women said that they knew their partners were bisexual.)

So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage. This way, everyone wins.

I think history has established that slavery is wrong. I refuse to believe that I, as a white person, must continually apologize to the black man or woman for slavery that happened to their ancestors centuries ago! I personally have never codoned or owned slaves and they personally have never been slaves. So I ask you, what does slavery have to do with Obama being elected president? What does slavery have to do with his compaign and this election? Who is making race an issue here? I'll answer the last one, YOU are by insinuating that Obama and all African-Americans deserve special accolades just because they are black. They did not suffer as slaves. They did not have to overcome slavery. And today's African-Americans receive more rights and more governmental assistant, then any white person I know. Just look at affirmative action for crying out loud!

It's not about what kind of job this guy can do, or how well he can lead the country. No it most certainly has not been! And I'm sick and tired of everyone making it out otherwise. It's always been about race and that's all its ever been about! I'm hopeful that anyone will be able to pull us out of this depression no matter what their color is or whether it be a man or woman. It's not going to be an easy job. But all through the campaign and to this day we kept hearing about how it's not about race. That was the line that this man from Illinois was trying to sell to us. He'd walk around and tell us he understands what we're going through, it's not about race. Then he'd talk about his grandmother being afraid of black me (uh, hello..I thought you said it wasn't about race). When he was elected my brother and his friends went out and celebrated in the streets because now we got a brother in there. He said to me, "you should be happy because we finally got a brother in the white house who is one of us". I asked him what does he mean "one of us", that's he's black like us so I should rejoicing and saying hallelulah thank you Jesus.

But this latest display of what he has planned for the innaugeration has got to be the most downright utter distasteful display of "flaunting" his race. Now at the inaugeration it's going to be a huge "Gone With the Winds" type of theme with ladies in their plantation dresses. I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure I'll be hearing about him dressing the blacks up like the what our ancestors were dressed when they were slaves. He has taken racism to a whole new level. This is disgusting and this is not what the men who founded this country had in mind. It took us years and years to get through the slavery issues and now here comes Mr. Obama bringing all that sh!t back up again and dividing people. I've got some friends who are white and nowhere in their history do they have any relatives who owned slaves, but now Mr. Obama is going to make all of them feel as though they are slave owners. I don't know what it is but why does America seem to get stuck and not be able to move forward. Instead of looking into the future he's dragging back up the plantation and slavery issues and making a big deal of them. I am just sick to death of coming on and reading how it's not about race when that's all that it is about. I voted for Mr. Obama because I like him. I didn't think he was qualified and he doesn't have the experience, but I'm willing to give a new unknown person a chance. Now he pulls this racial crap and it makes me ashamed to be black and more ashamed that I was conned into his lies and voted for him. (even the NAACP is criticizing this). It's not about race?????? Tell me another one.

Because of the following, which has been well known for hundreds of years now. This form of racism was established in the American culture by white people, some of whom now deny its existence.

Subconscious mental connection between blacks, apes may reinforce subtle discrimination

Many U.S. citizens may not hold openly racist beliefs today, but they still may subconsciously link African Americans with apes because people still use words and metaphors that subtly reinforce a less-than-human bias and endorse violence against Blacks, according to a new study.

"Historical racist images and books dehumanizing African Americans in the 19th and early 20th century relied heavily on the Negro-ape metaphor, which was used to stereotype Blacks as lazy, dim and aggressive," said lead author Phillip Atiba Goff, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State. "Such dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.

"The images have disappeared from popular culture and from most people's memory," he added. "However, after completing six studies, we found strong evidence that Black-ape linkages still influence people subconsciously and impact their judgment particularly in the case of African American suspects and defendants."

The study's findings are published in the paper, "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences," in a recent issue (February) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

Goff and fellow researchers Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor of psychology at Stanford University; Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively, conducted six studies of college-age students. They found that participants � even those with no stated prejudices or knowledge of the historical images � were quicker to associate Blacks with apes than they were to associate Whites with apes.

Goff and fellow researchers Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor of psychology at Stanford University, Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively, conducted six studies of White college-age students. They found that participants � even those with no stated prejudices or knowledge of the historical images -- were quicker to associate Blacks with apes than they were to associate Whites with apes.

In the first three studies, researchers subliminally flashed Black or White male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime" the participants, who could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with Black faces than with White faces.

http://www.physorg.com/news123944737.html

Please do not tell any of the following their lives are not DIRECTLY affected by the President:

1. The teachers and students who spend most of their time preparing for NCLB standardized testing while falling behind in basic life skills. This affects EVERY student and EVERY teacher in EVERY public school in the United States.

2. The soldiers who have been to Iraq,as well as their survivors. Their mission was to destroy nonexistent WMDs.

3. The millions of people who cannot afford health insurance or oil to heat their homes. Of course our president does believe "profits" are a good thing; unfortunately they are for corporate America.

I am not advising who to vote for; obviously it is a personal choice. But anyone who says no one person can make a difference, good or bad, is naive.

People can raise this question over and over again but what I would like to know is this: Has anyone ever raised the same questions regarding white candidates in this and/or past elections and why people voted for them? Of course not...I wouldn't care if Obama were multicolored - people are going to vote for whomever they choose and I for one am weary of the constant references to race...

I have always voted for dems regardless of race. Had Hiliary made it through the primary, I would vote for her, even though I personally believe that our country is not ready a female to hold that position. I speak from a female point of view and we are too often guided by our feelings and make rash decisions, but later end up regretting our action because we did not think it through. I would love to have Bill back as our president, life was good and he worked for the people.

Now can you quit calling us racists, because from what I can tell from posts nobody here is...

are disgusting and all too obvious to do any damage. Study the issues we are facing, quit trying to stir up hate.

for Barack simply because he is black, even if he truly was the better candidate? I heard a discussion that contained many variables such as I'm afraid to support him openly due to racial attacks. One lady said she had had threats made on her life because she was supporting Barack and she was a white lady. Another lady stated that there are closet supporters, people who claim to support one candidate in the open, but secretly vote for the total opposite of the one they show support for. Me personally, it does not matter to me their race, I have not benefited in the past 8 years from anything the Republicans have done, so I hold true to being a real Democrat. I have heard so many people state they changed their position or status to Republican simpley because Barack was running, but had it been Hiliary they definitely would have voted Democrat.

This is just a question of mine out of curiosity and I really want to know how many will answer the question honestly. By the way, I am black before the question arises.