Read on Twitter
Again we see how expertise in race, racism, racial history is an essential but underdeveloped journalistic skill.That Latinos, Asian & white votes are split is NOT surprising. It is the uniformity of the Black vote that is exceptional & it stems from a singular racial experience.
Black Americans, because of a history of chattel slavery and racial apartheid, have been forced into a monolithic vote even as they hold diverse political views. That's bc every aspect of Black Americans' lives was legally and socially constrained by their designation as Black.
A Black doctor, a Black immigrant, a Black Northerner, a Black evangelical all were barred from schools, jobs, housing, libraries, parks, voting, by law, by custom, by policy. Their individual attributes were literally irrelevant. Their citizenship and rights always contested.
This was true until a half century ago! I am part of the first generation of Black Americans in the history of this country for whom it was not illegal to deny me marriage rights, housing, education and employment simply because my ancestors had once been enslaved.
Thus, Black Americans have a shared history and shared racial experience that is singular in its uniformity, and Black Americans have always had to vote their civil and human rights over any other concerns or political issues. That is a different experience from other groups.
We tend to cover elections, our country overall, as if every group who is not white experiences racism, racial inequality and race the same but there is a distinct experience of being the people on which the established racial hierarchy was built.We need more sophistication here.
In a country as divided as this one, with the demographics shifting so rapidly that we're heading towards a destiny where there is no racial majority, the lack of understanding of history and the how race works in this country is going to be an increasing journalistic liability.
