When I lived in Chicago, the funniest temperature to see displayed on a bank sign in January was:
1
Now, the NYT has a poll of black voters' preference in the Obama-McCain race that's almost as amusing:
89 - 2
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Clearly this calls for some affirmative action...
ReplyDeleteOf course the NYT would never consider the obvious ethnic bias in this. Imagine this was the white voter preference for McCain. There would be inquisitions.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to the other 9 %.
Yet all we'll hear about from the MSM over the next four months in that regard is how some white people (who in fact will vote for McCain by a margin of about 55-45) are so racist they'll never vote for a black person.
ReplyDeleteHmm... weren't you just talking about how
ReplyDeleteAfrican-American voters didn't like him as much as they liked more naturally African-American politicians
?
Interesting...
Notice the question in page 27.
ReplyDeletehttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20080716_POLL.pdf
73% of Americans overestimate the share of population that is black, whereas only 1% underestimates it. It seems the typical belief is that about 30% of the US population is black.
I noticed the same thing in Sweden, where a lot of people seem to think about half of all Americans are black.
Is this A reflection of black cultural influence, their stronger than average personality or the media grievance machine?
In fairness to the "2" - can you imagine the strength of character it must take for a black conservative to hold firm and to stand up and speak out against the Obamanation in this day and age?
ReplyDeleteEven JC Watts and Armstrong Williams have been getting all wobbly in the knees and making noises about how they might support BHO.
Guys like Thomas Sowell are literally one in a million - can you imagine the abuse that poor guy must have received over the course of his lifetime?
At this point, his skin must be thicker than a tortoise shell.
These numbers are just illusory. I'm sure that McCain's attempts to "outreach" black and Hispanic voters will pay off large dividends for him in the fall.
ReplyDeleteRemember how GWB's pre-2000 respectable standing among blacks and Hispanics in Texas transferred onto a nationwide level, allowing him to score landslide victories against Al Gore and John Kerry in the general election?
Remember how Gerald Ford's vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other civil rights legislation enabled him to trump Jimmy Carter's calculated humility and defeat Carter in the 1976 election?
If only Ronald Reagan had learned these lessons. The pathological hostility that black voters had towards him would have been erased and he actually might have won a presidential election.
91% of blacks generally vote for the democrat so the poll numbers are actually remarkably consistent. Had the same 91 blacks been polled during Bush-Clinton, the results probably would have been 86-5 or 87-4 in Boy George's disfavor.
ReplyDeleteI always find girls high school basketball games to have funny numbers.... ie. 107-4
ReplyDeleteAnother funny number is that 73 percent of the poll respondents think that blacks represent well over twenty percent or even over fifty percent of the USA population!
ReplyDeleteI recall seeing a poll some years ago that blacks think a neighborhood isn’t “integrated” unless it is fifty percent black, which at the time would be difficult considering blacks were just ten percent of the USA population.
To build an anecdote on what anonymous said ... where I grew up, a heavily Jewish town in Massachusetts, our high school sociology class settled on 25% as the class's best guess for the portion of the USA that was Jewish. I think we also guessed something around 60% for white ... so carrying the logic to its end, the average student in my high school class thought almost half of the whites in America were Jewish!!
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't necessarily call anyone willing to vote for McCain a "conservative"
ReplyDeleteThomas Sowell is the only prominent black figure I know who has explicitly come out against Barack Obama (and in favor of McCain). Walter Williams is probably too disgusted by all politicians to vote for anyone. Alan Keyes is just plain nuts and I don't think anyone really cares about him. Who else is left? In terms of high-profile blacks that aren't on the Obama bandwagon, Tom Sowell might be more than 1 in a million. He might be 1 in 35 million.
ReplyDeleteBTW, all because of Steve, Ross Douthat (and other Atlantic writers?) will be policing their threads far more aggressively. Apparently, in the comments thread, some of the Leftists just exploded and sabotaged the thread through such tactics as posting as other bloggers they disagreed with, smearing, etc.
ReplyDeleteI've come to believe that in the same way conservatives fear being called "racist", liberals are afraid of data that challenges their view that we are blank slates. They avoid threads that deal with these subjects and become primal if it is brought up to them. The most productive thing a conservative can do is not become defensive or even talk about each other's character, but be gracious and recite those dry statistics ad nauseum.
Why bother with people who won't change their minds? Some lurkers may, but mostly, to make them desist and to abandon the conservative blogs where they find homes and cause trouble. I learn much from threads and it is a pet peeve of mine to see a conservative thread where the regulars are liberals who aren't even interested in debate.
For comparison's sake: How Blacks Rate African American Newsmakers
ReplyDeleteThat's the HTML cache of a PDF; go to page 10 to see blacks' favorability of high profile blacks or search "How Blacks Rate"
I learn much from threads and it is a pet peeve of mine to see a conservative thread where the regulars are liberals who aren't even interested in debate.
ReplyDeleteThis is due to active neglect on the part of Douthat. He may have judged his comments section to "not be worth the time", but a well regulated comments section eventually develops a tone that is self perpetuating.
He's a fool for letting it devolve into a cesspool in which profane liberals fling verbal feces at him every day. Ban and delete, delete and ban till some decorum is restored.
Just compare Sailer's comment section before he regulated on "Jupiter" and afterwards, or GNXP to the Washington Monthly.
"In terms of high-profile blacks that aren't on the Obama bandwagon, Tom Sowell might be more than 1 in a million. He might be 1 in 35 million."
ReplyDeleteThere are 35 million 'high profile' blacks in America?
You must be one of those that believes black people make up 90% of the population!
lol @ Truth - I was thinking of that when I wrote it, but went with it anyway. Point is, Thomas Sowell stands alone.
ReplyDeleteObviously, McCain simply needs to reach out to blacks in the same way he is reaching out to Hispanics. With effort, he might be able to push his share of the black vote from a meager two percent to a stunning three or four percent.
ReplyDelete"Point is, Thomas Sowell stands alone."
ReplyDeleteActually, there are two other black McCain supporters mentioned here that will make the tally for the election look as follows:
Obama: 35,999,997 A.A votes
McCain 3 A.A votes
But Sowell is a smart guy, maybe his vote should count twice.
Obviously, McCain simply needs to reach out to blacks in the same way he is reaching out to Hispanics.
ReplyDeleteHeh. However, the point of any such outreach would not be to score a few more black votes but rather to reassure moderate whites that McCain is not a racist and that, therefore, it's OK to vote for him.
lucille
ReplyDeleteHmm... weren't you just talking about how
African-American voters didn't like him as much as they liked more naturally African-American politicians
?
Interesting...
Fascinating. I mean, who's more naturally African-American than John McCain?
The temperature of 1 is funny. Why though?
ReplyDeleteRe: The first Anonymous and Sleep on demographics:
A Harvard Law graduate I knew once told me (after I asked him to estimate) the US is 30% jewish, 20% asian, 40% black, 5% latino - and the rest white.
I'm convinced such misconceptions affect public policy, and that if instead of my laughing at him I had asked him to reconsider just the size of the latino population he would have reduced it to 1-2%.
Anon, the post I was quoting was discussing Obama, not McCain.
ReplyDeleteI take back that comment - I wasn't reading carefully enough.
ReplyDeleteI learn much from threads and it is a pet peeve of mine to see a conservative thread where the regulars are liberals who aren't even interested in debate.
ReplyDeleteThe leftists you write about are post-modern facists, who believe that all claims to truth are products of power, so don't expect them to engage you or anyone else in a reasoned debate. All they have to offer is perpetual negation.
Lucille
ReplyDeleteu r right it is very interesting to note that blacks vote in blocks, showing a high level of groupthink. and their preference goes something like this, they would preferrably vote democrat, preferrably they would vote for the blacker candidate if not in race then in politics, and if the blackest guy available is half black, doesn't matter if they personally like him or not(i.e. jesse jackson)
What's even more interesting is that u should have figured out the aforementioned by observing reality or reading up on steve's blog(which u must have, else u wouldn't be here), yet u try to discredit an argument(to whatever little extent) by nitpicking. which shows ur either A.lack of knowledge of the bigger argument(u may not be as smart as u think u r). or B. u r just trying to say anything to discredit the bigger point.(u r a deceiver) or C. u r saying it to prove to urself that r right and enlightened.( u r narcassisstic )
"73% of Americans overestimate the share of population that is black, whereas only 1% underestimates it. It seems the typical belief is that about 30% of the US population is black.
ReplyDeleteIs this A reflection of black cultural influence, their stronger than average personality or the media grievance machine?"
Okay, I'll take a crack. You and your husband/wife live in a home with two children under the age of ten. It seems like those who are loud, self-obsessed and haven't grasped responsibility and respect for others make up much more than half the household.
"It seems like those who are loud, self-obsessed and haven't grasped responsibility and respect for others make up much more than half the household."
ReplyDeleteI ephasize with your example anonymous; when I was a wee tot I didn't have the most cohesive upbringing either.
It seems the typical belief is that about 30% of the US population is black. Is this a reflection of black cultural influence
ReplyDeleteNo. It is well-known that advertisers must show a non-white in every advert that has three or more people in it. Three whites and no non-whites has a "the-geographical-region-to-which-this ad-is-directed-is-an-overwhelmingly (90% +)-white-area" feel. Four or more whites and no non-whites is an ad about herpes or retarded people.
Absolutely verboten is any ad of all whites, non-diseased, non-retarded, non-gay, numbering four or more. THAT gives off a "the-Nazis-are-gathering-again" vibe...at least to a certain vocal segment of the population.
It's the kind of vibe some Jews I know term "WHITEBREAD" - pronounced in a tone of sneering rancor. And the paler the Jew, the louder this sneer.
So the 30% estimate is not more than a reflection of affirmative action practices in ubiquitous advertising. Pick up any circular and count.