Danny ChaiI don’t know if you read the comic strip Mallard Fillmore, but it enrages me like no other comic strip out there. It’s a political cartoon from a conservative perspective. What enrages me is that it’s so consistently and, in my view, unthinkingly partisan. I think I have the same problem with those political shows where they have the conservative voice debate the liberal voice. I value independent thought. On these shows, you’re guaranteed that one side will never sway the other, else the whole premise of the shows disintegrate. If there is no possibility of you changing your opinion no matter what facts or arguments you’re presented with, in my view, you’re simply not thinking. At best, you’re rationalizing. And that drives me crazy.
I suppose the whole point is to present the conservative view, but the comic drives me nuts. Because beyond being ultra-conservative, it’s condescending and sarcastic. It regularly slams liberals for engaging in hearsay and utilizing questionable or partisan sources, then does the same itself. I cannot express how upset that makes me. I had to force myself to stop reading it else it affect my health. It’s kind of shocking to me that it appears in the liberal Merc. Supposedly, its defenders say it’s just a conservative version of Doonesbury. For all I know, that strip may enrage me also, but I don’t read it as it’s boring.
That said, a recent strip (yes, I backslid and read it) brought up what I thought was an interesting point. You read how Obama had difficulty making inroads in Southern states. White Southerners voted for McCain in greater proportions than anywhere else in the country (besides Utah), and that’s attributed to racism. (SN. I’m sure you’ve seen the red/blue state maps representing the 2008 Presidential Election results. But I find the results by county far more interesting. For example, geographically, nearly every state is more red, even California. And even in Texas, which went for McCain, Obama carried each of the counties containing Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso. The county maps tell a far more interesting story than the state ones.)
What the strip brings up is that the overwhelming majority of blacks (I want to say 90%) voted for Obama. The question it asks is, when whites vote for McCain, it’s racism; when blacks vote for Obama, it’s because their policy views align more closely with his. Why the double standard?
It was presented with more defensiveness and sarcasm which upset me, but as to its fundamental point, it made me think. Why is it OK that blacks prefer black candidates but not the same for whites? Honestly, I can’t come up with a good answer.
And call me crazy, but I’m not 100% convinced that such preferences are necessarily bad. OK, maybe a little bit. But I’m not 100% convinced it’s racism at work. I think that all people naturally prefer people like them, on many different levels. Race is just one of them. Gender is another. During the primaries, when I read the liberal commentators, the large majority of the women supported Hillary. Socio-economic status is another. That’s why candidates spend an inordinate amount of time doing things that “regular” people do, e.g. hunting, bowling, whatever, to convince people that their lives are similar, even when it’s blatantly obvious that they’re not. Geography is another. That’s traditionally one of the main considerations when selecting a vice-president – geographic balance. People tend to vote for people from near where they are.
In short, people tend to prefer people who are like them, and “like them” contains many criteria, race being just one of them. It’s natural. And I’m undecided whether it’s bad or not.
I’m not denying that real racism exists. And I do think the Republican Southern strategy from Nixon on deliberately played on racist fears. But even granting that, I’m not sure that different racial groups showing favoritism toward their own in the polls necessarily constitutes racism. It might, I just don’t think it’s necessarily true. And if it is true, I’m not sure why it’s not fair to make the same criticism across all races, genders, and so forth when they show clear preferences for their own.