Some Surprising Data on Black Americans
Pew Research Tells All
The Democratic Party has very slowly seen their grip on Asian, Hispanic and Black voters slipping as of late. There are many nuanced, complex reasons for this. Here’s some fascinating data from Pew Research:
66% of Black Democrats believe sex is immutable and assigned at birth.
62% of Black Americans believe race should NOT be a factor in college admissions.
38% of Black Americans believe police funding should be INCREASED; 38% believe funding should remain as is; only 23% want it decreased.
In 2021, 65% of Black Americans believed that increased attention given to inequality had NOT led to changes for the better for Black Americans.
64% of Black adults feel that the ‘racial reckoning’ and focus on identity has NOT led to positive changes.
Only 29% of Black Democrats identify as ‘liberal’ within the party. (Compared with 55% of Whites.)
Currently, there has been a roughly 11% drop in Black voter support of the Democratic Party, dropping from 90% to 79%.
55% of Black Americans believe Democrats should work hard to find common ground with Republicans, versus only 41% who feel Democrats should proceed with their agenda no matter what.
***All this data seems to make one thing clear: White lefties are turning Black voters off, big time. If white liberals keep being paternalistic and keep ignoring what Black voters actually want, and how these voters think and feel, Dems are going to be in trouble.
Of course what I’m presenting here is only one angle on a complicated story. 63% of Black adults, according to Pew (source #9 below) still feel that racism is a major problem, and 60% feel that police brutality is. And there’s more in this vein. I’m not trying to oversimplify the case or cherry-pick or be one-sided. In general, Black Americans still vastly favor the Democratic Party broadly (though they’re generally more moderate).
I’m simply pointing out that this demographic seems to clearly *not* like the direction the Democratic Party is moving. We should pay attention to this.
Resources:
This phenomenon is also present in the Native American world. Public facing Indians are overwhelmingly of the left and far left so that gives the false impression that leftism is the default mode. It's not.
I think the gay rights movement is also being hijacked in a similar manner by the far left. I'm a gay guy who used to consider myself an ally for transexual people, but these days I imagine many would classify me as a transphobe.
I considered myself an ally because I believed (and still believe) that some people experience profound gender dysphoria and take steps to relieve that pain through medical procedures, fashion choices, etc. My heart went out to those people and I wished them every happiness. I was happy to call such a person he or she, whichever they preferred.
By my own definition, I'm still an ally to transexual people but what I believed is no longer good enough. Now I'm required to sign on to the idea that genders don't exist except as they are individually imagined and "identified" with. I'm required to believe that there is no such thing as a boy or a girl, a man or a woman -- at least not anatomically speaking. I'm required to use language that's neutral and degendered, required to identify myself by my preferred pronouns. As a gay man, some would go so far as to say I'm required to be open to dating transmen. It's too much.
I'm told that legislation being proposed in some states to limit the medical transitioning of minors is anti-LGBT. Is it though? There are many things I love about being a gay men, but my sexual preference hasn't endowed me with any special medical knowledge. I have no idea whether performing potentially irreversible medical procedures on trans-identifying minors is a good idea. How would I know such a thing without deciphering a great deal of medical research I'm not trained to decipher? The idea that I should automatically have an opinion on a medically cloudy issue like this is absurd.
Can we please go back to the day when gay rights was about being free to love (or just have sex with) any consenting adult who would have me? The rest of it is outside my wheelhouse.