| Alan Sondheim on 8 Jan 2001 14:03:11 -0000 |
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| <nettime> The Black Electorate |
In the United States, we're witnessing an incrasingly politicized black electorate; it was the Congressional Black Caucus in the House of Repre- sentatives that objected to Bush's election. The Black Radical COngress BRC-NEWS list, moderated by Art McGee, funnels articles, media news, calls for action. I'm sending the following on to nettime as an index of the list quality/relevancy to US politics and media; I'm hoping many of you will subscribe, if you haven't already. The NY Times Almanac reports that a black male born today has a 28.5% probability of incarceration. Bush, by proxy, if nothing else, is a butcher. - Alan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 22:08:49 -0500 From: Jennifer Jones <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: [BRC-NEWS] The Black Electorate -- 2000 Along the Color Line December 2000 The Black Electorate -- 2000 By Dr. Manning Marable <[email protected]> Black America tried its best to keep George W. Bush out of the White House. Its inability to do so does not negate the many significant gains it achieved in the electoral arena. The 2000 presidential election was by far the closest in terms of the Electoral College since 1876, and the closest in terms of the popular vote since Kennedy's narrow margin of victory over Nixon forty years ago. Yet despite widespread reports that voter turnout was heavy, the actual number of votes cast was about 104 million, only one million more than in 1996. Less than 51 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots, compared to 49 percent in 1996 and 50 percent in 1988. Considering that both major parties spent more than one billion dollars in the general election, with millions of phone calls and direct mail, the turnout was remarkably weak. The lackluster major presidential candidates, Bush and Gore, failed to generate any enthusiasm or deep commitment among the voters. The African-American electorate, however, was the exception to the rule. In state after state, black turnout was stronger than anticipated, and comprised the critical margin of difference for Gore and hundreds of Democratic candidates in Senate, House and local races. Nationwide, a clear majority of white voters went for Bush over Gore, 53 percent vs. 42 percent. African Americans, however, went overwhelmingly for Gore, 90 percent vs. 8 percent. Bush's feeble share of the black vote was actually less than his father had received as the Republican presidential candidate in 1992, or that Bob Dole garnered in 1996. Bush's 2000 black vote was the lowest total received by any Republican presidential candidate since 1964, when Barry Goldwater received only six percent. In Florida alone, the African-American vote jumped from 527,000 in 1996 to 952,000. In Missouri, over 283,000 blacks voted, compared to only 106,000 four years ago. In state after state, African Americans were the critical margin of victory for the Gore-Lieberman ticket. In Maryland, Bush defeated Gore among white voters by a margin of 51 to 45 percent. But African-American turnout represented a substantial 22 percent of Maryland's total statewide vote. Because black Maryland voters supported Gore by 90 percent, Gore cruised to a 17 point victory in the state. In Michigan, the white electorate backed Bush, 51 to 46 percent, but African Americans came out for Gore at 90 percent, giving the state to the Democrats. In Illinois, a massive turnout of African-American voters in Chicago helped to give Gore 56 percent of the statewide total vote, and a plurality of over 600,000 votes. The NAACP's National Voter Fund, and the Association's $12 million investment in the elections, was the principal factor behind the surge in the African-American electorate. The NAACP financed a political "command center" with dozens of full-time staff members and volunteers running telephone banks and a satellite TV uplink. Thousands of black churches, community-based organizations, and labor groups mobilized African Americans to turn out on Election Day. Jesse Jackson's campaigning was also critical to Gore's success in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. Less publicized, but potentially just as important as the African-American vote, was the electoral response by organized labor. The AFL-CIO devoted millions of dollars to the effort to defeat Bush. In Michigan, for example, where labor households represented roughly 30 percent of the state- wide vote in 1992, the union vote eight years later totaled 44 percent of the state's electorate. In Pennsylvania, union households comprised 19 percent of the statewide vote in 1992, but increased to 26 percent of all voters last year. The greatest tragedy of the 2000 presidential race, from the vantagepoint of the African-American electorate, was that the black vote would have been substantially larger, if the criminal justice policies that have been put in place by the Clinton-Gore administration had been different. As noted by the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, and Human Rights Watch, over 4.2 million Americans were prohibited from voting in the 2000 presidential election, because they were in prison or had in the past been convicted of a felony. Of that number, more than one-third, or 1.8 million voters who are disenfranchised, are African Americans. This represents 13 percent of all black males of voting age in the U.S. In Florida and Alabama, 31 percent of all black men as of 1998 were permanently disenfranchised because of felony convictions, many for nonviolent crimes. In New Mexico and Iowa, one in every four African-American males is permanently disenfranchised. In Texas, one in five black men are not allowed to vote. The selection (not election) of George W. Bush should not discourage African-American leadership or institutions. More than any other Americans, we fought and died to enjoy the right to vote. Now we must mobilize to insure that every citizen, including prisoners and those who have been previously convicted of felonies, can exercise their full democratic rights. The black vote is the decisive constituency in the fight for democracy in America. -- Dr. Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science, and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University. "Along the Color Line" is distributed free of charge to over 350 publications throughout the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Marable's column is also available on the Internet at <http://www.manningmarable.net>. Copyleft (c) 2000 Manning Marable. Redistribute Freely. 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