There's been a lot made, in the national mass-media, and even here on DU, of the supposed "fact" that Barack Obama received only one in ten "white" votes here in Alabama, for example.
Ten percent. One in ten.
The true number appears to be closer to 17% or 18%, up to maybe 20%.
I know that still isn't a huge percentage, but let's look at the facts.
John McCain won Alabama handily, at 59% to 39%. That's a healthy (for McCain) twenty-point margin.
But flash back to 2004. George Bush beat John Kerry 62% to 37%. That's an even healthier margin (for Bush), at 25%.
So statewide, Obama did 5 points better than John Kerry did last time around.
Flash forward again to 2008, and to Alabama's "whitest" county. Winston county in 97.9% white, and
0.6% black, according to 2006 Census Bureau estimates. Barack Obama received 17.5% of the vote in this whitest, and supposedly most insular, of all Alabama counties.
Before we get to the biggest county in the state, let me mention that I'm not aware of any particular surge here in black voter turnout, as compared to white voter turnout. Turnout was healthy, all around.
Jefferson County is the biggest county in the state. That's where Birmingham is. In 2004, George Bush won Jefferson by exactly nine points. In 2008, Barack Obama won Jefferson by 5.1%, 52.2% to 47.1%. I was pleasantly surprised by that result. I wasn't expecting Obama to take Jefferson County.
I'm not trying to convince anyone that Alabama is in any real way "liberal" or "progressive." It's obviously not. What I'm telling you is that real Southern Democrats, and liberals and progressives, did not abandon Obama because he is black. That is a lie being perpetuated by the mass media for their own benefit, whatever that mysterious benefit is.
Supposedly, it is for the same reason that they have bombarded us with Tim Russert's ludicrously simplistic conception of "blue states" and "red states."
Our American society is perhaps the most complicated society to ever exist on this blue earth. And for whatever reason, the Borg cannot resist the temptation to meddle in our apparent progress.
I remember vividly on election night, John King highlighting on his "magic map" a large swath of the South, in which he proclaimed "not a single county voted for Obama... A sad reminder of Jim Crow..."
Sadly, I laughed at his ignorance (or was it?) when he displayed his electronic wonder, with vast stretches of majority African-American counties tinted in Russert's red crayon.
I knew instantly that John King was either an over-paid hack of astounding ignorance, or a willing accomplice to the continued
sowing of ignorance. (To what ends, I'm still trying to determine, exactly.)
And along these lines,
Bill Maher owes an apology to the people of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and we are still waiting.
TUSCALOOSA | Two weeks ago on his HBO show "Real Time," comedian, social commentator and movie producer Bill Maher said something to the effect he would believe race had not played a role in the 2008 presidential election "When Tuscaloosa, Alabama, votes for Barack Obama."
Well, guess what, Bill, our fine city of 80,000 or so on the banks of the lovely Black Warrior River, went overwhelmingly for Obama, 62 percent to 38 percent, by my preliminary, rough estimate.
Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee. These are not liberal paradises. I, for one, have never claimed them to be. But I'm telling you that the
VAST majority of voters that would vote against a candidate because of his or her race already belong to the Republican party.
The Deep South is a conservative region by-and-large. Even the African-American population down here is more conservative, at least socially, than you may realize. I don't like it anymore than you do.
I've reached middle-age, as difficult as it is for me to believe. Schools here were still racially segregated just a few years before I started going to school. I didn't realize all that stuff when I was a kid. I had a black "girlfriend" in the first grade. I didn't know at the time, that a few years earlier, me and her would have been shipped off to different schools just because of our skin. But I know that history now.
I want to see more progress before I die. I think it is important to push back against these "memes" that paint the Deep South as some alien culture. Down here, we still have plenty of problems. On that scale, religious fundamentalism (among both white and black folk) is far ahead of any systemic racism.
I'm just trying to help some of you understand the South. It's not quite the way you think it is.