> What makes you think that blacks are a unified community
> with no class distinction, holding uniform political views?
I'm surprised that you're the one who took my tongue-in-cheek comment and started asking serious questions; usually you have a better sense of humor. I certainly don't think that US blacks hold "uniform political views," but I was only half-joking when I said that a 14% approval rating for Bush among blacks really does seem high.
As for the political views of US blacks, the "black consensus" (credit the Black Commentator for this concept; see http://www.blackcommentator.com/17_analysis.html) is considerably to the left of the consensus in the rest of the country, and that holds true across class and income for blacks, though of course there are variations. This statement of yours, while partially true, is woefully inadequate:
> It is not that there are inequalities because there are racial
> divisions in the US, but the other way around -- racial
> divisions are created by class divisions
Race was itself created by slavery, which was an economic system and a class division -- but that was centuries ago. Now, it's untrue to say that one is prior to and independent of the other in the way our society works; race and class are hopelessly enmeshed and entangled. To take the most important example of why this is the wrong way to look at things, note that a wildly disproportionate number of US blacks who have achieved steady and comfortable incomes (colloquially known as the "middle class" in this country) are people in public employment. This is because public employment has historically been less discriminatory than the private sector, especially since the gains of the 1960s movements; the private sector is in fact still a hotbed of systematic discrimination, and to the extent that that is overcome, it has a lot to do with affirmative action initiatives that are themselves the result of the threat of government-enforced anti-discrimination measures. Of course I'm simplifying things (and all of these gains are under attack), but you know that the broad outlines of this story are true. In addition to the legacy of oppression and day-to-day petty indignities that US blacks suffer -- all of which serve to reinforce a unique black identity that would be described as a "nation within a nation" in most European countries -- these employment patterns produce a very different attitude toward the efficacy of the state among the black "middle class" than among most whites of similar income and wealth. Whites are much more likely to believe in the low-tax, "get government off our backs" nonsense.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories