At any rate, while Buchanan is being repugnant, I do think this is something conservatives are going to want to think about. Consider the case of Jeff Sessions (R-AL). We're talking about a guy who's too racist to get confirmed as a judge, but just racist enough to win a Senate seat in Alabama. And it's not because Alabama is a lilly white state. With 65 percent of its electorate white, and 29 percent of its electorate African-American, Alabama is much more demographically favorable to the Democrats than is the country at large. But while McCain pulled 55 percent of the white vote nationwide he scored 88 percent of white vote in Alabama. And this is what you tend to see in the Deep South, white Americans exhibiting the kind of high levels of racial solidarity in voting behavior that you normally associate with African-Americans in the US political context.
Consequently states with small white populations like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be solid GOP territory. Under the circumstances, it's not entirely crazy for Republicans to believe that the right way to respond to shifting American demographics is by just trying to amp-up the level of racial anxiety in the shrinking white majority. An analogy might be to religion. When the country was overwhelmingly Christian, Christianity didn't play much of a role in our politics. But as the Christian majority shrank it became more and more viable to explicitly mobilize Christian identity for political purposes.
There are a couple problems here, I'd submit. One is that Sotomayor isn't black (except in Baltimore.) She's a Latina. Amping up the race-baiting isn't just going to turn off black people (most of whom are already turned-off) it turns off Latinos also.
The second problem is that it likely turns a significant portion of white people also. The GOP's problem isn't that it needs to shore up Alabama--at least not yet. It's problem is, well, basically everywhere else that isn't Alabama. I don't know how bashing Sotomayor makes you more competitive in, say, Colorado or Oregon. I'd assume the opposite.
Altogether, I think this is awful political advice. But it's about what you'd expect from the guy who, as one of Matt's commenters note, told us that Sarah Palin would steal women from Obama. You don't have to be right to do Buchanan's job. Or even sincere. You just have to be very loud.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
That's just...how they roll. And the cynicism of it is astonishing.
It's a bit of a bind. They certainly can't win without Alabama and Mississippi, and both states have demonstrated that they (along with other southern states, to a lesser extent) are "solid" for white supremacism. They will not be faithful to the Republicans, any more than they were to the Democrats in the 60s.
Buchanan is an idiot. He is not worth your time to even comment on that MF'er. Let him fade away to obscurity where he belongs.
But I thought this was funny...
Was it meant to be? I'm guessing it's because when you were young all people of color were black? You were "all the same"?
Btw, I grew up military. I think I am color-blind more than most. I'm trying to understand the opposite point of view. Yours is from the African-American side.
My dawgs...my peeps...well, we were all colors. Didn't mean a thing.
Yeah, it's a joke. In Baltimore, when I lived there at least, we weren't big on ethnic diversity. There were no Dominicans or Puerto-Ricans or Mexicans. It was blacks and whites. Pick a side. Obviously, it was never that simple, but it was how we saw the world.
On another note, Sonia Sotomayor, on the basis of looks, could very easily--extremely easily--pass for a black woman, if she lived outside of New York. I think in NY, the accent is a dead give-away. Even the scrubbed one. But back home, we would have just passed her the potato salad.
with Mayo of course. No Miracle Whip crap. The sh-t ain't even food...
oh wait. Wrong post. Everybody ignore that. Don't start again... :)
You ain't never lied. When I first glanced at her I said to myself,she has some black in her. Out in Oakland, we wouldn't give her a second glance entering Nellie's Soul Food.
Virtually all Puerto Ricans are in fact "black" by the traditional standard of "if any African ancestry is in the mix you're 'black'." Sotomayor herself is actually pretty light-skinned by Puerto Rican standards. Also, regarding accents, maybe I'm crazy but in most native New Yorkers, of whatever color, I often hear a large dollop of what sounds "Jewish" to my mid-Western ears.
Many Caribbean Latinos do have a certain amount of black blood. Especially in Cuba and DR, but even with Puerto Ricans, it is frequently visible.
-brucds- I often think the same thing about the black NYC accent. But it's weird because all the "man the street" black people from nyc I ever met sound just like black new yorkers, whatever that means.
But then I hear Chuck Rangel or Ed Thompson and if I weren't looking the first image that came to mind would definitely be "Jewish."
No idea what that's about though.
Nellies !! Yeah !!!
Immigration has come to Baltimore and surrounding pretty strongly post-2000. Some of the grocery stores are bilingual now.
When Mexicans started rolling deep throughout New York City, I knew the days of just Black and White were coming to a close in much of this country.
On another note, Sonia Sotomayor, on the basis of looks, could very easily--extremely easily--pass for a black woman, if she lived outside of New York.
This is true. If she showed up at a BBQ, no one would think twice about her..>>>LOL
She also looks like some of my Italian aunts on my mother's side.
I have several Italian relatives who might be taken for Puerto Rican, or even very light black (based more on hair texture than anything else). Sotomayor looks a bit like them, too. Italy is not that far from Africa, and black people have been turning up in Europe for thousands of years. Not all race mixing happened in the New World.
"Italy is not that far from Africa, and black people have been turning up in Europe for thousands of years."
Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper had an extensive discussion of this issue in the Tarantino-scripted "True Romance." Didn't end well...
She could be Jewish or North African as well. One forgets that Spain is historically the most multiethnic, multiracial European nation.
In my neighbourhood (SE Baltimore), Judge Sotomayor is Mexican. All Latinos are.
I suppose Baltimore is making progress.
That, and National Review apparently thinks she's Asian.
This is Resentment Politics. The Conservative side of the GOP is going to try and scare the white male population into believing they are going to become extinct; by the minority population. This will be their new rally cry. I see it coming in 2010/2012.
This might be beating a dead horse, but Buchanan's biggest problem is that he treats demographics as stable. The white share of the vote will get smaller and smaller. The Latino/a share, especially, will get bigger.
TNC is right that you can't automatically get a six percent jump by more blatant race baiting. (Buchanan imagines that at least six percent of white voters were willing to vote for an African-American but could be swayed by crude appeals to racism.) But you also can't count on the next election being like the last one. Buchanan's not just trying to turn back the clock in terms of policies and race relations. He's trying to turn back the clock in terms of America's actual population, at least in his mind.
I think that liberals should be thanking Pat Buchanan for speaking his mind - because it's the mind of a large segment of what's left of the GOP. It's easy to revile the guy for what he obviously is, but I credit him for having the balls - or maybe just bad judgement, or perhaps an understanding of his irrelevance as anything but a paid shit-stirrer on the airwaves - to honestly state what he believes. Most of the stinking racists in the GOP also suffer from the vice of hypocrisy. Of course, the clowns at the Sotomayor hearings DO come across as the most race-obsessed, patronizing, out-of-touch, phony old white guys come together in one room since...I don't know...maybe since Lou Dobbs dined alone.
...maybe since Lou Dobbs dined alone.
ftw.
The other fun thing is that the major ammunition for Sessions et al. is the Ricci case, and they are inviting Ricci to be a standard bearer. This guy is a serial plaintiff in discrimination cases, and a lifelong government worker and union member.
That's all fine, but it strips away all other pretense of conservative ideology and gets it down to the nitty gritty of protecting whites from minorities.
I think you're right about the odiousness of racism for moderate or even conservative whites outside the South. Oregon is over 90% white, and Oregonians seem to be a little uncomfortable about the whole idea, and bend over backwards in the racial sensitivity department.
Moving from Portland to New York was a trip. I heard more ethnic jokes and slurs in the grocery store in one hour than I had heard in four years in Portland.
hmmm...are you Russell from OBWI?
I do comment there on occasion, however I think there's another Russell there (maybe he spells it russell?) who is a bit more active.
Sometimes I post as Russell Abbott as well.
It seems to be all they've got left. But it really is astonishing to see them unashamedly reveal themselves on national television. It's not just all the weird coded racial fear messages (one of them this morning was talking about how Southerners had the right to bear arms taken away from them during Reconstruction, and spent a lot of time on questions about "foreign" law), but the way they are questioning this WOMAN, who happens to represent more than 50% of the population. The condescending questioning by Graham yesterday about temperament issues was unbelievable.
Jennifer, while watching the hearings, especially during Sen. Graham's questioning, I too got the impression that the GOP was probably pissing off an awful lot of women, including White women. Over the years, I've worked with many, many White women in the corporate world. With few exceptions, at some point we've (professional women of all races) all had our "temperments" questioned by White men. We're too abrasive, too tough, too aggressive, not a team player.
Several years ago, I was putting together a press event featuring the CEO's of three of the largest telcoms in the country. At the end of the event, my boss (not one of the telcom CEO's but one of the most influential men in show biz at the time) showed me a note from one of the CEO's asking my boss "is she always that bossey?" My boss assured him I was and that's why he'd made sure I was running the event.
"We're too abrasive, too tough, too aggressive, not a team player."
Yes! Which I always hear as a code word for "bitch." (But I am also, of course, being a woman - overly sensitive!) One of the reasons I own my own business now is that being bossy is always an asset.
They are definitely pissing off this white woman, anyway. I am awed by Sotomayor's calm demeanor through it all.
Bingo! The GOP has become equal-opportunity offenders. Just about the only people who are NOT offended by this display of sexist, racist blithering are KKK members (with or without hoods).
They've lost African Americans, Latinos, any other minorities, women, young people, rational white men, LGBT - but they're still big among the folks in vegetative states.
What do white people born in the South, but who develop a liberal orientation, do? Do they flee? Is political conservatism just really *that* accepted by white people below the Mason-Dixon line? Does anyone know of any articles, studies, or books that touch on this question?
Um...no, we don't flee. For one thing, the South, like the rest of the country, is enormously diverse. Chapel Hill isn't Daytona, New Orleans isn't Knoxville. Atlanta has the third highest percentage of gay residents in the country. And there's no magical "racist curtain" that descends when you cross the Mason-Dixon line.
"Um...no, we don't flee. For one thing, the South, like the rest of the country, is enormously diverse. Chapel Hill isn't Daytona, New Orleans isn't Knoxville. Atlanta has the third highest percentage of gay residents in the country. And there's no magical "racist curtain" that descends when you cross the Mason-Dixon line."
Maybe I should have relegated the question to Alabame, then. Clearly I'm not talking about oases in the South like Atlanta, Chapel Hill, and Austin (yes, I'm calling that the South.) I'm referring to one of the main points of the article, which is that even though many of these states have as much as twice the national percentage of Blacks, they ironically are Republican strongholds for the statewide/national office levels. That means that the white folx are voting as a block, with exceptions like the ones you mentioned (which are obvious and shouldn't have to be mentioned in the first place.)
Austin? Yuck, leave Texas out of the South! ;)
But seriously, the problem with the "oasis" vs. "real South" (not your term, I know) opposition is that it presumes that the non- or less-racist parts of the South aren't really Southern. Yes, cities like Atlanta and Chapel Hill are magnets for non-Southerners; but they also attract liberal, progressive, and just plain freaky Southerners (many of them black, btw). And most of the more progressive cities in the country - San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, Boston - have a high percentage of people from other regions & countries. I've encountered as much overt racism and homophobia in upstate NY and rural Indiana as anywhere in the South.
I also think that while white Southerners voting as a block is partly attributable to racial antagonism, most of the polarizing issues in recent elections - abortion, gun rights, national security, etc. - don't have much of a racial component. White Southerners tend to vote Republican because they tend to be conservative.
This isn't to minimize the very real problem of racism and general intolerance in the South - it's just to point out that these are problems everywhere, or almost everywhere. They may be more intense in the South, but it's a sliding scale, not a quantum leap.
Texas was founded, at least partially, on the basis of preserving the institution of slavery. The Plan de Iguala (1820) outlawed slavery, Mexico gained independence in 1821, and the abolition of slavery was embedded into the Mexican Constitution in 1824. After the Revolution, Mexico encouraged Anglos to settle in the state of Coahuila y Tejas. Many Southerners came, bringing their slaves.
This flouting of the law and other breaking of the agreed terms of Anglo settlement led to a crackdown on the Anglo Texians after about a decade. Thus we have the Texian Revolution starting in 1835 and later the Mexican-American War after the Republic of Texas was annexed by the U.S. in 1845.
So, a slave state and a state South of the Mason Dixon line. A state that joined the Confederacy that sent many men to fight the Union. How is that not a duck?
I'm a white liberal from Alabama so I can contribute a little here. The basic answer is we are here, we're just kind of rare. (As the 88% number might indicate.) I have thought about moving at times, but I have friends and family here and it's my home, infuriating as it can be. If I got a job out west or up north, I might enjoy it there (in fact I expect I would), but I'd probably miss some things as well.
There are also oasises in Alabama to a certain extent, mostly in metropolitan areas and college towns. A lot of the people you meet are still going to be conservatives, but in those areas you can find people who share your views. But aside from the occasional cordial argument or playful ribbing, my friendships with my conservative friends aren't a lot different from those with my liberal ones.
I have to accept that the candidate I support most likely won't be the one the rest of the state votes for, but that's just annoying, not intolerable. And maybe someday that will change.
As if to emphasize your point, my brother is a gay Puerto Rican living in Atlanta.
Another emphasis: Google "Martinsville Indiana racism." Martinsville's arguably one of the worst examples in Indiana, but having grown up about an hour away from there, I wouldn't consider it an outlier, either.
motownjunk-- pittsburgh is no haven of racial harmony either. Even though blacks and whites here don't rumble on a regular basis, this is mostly because they keep themselves to themselves. Very little mixing goes on -- most people around here self-segregate, and stay in their own worlds. Now, people here also tend to mind their own business, which is nice, but it doesn't encourage branching out in new directions.
That's why a liberal, inner city dweller like me grew up with almost no contact with black people outside of riding on the bus. Our paths simply did not cross.
Some liberal folks do flee. But speaking for the white Southern liberals I know, we stay and we work--slowly, sloggingly, sometimes dispiritedly--to change things. This is my home. There are things about it that can be mighty ugly, but the South belongs to me and the Latinos and Asians and black folks who live here just as much as it belongs to conservatives. I'm not going to let Jeff Sessions or anybody else drive me away from my home.
Have you had many experiences where white southerners who would call themselves conservatives do wind up expressing discomfort/displeasure/disappointment in what the republican party has become over the last, 30 years, or so (not just GWB, but the whole Republican movement)?
I guess what I'm really asking is, does this block really truly buy this stuff hook line and sinker, as the voting record suggests? Because as a member of a group that has been accused of being a block (black liberals/Democrats) I tend to see a certain amount of discomfort with any number of basic positions of liberals/Democrats among black folks.
I've had a few conversations like that. My father is a moderate, Colin Powell-style Republican, and I know he's uncomfortable with the venom surrounding contemporary Republican politics. I've had other conversations with white Southern Republicans who are of a much more libertarian bent--they want to keep the government out of their personal lives (in other words, don't take away my guns or zone my land) and don't much care what other people get up to, as long as it doesn't raise their taxes. However, even though they might not buy into all of the Republican rhetoric, they still vastly prefer them to the Democratic party.
I'll sign onto the entirety of SW's post. Living in the South, I know many moderate Republicans who consider themselves similar to the old-school NE Republicans. Some have even taken to calling themselves conservative democrats, though most of them are generally "libertarian". My parents fall in that camp as well and both felt Obama was the stronger candidate especially after the Palin debacle.
I think there is a silent minority of the Republicans who hate the direction the party is taking and that just like the idea of limited federal government. They'll either move into the Democratic party and try to align it with those views, fight inside the Republican party for candidates like Huntsman and Crist or just give up. Any of these ways, these moderate Republicans aren't likely going back to the uber-conservative wing without some proof that it isn't as rabidly crazy as before. I think the best example is in the field of science, where the Republican party's standards are clearly backwards and generally ridiculous. I know people who won't vote Republican again until they hear that they agree with accepted scientific facts like evolution and to a lesser extent, climate change.
I always felt that many "Obamacans" weren't super supportive of Obama as much as they were genuinely horrified that the right wing of their party had taken over and had to witness the Presidential debates with people like Tancredo, Hunter and others. Additionally, watching Romney change all his stripes (my mother has jokingly called herself a 1994-Romney conservative) in order to appease the rabid base disappointed them in the party as much as in Romney himself.
My guess, based on experience with other white backwaters (Vermont and Maine) is that the children of Liberals and Conservatives, both -- tend to leave for better opportunities elsewhere.
I'd tend to think that 'it's the economy' more than politics that governs their choice.
To a large degree, the society of successful whites is geographically rootless.
My stepdad, an old-line Maine Republican, abandoned the GOP in 2003. He said BushCo's tax "reform" was a sham and the HalliburtonBlackwaterKBR invasion of Iraq drove him crazy.
Ugh.
It seems like the same old routine. The future that Buchanan sees is in the past, but there is no one left to drive the time machine. Which sort of leaves everyone standing around in tinfoil hats.
It seems that the only people playing identity politics are Buchanan and his ilk. My father's generation of republicans needs to move over if this is all they've got. In what world does going around waving a sign that says "the end of the world is nigh" garner votes instead of convince people you're crazy?
I must ask..why is she Black in BALTIMORE?
just wondering.
MSNBC's Resident Racist is just being who he is, plain and simple.
They are who we thought they were.
And, oh, how I hope recaps of this are being played out on Spanish tv, radio and newspapers all across the country.
Look up thread. TNC was making a joke. A funny one to me.
thanks...I replied before looking at the replies.
and I don't know how I replied to Som.
None of it really makes any sense though. It's like watching members of a cult commit ritual suicide. It shows dedication to a cause, but it also convinces people the members are crazy.
I think there are too many old men in the republican party. Too many people who can't move past the culture wars and are stuck, on auto-pilot.
"MSNBC's Resident Racist"
He is kinda their Alan Colmes, isn't he?
Except absolutely no one pays attention to Alan Colmes. Pat Buchana is still listened to and respected by too many people.
Sorry about the reply, I wasn't sure who you were talking to.
I think that the emphasis on the political ramifications of race-baiting is a little misguided. We still live in a nation that is objectively saddled with race-based inequalities. Look at schools, prisons, public health, etc. In some ways, these political discussions are a stalking horse for arguments that attempt to rile up White indignation and paranoia. That is essentially what we've been hearing from the Republicans in the Judiciary Committee. But those arguments don't just have political ramifications - they also shape the way that the consumers of those thoughts see the world. In other words, when purveyors of bigotry sow hate with words, they will reap it.
Check out this video for some visual aids on this point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POYA9uev828
The GOP is a party that is dying. At least in it's current form. That is probably a very good thing.
The circular firing squad is still firing away.
Check out Conor over at Andrew's blog here...it's kind of funny. In a very, very, sad way.
dang white haters. Why are they so scared?
A subtle deployment of the "reverse racism" argument could potentially appeal to middle-of-the-road white voters in, say, Colorado or Oregon without reading as racist. Not that Sessions, Graham, et al. (not to mention Buchanan) are being particularly subtle. The idea that judges should be "neutral" is a way of coding the "majority" (i.e. white male) perspective as universal & deviations from it as "personal." But it's still an effective tactic.
Also, I'm not sure it's super-relevant to this discussion, but remember that "latino/a" isn't a racial category per se - in addition to Sotomayor, it covers folks as "racially" diverse as David Ortiz and Gael García Bernal.
The big problem for the GOP's strategy here is that even the deep south has been changing rather significantly as a result of legal and illegal immigration.
Which is why Bill O'Reilly pops a gasket weekly about putting up a fence on the border. ALthough I stopped watching him after teh inauguration, so I don't know if he's still on this tip.
"The second problem is that it likely turns a significant portion of white people also. The GOP's problem isn't that it needs to shore up Alabama--at least not yet. It's problem is, well, basically everywhere else that isn't Alabama. I don't know how bashing Sotomayor makes you more competitive in, say, Colorado or Oregon. I'd assume the opposite."
I would guess that the strategy's aim would be not to appeal to white racists in the hope of winning their vote, but to stoke racial fears and hope to create more white racists. So the way it would seek to make Colorado or Oregon more cmopetitive is try to make the white majority there more like the whites in Alabama.
Also I don't think the target would be out in the west but more of the mid-west states that border the Applachians, like Ohio and Indiana. Try to get them back in the GOP column.
There is a problem baked into democracy, however -- radicals have a disproportionate impact because the majority is generally silent.
As long as the Republicans can keep their radicals from turning on each other, they can maintain a disproportionate stature in political debates, simply because their radicals compensate numerical weakness by sheer volume.
I was reading an old collection of Michael Kinsley essays, and I came upon the one where he made the remarkable argument that Buchanan is probably not an anti-Semite, because it's obvious he isn't holding anything back. What I've observed is that ol' Pat seems to have made a career out of skirting the edge of white nationalism while never quite crossing the barrier. He may be more explicit than most, but it doesn't follow that he's got nothing to hide.
In some ways, this is a strong argument for keeping him around. He's perfectly balanced on the edge of an extremist movement, and can be used as a reliable bellwether for that school of thought. He's got (almost) nothing to hide, and this is a talent that can be exploited. He's not Michael Savage, for example. Savage wouldn't be able to stay in any national media forum. We can say we want Buchanan gone, that he's an irrelevant dinosaur, but I think he exemplifies the Southerner archetype of the racist that's straight with you. Is it handy to keep him around?
The excerpt touches on the same point made by an old episode of This American Life that I just enjoyed. The episode was about Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago. The argument was made that black mayors are most likely to be elected in majority-black cities or cities with small black populations. Sizable black minorities are likely to create enough fear that whites will vote with the solidarity noted in the excerpt (81 percent of white Chicago voters voted for the white Republican!)
hmmm...are you Russell from OBWI?
No
Speaking of border policy, this discussion is reminding me of the New Yorker article on Joe Arpaio I read last night (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/20/090720fa_fact_finnegan, full article in print mag only). He's an appalling, disgusting man, and yet had been reelected Sheriff down in Arizona. He's 77 (or 79?), though, so hopefully he represents the last gasp of the older generation in their attempt to preserve the tradition of conservative white privilege.
wait... 55% of white voters voted for McCain? Really? For McCain-Palin? WTF?
And actually, since we know Obama won most of the under-30 vote, and probably most of the under-35 or 40 vote, this means that old white people (i think retired people vote at a pretty high rate, don't they) went even more solidly for McCain. (One of their own hehe.)
55% for McCain-Palin. Jesus, man. That is just nuts.
SV,
The thing is that white vote isn't distributed equally, McCain got something like over 70% of the White vote in Alabama for example.
That is the major flaw with Pat's thinking that commentators to Matt's post have pointed out, running up an even bigger percentage in states he already won woudln't change anything. And for every White vote you gain in thoise state you lose in others. And the real problem is if they manage to turn Hispanics into a solidly 80-90% democractic block they put Texas and Florida in jeopardy.
Nate Silver ran the numbers on the all white strategy, the short answer is it is barely doable if you thread the electrol needle and manage to keep Texas and Florida. So they need a political genius who can create enough white rage to win the winnable states while limiting the damage among Hispanics so they just barely hold onto Texas and Florida. I'd put my chances of winning Powerball tonight higher, and I didn't buy tickets:-)
yeah.. it's a losing strategy even if you do away with the electoral college, though, isn't it, and also even if you discount the demographic trends, because i suspect the public's attitude in general towards racism, within every racial cohort, is becoming less tolerant. (less tolerant of racism in any form.) buchanan et al are stuck in their old white man bubble, and they're not the majority even among that cohort.
more than that, it's a losing strategy because it has no actual substance - just baseless fear-mongering tribal/culture war resentment that's finally losing its credibility and appeal. instead of offering real solutions for all to the real issues facing us, they just try to stoke the fires of old boogey men, old saws, making up problems that don't really exist but many suspect could be true. immigrants cause crime to go up, etc. (a recent reason.com/blog post demonstrated that this isn't true.) i suspect the public is slowly coming to reject this sort of insubstantial politics in favor of more solid policy stuff, because they feel that govt. hasn't dealt with the myriad problems that face them and they're feeling vulnerable right now and just downright tired of it. i'm not gonna only point to the single instance of the Obama victory as evidence of this, even though as a sort of movement that is significant - this is more my reading of the newer generations of voters becoming politically aware, and of people my age (29).
Just wanted to mention here that Latino/Hispanic/whatever population (and I say that as a mexican-american pocha person ha!)has been growing very fast in the South.
It never was just a white and black country, but then again,my perspective is very different than the largely east coast perspective here - the West Coast namely California, has been "multicultural" and "multiracial" for decades.
It's worth reading through the comments, and the original post. The point about there being a very large, and growing, Latino population in this country is made repeatedly. I don't think being from the East Coast has much to do with it. It isn't like there aren't Latinos here.
..and I did read the origincal post and comments.
Fair enough.
I understand that the Latino population is growing in different parta so the country, including the East Coast. What I am also pointing out is that there is a large portion of the country where the Latino population has always existed as huge part ot the demographics for a long time (as always as Asian by the way) and the existence of such groupps, is not a relatively new phenomenon (relatively 'new" meaning in relation to say the much larger "historical" presence of "hispanic populstions" in the southwest for example, or the presence of the Chinese during gold rush era California, etc.).
This is no disrespect to the East Coast. I'm just stating a difference that I see in perspectives regarding demographics changes and the history of certain groups residing in some parts of the country vs. other parts in this blog sometimes. It's not bad or wrong, good or right. Just adding to the mix of geographic and ethnic perspective here.
Due,
I think your seeing a difference where none existed, the very post you say you are disagreeing with contains this line:
Amping up the race-baiting isn't just going to turn off black people (most of whom are already turned-off) it turns off Latinos also.
How is that only focussing on black and white? I read TNC's post as pointing out that basically Pat Buchanan is living in a world where there is only black and white so he thinks he can gain white votes and not worry about any of the others.
"the very post you say you are disagreeing"
I don't necessarily disagree with the post. And I don't think there is only just a focus on black and white, there was talk upthread about immigration and the new arrival of Mexicans in Baltimore and New York, etc. I was just mentioning that Mexicans and other hispanic groups aren't that "new" especially in other parts of the country - not as new as say in the East Coast. I was adding a bit of historical perspective of Latino presence in the country, which is older in the southwest for exampmle.
Perhaps some of the GOP like Pat Buchanan think just "ignoring" people of color in general is a good strategy and ramping up race-baiting might work too, is because the GOP in some of those hisorically multicultural areas, ignored people of color for a long time and were still successful i.e. the california GOP in the 80s. Stuck in the past? Maybe.
This early comment was a small, perhaps too small and not well explained initially.