Obama and the Southern Strategy

[Mr40acresandamule]

Congressionally the Southern Strategy won't die in the South because of gerrymandering and because of racialized voting patterns in those congressional districts. More and more Hispanics are moving to states like Georgia, Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina, the Southern Strategy will be useless because these will become majority minority states or close to it.

[lkspence]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Two questions:

1. What percentage of southern blacks voted for George Bush in 2004?

2. What percentage of white southerners voted for Obama in 2008?

[TheMississippian]

I fail to see how you come to this conclusion. It is based on generalizations. Firstly, it makes the assumption that all southern blacks are Democrats. And secondly, that white southerners are Republicans or racists. You would be surprised if you knew how many white southerners would have already elected Colin Powell.

[lkspence]

Thanks for replying! this is empirically false. Here's one way to think about it. You don't have the suburbs ANYWHERE without significant government intervention. The freeways are created by the government. The suburbs are created by government subsidy--and because most of them were racially exclusive blacks couldn't participate. If an "environment of dependency" existed anywhere it was in the white south and the white north. Track the history of your own neighborhood to verify what I say.

[09geauxtigers]

Actually, it was the strategy of LBJ that brought down blacks. His "Great Society" policy did more to hurt minorities than anything else. It created an environment of dependency on government. Under this policy housing projects and so many urban development programs caused neighborhoods to become ghettos. This was an attempt by Democrats in the 60s and 70s to isolate blacks from the rest of society. Obama and the dems will destroy the economy. This will create more poverty within black areas.

[Mr40acresandamule]

@09geauxtigers You don't have any data to support your claim. Poverty among blacks dropped from 45% in the 1960's to about 25% today so you don't know what you are talking about. All you want to do is criticize Obama/Democrats, but the GOP has been a bystander of social programs have failed because they realized that the black vote was not that important to their electoral victory. They felt that if they could "maximize" white support black votes wouldn't matter.

[willia3r]

It still remains to be seen whether whites will totally buy into the idea of equality for everyone. Too many I find still see President Obama as a "socialist" and the February 27 national "Tea Party" protests spurred on by Mr. Rick Santelli's rant on MSNBC still cause me to worry about the future.

It still seems that there are some whites(the middle to lower class ones anyway) who can't stand the idea of sharing ANY sort of resources with the minority population...

[Mr40acresandamule]

This is why many whites have left the Democratic party because it has become the party of "the blacks." Most blacks are middle class, blacks send their kids to college, blacks are patriotic, blacks go to church, and blacks want a share in the resources that can improve the lives of their fellow man. As a black person, I haven't met one black person that says and thinks "Oh, I want to support the Democrats so that I can get free stuff from the government."