I'm going to go ahead and say that this is a woefully inadequate response from Andrew Sullivan regarding NYU's comprehensive demographic evaluation of who supported and opposed Proposition 8. For weeks after the election we were treated to Sullivan's prejudices presented as reluctant but factual evaluations of homophobia in the black community, followed by his full-on embrace of a CNN exit poll whose sample size was so small that it couldn't even provide a statistic for the number of black men who voted for or against the measure. The report shows that "African Americans and Latinos were stronger supporters of Prop. 8 than other groups, but not to a significant degree after controlling for religiosity." Not only that, but blacks who attended church weekly were less likely than other ethnic groups to support Prop. 8.
It would be a mistake to see Sullivan as the sole culprit of a media fiasco that rivals the press coverage of Hurricane Katrina in its embrace of dubious information that presents a comfortable stereotype of black people. The lesson from Katrina coverage is that there isn't anything that can be printed about black people as an anonymous mass that won't be believed. The media repeated the results of the CNN poll as if it was gospel, and it was used assiduously to reinforce ideas about black people that its touters may have already possessed. This nonsense doesn't just hurt black people. The notion that black people are homophobic by nature was used as an excuse by Prop. 8 opponents to put off outreach to black voters until the last minute, then was subsequently presented as a reason why that outreach could never have succeeded.
In my mind, this is absolutely related to Ta-Nehisi's response to Nate Silver's evaluation of why black pols have trouble getting elected statewide. The fact is that while white people may know black people or have black friends, very few are actually comfortable with, or spend very much time present in, black spaces. While black folks are forced by economic necessity to spend more time in white spaces, we often find ourselves with few real connections to white people in our personal lives. We really just don't know each other that well.
As a result, we as Americans are quick to believe what we hear, especially if it conforms to long established notions of each other. What we don't know firsthand we fill with a shorthand gleaned from what we see in popular entertainment, and perhaps worse, what is given to us with the authority and credibility of the mainstream press. The effect of this is often more dramatic on black folks, but ultimately it's not good for anyone, as the above example shows.
On the one hand, these kinds of mistakes are good because people show their true selves, and ultimately, that's the only way to have an honest conversation. On the other, these notions, once established, take generations to unravel, precisely because we're predisposed to believe them. So they feel true, even when they aren't. And there is absolutely nothing the press can or will do to make this story supplant the previous one, that black voters single-handedly carried Prop. 8 into being.
There's one other conclusion to draw from the poll: for those Republicans salivating at the prospect of chipping large segments of the black vote away from the Democratic Party, you're going to have to find some way other than hatred to do it. I hear the kids are using this new thing called the "twitter," maybe you should try that.
-- A. Serwer
