John McWhorter offers an interesting comparison of Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery at TNR:
Warren opposes gay marriage; 70 percent of black voters in California supported Proposition 8. Warren is pro-life; in 2004, a Zogby poll tabulated that while about half of Americans overall were pro-life, 62 percent of blacks were.
Black Reverend Joseph Lowery, heading up the rear doing the inaugural benediction, has the positions Warren's detractors prefer: pro-choice, in favor of gay marriage. These, however, cannot be treated as default "black" views, because so very many black people of all walks do not share them. Warren and Lowery will represent two variations on black ideology, of which the one Warren represents is arguably the dominant one.
That's true. But if we're just measuring who best represents black ideology based on views of gay marriage and abortion, then Rick Warren is more representative than Barack Obama. But I don't see anyone on Georgia Avenue wearing Rick Warren t-shirts, so there's probably more to it than that.
--A. Serwer
