SOME readers were less than satisfied with my column about race last week. Most of them could swallow the part about our all being recovering racists, striving to improve, but never perfect.
But they wanted me to address another statistic - that number of voters, however small, who were black, who said race mattered in their choice for a presidential nominee and who told pollsters that they voted for Sen. Barack Obama.
The question varied. It was almost always genuinely and politely asked, but it essentially came down to this:
"Why is it that when a white person cites race and votes white, it's racism, but when a black person cites race and votes black, it's OK?"
It took me a while to sort out my own thoughts on this question, and I'm afraid some readers won't like the answer.
On a simple, academic level, I agree. It is not OK for people of any race to judge someone else by skin color.
Why then, was I so disheartened at the percentage of West Virginians - and Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers and so on - who said race mattered and who voted white? But when I looked at the handful of black voters who said race mattered and who voted for a black man, I thought, "Well, that's understandable."
For the record, the numbers vary. In West Virginia, where just 3 percent of the state is black, there were too few African-American voters for CNN's exit poll to accurately measure what proportion of black voters cited race as a factor in their choices, or even how they voted.
In nearby Pennsylvania, where 15 percent of Democratic voters are black, 90 percent of them voted for Obama, according to CNN's poll. Only 4 percent of blacks said race was important in their choice, compared with 12 percent of white voters.
SOME readers were less than satisfied with my column about race last week. Most of them could swallow the part about our all being recovering racists, striving to improve, but never perfect.
But they wanted me to address another statistic - that number of voters, however small, who were black, who said race mattered in their choice for a presidential nominee and who told pollsters that they voted for Sen. Barack Obama.
The question varied. It was almost always genuinely and politely asked, but it essentially came down to this:
"Why is it that when a white person cites race and votes white, it's racism, but when a black person cites race and votes black, it's OK?"
It took me a while to sort out my own thoughts on this question, and I'm afraid some readers won't like the answer.
On a simple, academic level, I agree. It is not OK for people of any race to judge someone else by skin color.
Why then, was I so disheartened at the percentage of West Virginians - and Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers and so on - who said race mattered and who voted white? But when I looked at the handful of black voters who said race mattered and who voted for a black man, I thought, "Well, that's understandable."
For the record, the numbers vary. In West Virginia, where just 3 percent of the state is black, there were too few African-American voters for CNN's exit poll to accurately measure what proportion of black voters cited race as a factor in their choices, or even how they voted.
In nearby Pennsylvania, where 15 percent of Democratic voters are black, 90 percent of them voted for Obama, according to CNN's poll. Only 4 percent of blacks said race was important in their choice, compared with 12 percent of white voters.
Why not criticize those black voters with the same zeal as white bigots?
Because it's not the same. White people don't always want to acknowledge it, but as a majority for centuries, white people have enjoyed privilege and status that they might not even recognize. Avenues of education and accumulating wealth were available when those opportunities were not available to black families, and are still stunted in some cases. Setting aside the most brutal and obvious wrongs of the past, society has been stacked in favor of whites in a hundred subtle ways that white people don't necessarily notice because they are on the receiving end of the benefit.
White people alive today may not have set up these mores and traditions. I did not, for example, create the conditions that cause black men to be harassed during traffic stops. Nevertheless, that is a danger that I have never had to worry about simply by a fluke of birth. Multiply that phenomenon by the disproportionate number of African-Americans in prison, or who score poorly on school achievement tests, or the lower proportion who graduate from college, or those who are not treated promptly for health problems or those who are turned down for help starting new businesses.
The question has bothered me so much that I wrote to my favorite columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize winner at the Miami Herald. He cut through my ramblings and boiled it down to one word - power.
"It's about the powerless seeking power and nothing could be more American," he answered.
Here's an example he gave me: Two guys of similar size and strength punch each other. You break up the fight and send them home. But if a big guy hits a little woman, he's a jerk and should be arrested. And if a little woman hits a big guy, she's plucky, like David standing up to Goliath. We judge behavior differently depending on the relative power of those involved.
That's the problem with trying to judge black voters and white voters by the same rules. They're not coming from equal positions.
We're not yet to the point where we can honestly say we don't think about race when we pick a president, because we have not yet completely repaired the damage of our ancestors. But I've encountered an old white man who confided that he voted for Obama and a middle-aged black woman who voted for Hillary and every other combination you can think of. That seems like a pretty good indication that we're still forming that more perfect union.
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