Race and Presidential Approval

At NRO Daniel Foster remarks on the apparent fact that Obama remains overwhelmingly popular with the black community. 

The L.A. Times highlights the latest Gallup numbers on President Obama, leading with Obama’s rock solid 91 percent approval among African Americans even as his broader approval rating is stuck at 44-45 percent.

I recall last year, when the president’s ratings were still north of 50 percent, some fuss on the Right was made about his approval among blacks being out of whack wit his overall numbers, and the usual charges of racism were slung around with typical carelessness. But this is a difficult issue. The suggestion that Obama wasn’t really popular in 2009 if you took black approval out of the equation at least sounded dangerously like the suggestion that Obama wouldn’t be as popular if there simply were no black people. And that’s not cool.

But I do think it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask where Obama’s approval numbers would be if his approval among blacks changed in the same way his overall approval has — in other words, to ask, what if black approval for Obama responded to Obama’s policies the same way overall approval has?

Racial solidarity is a fact. It was the basis for black slavery in America (as opposed to slavery in other countries where people of all races were enslaved). It was the basis for segregation and all of the injustices that black people experienced at the hands of the white population.

But anyone who has studied sociology knows that racial and ethnic solidarity is a phenomenon of all people. When Hutus slaughtered Tutsis, when Nazis slaughtered Jews, when Latino gangs and black gangs clash in the US we are experiencing examples of racial solidarity expressed in violence.

Why should it surprise us then that the majority of blacks in America should stand by "their" man no matter what his policies? It may take several more generations before skin color becomes as meaningless (or meaningful) to black people as it is to white people. That is not to say that whites in America are color blind, but they elected a black man as President and that says something very powerful to those who study race.