Miss The Myth

Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic website quotes an article on the Houston mayoral race:

The dynamics of the mayoral runoff echo California's Proposition 8 vote in 2008, where black voters formed an unusual alliance with conservatives to approve a measure that banned same-sex marriage, said Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist.

"You don't have many cases where you have an older straight, black male supported by conservatives matched up against a younger white female who happens to be gay, and is backed by non-establishment sources," Murray said. "Normally, you see progressive whites allied with African-Americans. This is exposing the same fault line we saw nationally in Prop 8."

Coates then notes "this claim is demonstrably wrong." He then goes on to say it's been debunked numerous times but never goes away.

The only claim I see is that African-Americans voted with conservatives in two particular elections, instead of with progressive whites as usual.

So I followed Coates' link, where the debunking is supposed to take place, and found this:

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute yesterday released the results of a study debunking the myth that African Americans overwhelmingly and disproportionately supported Proposition 8.

[....] the study concluded that the level of African American support for Proposition 8 was in the range of 57-59 percent.

So in other words, blacks did vote overwhelmingly and disporportionately for Prop 8 (i.e., against same-sex marriage). Alright, they didn't vote 70%, as some reports had it, but in almost any other election, it's mindboggling to see them agree with the conservative position. Heck, it's mindboggling in plenty of elections if 30% of them vote on the conservative side. (And note the quote that excites Coates doesn't mention any percentages.) So the "myth" is a minor point about just how mindboggling the percentage is, missing the real story.

It's almost as if the Task Force, usually ready to take on those who vote against them, has finally found a group they're willing to leave alone. Or rather, go out of their way to defend.

The piece continues:

The 57-59 percent figure — while higher than white and Asian American voters — is largely explained by the higher rates of African American religious service attendance: 57 percent of African Americans attend religious services at least once a week, compared to 42 percent of whites and 40 percent of Asian Americans.

So they voted for Prop 8 in numbers higher than the usually more conservative white population. And since Prop 8 won with 52%, they voted yes at what I'd call a significantly higher rate than the population at large. There's a valiant effort to explain it--higher religious attendance--but what difference does that make? I presume the same "explanation" applies to Mormons. In any case, black churchgoers regularly disagree at the polls with white churchgoers.