The Racial Progress Democrats Won’t Admit
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Biden has spent the better part of his first year in office insisting he wants to steer the country in a less racially divisive direction. Last week he took it all back. When you invoke Bull Connor, Jefferson Davis, George Wallace and the Ku Klux Klan to describe your political opponents, your objective isn’t racial harmony but something closer to the opposite. Maybe we should thank him for finally coming clean.
With the White House struggling to advance its economic agenda, the president’s job-approval rating stuck in the mud, and midterm elections looming, it’s no great shock that Mr. Biden is resorting to racial demagoguery. The Democratic Party has long depended on keeping black people scared and paranoid to maintain their support. That’s how its activists raise money and how its candidates typically turn out the base. For many on the political left, racial progress is something to be played down or ignored altogether, and nothing seems to inconvenience them more than the incredible strides America has made in recent decades on voting rights.
You would never know it from listening to Mr. Biden’s nasty tirade in Atlanta, but black voter turnout has been rising since the mid-1990s even as more states have passed voting requirements that the president and his backers insist are “Jim Crow 2.0.” Nationally, the black voter-turnout rate exceeded white turnout for the first time in 2008, when President Obama was elected. It happened again when Mr. Obama was re-elected in 2012, prompting the Census Bureau to note that the “increase in voting among blacks continues what has been a long-term trend.” True, black turnout dipped in 2016, but only to the pre-Obama level. And the decline almost certainly reflected apathy toward Hillary Clinton more than any efforts to disenfranchise blacks. Two years later, “all major racial and ethnic groups saw historic jumps in voter turnout,” according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
In 2020, Asian and Hispanic voting levels made history again, while black turnout was the third-highest on record for a presidential election. When minority voters are sufficiently motivated, they seem to have no trouble casting a ballot. And when asked their views on voter-ID laws—as they were in surveys conducted last year by National Public Radio, Monmouth University, Rasmussen and others—large majorities of respondents, regardless of race or political affiliation, expressed support.
Democrats and voting-rights activists aren’t unaware of these facts but hush up about them so as not to undercut the voter-suppression story line. Liberals who complained about Donald Trump ’s relentless demagoguery on such issues as illegal immigration are giving Mr. Biden a pass because their criticisms of Mr. Trump were based on political expediency, not principle.
The positive national trends in black voter turnout are reflected in state data as well, including Dixie states, where most blacks live and where black voting rights historically met the most resistance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation voter database, which compiles census figures, black voter registration in the South is higher than in other regions of the country and sometimes higher than the corresponding white rate. In 2020, for example, black registration surpassed white registration in Maryland, Mississippi and Tennessee, and the black-white difference was less than three percentage points in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas.
Turnout numbers tell a similar story. In 2020 blacks voted at higher rates than whites in Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee. After losing the Georgia governor’s race in 2018, Stacey Abrams founded an organization to fight voter suppression and subsequently has become the progressive face of the cause. Yet by 2018 black voter registration and turnout rates in the Peach State surpassed those of whites. Her organization is a solution in search of a problem.
Democrats continue to assert, as Mr. Biden did in his Atlanta speech, that in 2013 the Supreme Court weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act to the detriment of blacks when it ruled that federal oversight of voting protocols in states with a history of voter suppression could no longer be justified. The oversight, always meant to be temporary, was based on decades-old data, and the court concluded that times had changed. “There is no denying,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.”
Since that ruling, black registration and overall voter turnout have continued to improve, yet Democrats have no choice but to remain in denial because acknowledging racial progress would upend their identity politics and risk putting the party out of business. Thus the nation was subjected to the spectacle of a president in 2022 trying to convince us that the black franchise is as precarious as it was six decades ago.
C’mon, Joe. You’re better than that.
Jason Riley is an opinion columnist at The Wall Street Journal, where his column, Upward Mobility, has run since 2016. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and provides television commentary for various news outlets.
Mr. Riley, a 2018 Bradley Prize recipient, is the author of four books: “Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders” (2008); “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (2014); “False Black Power?” (2017); and “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell” (2021).
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Biden didn't write the speech, but he should have read it.
He's no better than whoever did write it.
He embarrassed himself and the country with that speech.
For a minute I thought it was 1949!
He was spitting mad, wasn't he? I don't recall him acting that way as a candidate. Could it all be acting?
a few days ago Trump had a woman named Wendy Rogers be a featured speaker at his Arizona rally. She is an Arizona state senator , and huge in MAGA out there. She is well known as a big Trump supporter. Trump loves her.
On MLK day she retweeted a white supremacist who used MLK day to promote honoring Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
That is the racism you are searching for Vic.
No John, I found the real racism right on some of these very pages.
BTW, Your president has been studying his talking points for his big "news conference" today.
The big question is: will Joe Biden have a real press conference today — with an open back and forth with a number of journalists — or will he simply call on the same handful of carefully chosen reporters handed to him on a list by staff?
I'll be covering it right here!
Do you deny that John's example is racism, or do you discount it because it is not convenient to acknowledge?
No
or do you discount it because it is not convenient to acknowledge?
I dismiss it because it is an isolated example. I don't experience that in daily life. That is the progress being ignored. Thus the title & substance of the article.
What I'm much more concerned about is the racial discord that Joe Biden is promoting.
This is the real racism, Ozzy.
"When you invoke Bull Connor, Jefferson Davis, George Wallace and the Ku Klux Klan to describe your political opponents, your objective isn’t racial harmony but something closer to the opposite. Maybe we should thank him for finally coming clean."
There are many millions of white racists in America TODAY.
Millions? How do you know that?
I think we did this before. Are you going to post a poll?
Prove it John. Or quit making shit up.
Polls are not often taken asking people if they are racist, but there was one a few years ago where about half the respondents admitted to some level of racial prejudice. There are other indicators as well.
As I think I have told you, a social scientist examined the locations of the Jan 6 rioters who were arrested. There was a racial component to that too. A large number of those arrested came from counties where the white population had experienced a significant decline in recent years.
You are in denial.
lol. as if you would know.
And you have been reading too much Kendi.
This is a ridiculous comment. In your cockeyed view, Biden is a racist and Trump is not.
Biden is not the one who played down the role of white supremacists at Charlottesvile. Biden is not the one who invites white supremacist sympathizers to speak at his rallies. Last week Tig posted a link to a list of all Trump's racist past actions and comments. It was a pretty long list as I recall.
In 2016 Trump retweeted known white supremacists numerous times during the campaign and pretended to not know who David Duke was when Duke endorsed him. Why? Because Trump knew that racists were part of his voting base and didnt want to offend them.
Biden is an arsonist, doing his best to create racial strife for his political advantage.
Biden's playing from the George Wallace playbook
There is nothing ridiculous about it. I never see examples of racism in my daily life. I can remember back when there was blatant racism and ethnic prejudice. The problem now is that race is being used to attain power. Nerm is absolutely right. And I'm right about the consequences of doing that. Take a look at what you just said in post 2.1.9. You claimed that there was a racial component to the Jan 6th riot. That is completely false. Yet Biden called them White Supremacists as did anchors over at CNN and MSNBC. You say a social scientist examined the locations the protestors came from and made some kind of connection to things going bad in their communities. Here's a news flash, John, a lot of this country suffered because of globalization. The country got sold down the river. That doesn't make them racists.
Biden is not the one who played down the role of white supremacists at Charlottesvile.
Biden has habitually used race since the day he was nominated.
In 2016 Trump retweeted known white supremacists numerous times during the campaign and pretended to not know who David Duke was when Duke endorsed him. Why? Because Trump knew that racists were part of his voting base and didnt want to offend them
You are doing it too!
You dont have answers for what I am saying. If I wanted to I could post examples of racism , in the news, every day here. Of course there has been racial progress, no one denies that, but we are a long way from ending racism.
Joe Biden is a total racist and complete bigot. He’s been so his entire adult life. He is the definition of “scum of the earth”.
And you have been watching too much Faux News!
Labeling people who have differing opinions as "domestic terrorists" won't end well. We get a small glimpse of it in the polls and we'll see more in the upcoming midterms. When the Democrats are pushed out, we all know they will stop at nothing to regain the power that was taken from them by the people.
28 House democrats...and counting... aren't going to run again.
Those are the ones that suddenly got common sense and see their time is short. It's those that remain that will be a problem.
Biden knew what he was doing. And Biden's speech shouldn't be surprising.
About 12 pct of eligible voters are identified as Black. And the Black voting block overwhelmingly supports Democrats. Presidential elections are won or lost on less than a 3 pct margin. Any softening of support by Black voters means Democrats would no longer be competitive in Presidential races.
If the Black voting block were more evenly divided, as is the Hispanic voting block, then Democrats can't win Presidential elections with their typical liberal leaning governing agenda. Softening support by Black voters would mean the Democratic Party would need to dramatically change to remain competitive. Biden doesn't have much choice; Democrats must foment and exacerbate racial divisions to remain competitive. The Democratic Party, as it currently is, cannot win without overwhelming support of Black voters.
That's why 12 pct of eligible voters have created a partisan divide in the country. And that voting block knows it.
You mean that sowing racial hostility is necessary even if it causes an enraged man to get in his car and run over a group of white people in a Christmas parade?
Is winning an election that important to them?
It's worked for 200 years. Why change now?
I can almost hear the voice of LBJ!
In other words, American citizens of Black, Hispanic, and Asian heritage don't have problems when they cast their votes, do not have problems getting IDs/proving citizenship, and approve of showing IDs in order to vote. That makes Biden's (et al) claims of "Jim Crow 2.0" dead in the water.
As a matter of fact a ll major racial and ethnic groups have shown historic jumps in voter turnout.
Biden's shameful racist history has been well-documented. His "coming clean" last week in Atlanta wasn't necessary. He's been a racist as a US Senator, VP candidate, VP, and now POTUS.
President Biden is no racist. It's ridiculous to state such nonsense.
I said something similar just yesterday, but we need more people saying it and saying it more often. It’s basically calling “Bullshit” on a disgusting tactic intended - not to help people in need - but to scare people into voting for people claiming to be saviors.
The strategy is simple and politicians have been doing this for a long time. They claim a problem exists and that they need to pass legislation to solve it. They don’t bother trying to prove the problem exists. If they can pass the legislation, then they have saved you! You should be grateful and vote for them. If they can’t pass the legislation, it’s because the other side hates you and so they still need your vote to defeat the evil ones.
That’s what all this voting civil rights shit is: a fake solution to a nonexistent problem.
Sometimes there isn’t really much of a downside to legislation like this (beyond the needless waste of time and effort, of course). But in this case, we’re talking about creating federal authority to control something (voting) that has always been largely a state-controlled function. Basic safeguards already exist and are working pretty well all over the country.
States need to be able to design voting systems that work best for them and this promotes innovation that might benefit other states in the long term (i.e. “Hey look at what Iowa did last year. That worked great for them. Maybe we should try that here in California, too.”). A one-size-fits-all approach is likely to do more harm than good.
And now cue the unthinking commenters who will point us to a single incident of someone being a racist dick as if that were proof of the problem. Or they will mock the dissenters with the straw man argument that they are saying racism no longer exists anywhere in the country. Such comments are either disingenuous politicking or closed-minded ignorance.
In fact, no one trying to point out racial progress is saying that racism or racist people no longer exist. All we are trying to show is that the specific problem being claimed - that there is some kind of systemic injustice preventing minorities from voting - just isn’t happening. We have laws protecting the right to vote and they are generally enforced pretty well. As referenced in the seed, the increasing numbers of minority of voters speak for themselves - or they would if people would only look at them.
But you have to be willing to take the blow to your ego that maybe people don’t need you to save them anymore.