Monday, September 03, 2012

Race and the House of Representatives

I found these numbers quite interesting:
41 voting members of the House of Representatives are black.

39 of them are Democrats. (Those numbers would be 42 and 40 save for the death of a Rep in March.)

Given that Democrats famously spurn color blindness to embrace affirmative action, how many of those 39 do you suppose come from majority-white districts?

Did you guess four?

Meanwhile, there are two black Republicans in the House. They were elected from districts that are 82% and 75% white, whiter than any district that sent a black Democrat to the 112th Congress. Apparently an overwhelmingly white electorate is no bar to a black candidate - so long as the overwhelmingly white electorate is also majority Republican.
The source is here.

4 comments:

Diver City said...

I haven't seen that much spin since, well... ever.

Democrats have 20 times the number of black reps. Twice as many from majority white districts compared to Republican black reps.

But it's Republicans who host the welcoming big tent?

And am I not to believe my lyin' eyes? The ones who saw a sea of white at the RNC?

Reminds of when Bugs Bunny spins his body to drill a hole to his subterranean dwelling.

Darren said...

What I got from those numbers is that blacks vote for blacks--hardly a surprise.

But feel free to continue to think Republicans are racists. It makes beating you that much easier.

neko said...

That's curious. I just saw a sea of people at the RNC -- didn't really look at their skin color...

ORLY said...

No, no. Republicans are as white/pure as the driven snow.

Other than the peanut throwing.

The emails

The regular mailings.

The Facebook posts.

Cartoons

And... honestly, there's way too much stuff.

To quote Bill O'Reilly, "You can't explain that!"