{"id":411,"date":"2009-11-02T12:14:58","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T12:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/11\/are-white-men-a-political-problem.html"},"modified":"2009-11-02T12:14:58","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T12:14:58","slug":"are-white-men-a-political-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/11\/are-white-men-a-political-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"Are White Men a Political Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Ygelsias over at Think Progress<\/a> has posted an interesting, if confusingly
\ncolored, map showing what percentage of white men voted for Obama<\/a> on a state by
\nstate basis.  <\/span>He titles his headline “White Men
\nAren’t Very Progressive.”    <\/span>His following discussion explored the allegedly “thin talent pool” from picking so
\nmany candidates from such a supposedly thin selection of “liberal” voters.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This map is provoking discussion widely in the
\nblogosphere.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nThe information it provides is interesting, if poorly
\npresented color-wise, but the vacuity of the analysis discussing it that I have
\nread so far is depressing. This map provoked  <\/span>a misleading discussion – which argues white men are a lot
\nmore conservative than other Americans – that white men are a BIG PROBLEM.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That white men are more conservative than Americans in
\ngeneral is, I think, not open to challenge.  <\/span>This makes a difference in close elections, so I am not
\nmaking light of the issue.  <\/span>The
\nimportant questions are how significantly so and why?  <\/span>This map does not help much because it hides the really
\nimportant cultural differences within the US that answer both questions to a
\nlarge degree. <\/span><\/p>\n

What the map does show is that Southern white men are far
\nout of step with white men elsewhere, except for Mormon white men and perhaps a
\ntiny number of Western welfare ranchers and such who play cowboy.  <\/span>(There are very few of them, but they
\nare common in the demographically tiny state of Wyoming and combined with
\nMormons, give the impression of a huge reservoir of conservatism in a state
\nwith under a half million citizens total. Number 50 out of 50.)    <\/span>Minus these two-and-a-fraction groups and white
\nmen in the rest of the country, the overwhelming majority,  <\/span>did not vote for Obama much less than
\nwhite women.  <\/span>Pooling the white men
\nof Mississippi and the white men of Maine does a serious disservice to the
\nlatter, and disguises the realities of what is really going on.  <\/span>And, of course, Southern white women do
\nnot really hold the Democratic banner all that high, either. <\/span><\/p>\n

The South has long been the cultural and political outlier
\nin America, its religion often out of step with American traditions, its
\nhistory often a celebration of treason. 
\n<\/span>Nothing like a majority of white women in the South voted for Obama
\neither.  <\/span>There are plenty of good
\nand reasonable people in the South, White and Black and Brown and Red, but we
\ndo not make their task of promoting civilization any easier by bad analysis and
\nplaying into the hands of authoritarian racists like Pat Buchanan and Rush
\nLimbaugh who seek to convince white men that they speak for them.  Yglesias makes teir claims easier to accept.<\/p>\n

Many left-liberals get uncomfortable talking about culture,
\nbut culture is what shows through in this map, not primarily race and
\ngender.  <\/span>Culture is what ails us
\nand may yet tear this country apart. 
\n<\/span>And the Democrats and ‘progressives’ are scared to talk about it for
\nvarious interesting but ultimately dishonest reasons.<\/p>\n

But there is something EVEN WORSE about this
\ninterpretation.  <\/span>Yglesias writes
\n“Drawing from the relatively small pool of white male progressives means
\ndrawing from a shallow talent pool.”<\/p>\n

Part of what is wrong with this country is tied up with this
\nstatement.  <\/span>It assumes that only a
\ntiny percentage of Americans are competent, and so we need huge ‘talent
\npools’ to have a chance to get the best. 
\n<\/span>It is stupid elitism, “progressive” style.  <\/span>Apparently they believe they are somehow much more competent
\nthan most everyone in the country and so need to do their thinking for
\nthem.  <\/span>They are making the same
\nmistake their corporate and political equivalents to their political right are making: over
\nestimating their own intelligence while underestimating everyone else’s.  <\/span>The corporate and political ones do more
\ndamage because they are in power and the Progressives are not, but the problem is deeper than which faction
\nholds office.<\/p>\n

Across the board we are getting pretty low levels of talent
\nand competence in leadership positions in this country, and the problem has
\nnothing to do with gender or race. 
\n<\/span>Obama’s people clicked it up a notch, but that’s often still not very high.  This country is over centralized, and dominated by huge organizations
\nwho for the most part have insulated their leadership from being held
\nresponsible for their actions, especially incompetent ones.  <\/span>A far smaller nation with a far more
\nexclusive group of white men gave us the American Revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is not the size of the “talent pool” it is the
\ndegree to which millions of people of talent of all races and genders are
\nsubordinated to the ingrown leadership of giant organizations – mostly
\ncorporate but also political.  <\/span>For
\nhistorical reasons most of these incompetent and corrupt leaders are white men,
\nbut anyone who believes Blacks or other races are somehow less subject to these
\npatters is fooling themselves and should read a little history.  <\/span>I suspect it is no different with
\nwomen, given the number of dishonest and manipulative ones that have risen in
\nthe conservative movement of today.<\/p>\n

It is this comfortable elitism on the part of many
\n‘Progressives’ who sincerely think they are part of the solution rather than
\nsimply a more humane part of the problem that worries me even more than our
\ncultural divisions.  <\/span>It prevents
\nthem from seriously considering policies that actually empower people and
\nweaken the power of the incompetent elite that dominates this country.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Ygelsias over at Think Progress has posted an interesting, if confusingly colored, map showing what percentage of white men voted for Obama on a state by state basis.  He titles his headline “White Men Aren’t Very Progressive.”    His following discussion explored the allegedly “thin talent pool” from picking so many candidates from such a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"\nAre White Men a Political Problem? - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/11\/are-white-men-a-political-problem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are White Men a Political Problem? 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