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It's apparently just the black vote that clinched things. I learned this by reading DU. It had nothing to do with the Mormon millions, progressive white apathy in CA, or a fucking stupid system wherein, given enough signatures, basic human rights can be taken away with a simple majority.
Seriously, minority turnout tends to be socially conservative yet at the same time votes heavily Democratic; that's a mixed blessing in practical terms for a progressive. Thankfully, we're not faced with the choice of being exclusively happy or sad about it--strong turnout for the traditionally disenfranchised is a great thing. Be happy about that. Its effects in terms of prop 8 were not helpful, though by no means decisive. Be pissed off about that. There is no need to pit gays and blacks against each other in some macabre demographic war, as though one group was uniquely and directly responsible for screwing the other--mass human behavior doesn't lend itself to such simplistic narratives. Nader was no fucking help at all in '00, but was he uniquely decisive when compared to the major villains that year, such as the media? Hardly. Does it do any good to shit on 2000 Nader supporters out of proportion to their actual influence? No.
Let's lay the blame where it belongs--the rich white fucks that conceived this travesty and funded the signature drives; the ignorance and bigotry of -all- who voted for the measure. Singling out oppressed minorities who have little voice as major villains in this case is counterproductive and simplistic. Yeah, I've got a beef with 72% of black women voting for this thing, but their impact pales in comparison to the main villains of this story, and focus on that small contributing factor seems almost pathological when you consider its slight actual impact.
Again, it reminds me of people who endlessly ragged on Nader in 2000--it's undeniable that he was directly harmful, but when you focus on the small problems in an election that is close enough to make small problems decisive, you indirectly give the larger, more systemic problems that made the election close in the first place a pass. You can more easily harm the smaller, vulnerable targets with blame and attacks, yet if you succeed your impact will be very small. When you take on the larger, decisive problems, your impact can be both decisive and lasting.
So blame blacks for their bigotry with regard to prop 8, but don't make them out to be the major villains. That seems to me a futile and utterly useless gesture.
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