* Politics: there is absolutely no “black dominance.” Aside from Hawaii/Indonesia raised, half white Obama, blacks have been pretty unsuccessful in politics outside of special majority-black districts.
Blacks are about 13% of the population and about 25% of Democratic voters, yet they are 0% of Democratic senators and 0% of Democratic governors. And if they have any dominance, it sure is hard to tell by the last 25 years: cuts to AFDC, open boarders for competing low-skill workers, gentrification of the choicest black neighborhoods, high rates of imprisonment, and a gradual decline in per capita civilian public employment, a very important source of jobs.
There is certainly black dominance, or at least over-representation, in some aspects of low-brow popular culture. But that has little to nothing to do with “the perception that black Americans have suffered uniquely among peoples.” Blacks are simply better at low-brow culture: sports, stand-up comedy, rapping, and dancing, than other groups.
Where blacks benefit from liberal guilt/affirmative action isn’t low culture, where they do fine on their own, but high culture. As Derb says, so much of black intellectual output is solipsistic black black blackety black, a never-ending “conversation about race.” Coates is typical of this.
* What is more interesting is that blacks lately haven’t been honoring their bargain with white liberals: behave reasonably well and turn out to vote, and we’ll keep the goodies from Uncle Sugar flowing.
Sure they came out in 2008 and 2012, but 2010 had possibly the longest impact of any election in the past 100 years. Republicans won so big at the state level that year, they extensively gerrymandered states swing states like Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania to the extent they get 3/4 of the seats while losing the state-wide popular vote in the House. They did the same to the state legislative districts. The GOP will thus control the House the entire decade, and then will gerrymander again with their lock on the same state legislatures, and hold the house until at least 2032.
It was completely foreseeable that electing Obama would hurt the democrats with blue collar whites in these states, and the only way to make up for this was higher black turnout in off-year elections. But they just didn’t show up.
Now they are failing the second part of the bargain: keep up good appearances for the news. Instead, it is blacks, from the Talented Tenth to the Unemployable Three Tenths, who want to talk about black crime and especially how the horrible racist police* are trying way too hard to stop it, and also all of America is bad and racist too.
*(Middle Americans, in poll after poll, show they have extremely high opinions of police, near the very top along with nurses, doctors, and firemen).
If there is one issue that the Democrats don’t want in the news, it is black crime. Black crime isn’t just a bad issue for them, it is the issue that caused them to lose five elections in a row in New York City. It just caused them to lose elections for governor of Maryland and Massachusetts.
My analysis of this lack of political discipline is mostly about the extremely competitive new media environment. The New York Times, and even more the many papers that had no local competition at all, used to give little coverage to both black crime and the angry, anti-police views of many, perhaps most blacks. Now those gatekeepers lack this power. If the average black wants to talk about how the police are evil, that’s what will get talked about.
