1. Dude. You’ve got the correlation =/= causation problem going on there yourself. Just because the numbers match doesn’t mean you’ve explained the causation of anything.

2. That 70% figure was based on a sample size of 10 people. Which, when combined with the “clumpiness” of exit polling, means that you have no idea what the real incidence of Yes votes among African-Americans was. And if you don’t know what that number actually was, then you can’t meaningfully assert that your calculations equal it.

3. You’re assuming that “Christianity” is a uniform property that behaves the same way in all communities. We’ve got no evidence for that; in fact, given how segregated Christian churches tend to be (and, also, how some denominations are extremely unlikely to cross color lines), that’s a very risky hypothesis to make.

In short, I don’t think you’ve demonstrated anything.

Generally speaking, I prefer to get my information about why communities of color vote on LGBT issues as they do from queers of color and allies of color — people who are actually members of those communities; who have actually been on the ground, having the conversations and doing the work.

1) 75% of Christians support Prop 8, and only 10% of those with no religious affiliation were against it

You mean that only 10% of Christians were against it, right? IIRC, about 85% of those with no church attendance voted against Prop 8.

I don’t get why generally speaking minorities support Prop 8

It’s actually a very simple question, despite the complex responses that people offer to explain it.

1) 75% of Christians support Prop 8, and only 10% of those with no religious affiliation were against it
2) 90% of blacks are Christian
3) 70% of blacks support Prop 8.

Those statistics actually add up to 68%, not 70%, but it is very close, and besides there is margin of error. Maybe by some small percentage blacks are against gay marriages more often, but not NEARLY enough that it could have changed the election.
Think, if 2% of blacks were against gay marriage just because of some inherent hatred for gays in the black community (!?) that would not even be close to changing the tide of the election.

It has nothing to do with their being minorities, it has to do with their being Christians. Frankly the whole “Blacks hate gays” myth is absurd, it should be “Christians hate gays” thank you very much. Correlation does not equal causation.

@Brooks: You’re awesome

The Eureka Springs they knew is gone. It is now a national hub for fundamentalist Christians. Eureka Springs is becoming the Bible Belt of Arkansas. The story of how this happened is told in the new AFA DVD “They’re Coming To Your Town.”

…

AFA’s “They’re Coming To Your Town” documents the story of how and why this happened. And how fundamentalist Christian activists plan to do the same in other towns.”

I think this is much more accurate.

I don’t get why generally speaking minorities support Prop 8, it makes absolutely no sense.

Well, one of the issues are the abundant, facile equivalencies proposed by white queers (which I know, Hemant, you are neither) between GLBT discrimination and racial discrimination. The two are actually kinda different, and even if they weren’t different, those analogies are appropriative.

Slit does a nice job expanding on what the problem with those analogies are in An Open Letter to White Activists. So does Nojojo in If A=B and B=C but C is not equal to A, then… WTF?

I’m not sure if history is being taught properly…

On average, members of racial minorities have a better knowledge of the history of discrimination in the U.S. than white people do, even better than whites who are reasonably well educated. The ugly fact is that the mainstream culture, including the schools, just don’t tend to provide very good education on racial discrimination or history.

So, if you’re white and confused about the actions of members of a racial minority, “Don’t they understand history?” isn’t usually a good first question. “Is there some relevant bit of history that I don’t know yet?” is probably a better one.

In biology, specialization precedes extinction.