This will be cross-posted on my blog, wantsomewood.blogspot.com.
Much has been made about the alleged widespread homophobia among African Americans, and how the Democrats' general support of gay rights threatens the long-held alliegance that black voters have for them, which will drive yet another wedge into the fractured Democratic coalition. When one looks at the voting results from last November's anti-gay-marriage referendum in Virginia, however, one quickly notices something that that idea wouldn't have predicted: large numbers of black voters opposed the referendum.
As most pundits predicted, the referendum passed handily, although it did not enjoy the overwhelming support that anti-gay referendums had enjoyed in the previous election elsewhere in the country. Predictably, it passed in all of the state's rural Republican counties and failed in most of the urban and suburban counties, such as Arlington County near Washington, that have many white liberals. Interestingly, however, the ban also failed in majority-black Richmond (69% against) and Petersburg (65% against). In Norfolk and Hampton, which are both roughly half-black, the referendum also failed with 47% and passed with 55% of the votes, respectively. Portsmouth City, which is majority-black, had the largest vote of any such city for the referendum, but its percentage-in-favor, 56%, was small compared with white rural counties.
In smaller cities, a similar pattern held. In Lynchburg, which is about one-third black, the referendum passed by a surprisingly narrow 52%. Majority-black Emporia passed the referendum, but by only 61%.
Interestingly, the percentage in majority-black rural counties was also lower than in their white rural counterparts. Surry County, for example, passed the referendum with 61% of the vote, and Brunswick County, just north of the North Carolina state line, passed it with 57%. Charles City County, near Richmond, passed the referendum, but just barely--by less than 30 votes, in fact. Compare these figures with the 76% anti-gay vote in Appomattox County, the 72% in Rockingham County (in the Shenandoah Valley), the 68% in Culpeper County, or the 91% in usually-Democratic Buchanan County. That all of these are rural or exurban and majority-white counties is telling.
It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that urban blacks and whites opposed the referendum, and urban and rural blacks supported it, but one cannot argue that without acknowledging the exceptions to this rule. In Democratic-leaning, rural, and majority-white Nelson County, south of Charlottesville, the referendum passed by only about 200 votes out of 4,000 cast, and it similarly passed only narrowly in majority-black Charles City County, as mentioned above.
NOTE: My source for the election results in this article is http://www.cnn.com/...