[Blackhawk]

(10-02-2012 10:24 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

The support of the Democratic Party today by blacks is primarily a result of the democratic party's shift in focus to more progressive social justice/welfare concerns prior to World War 2.

I admit its debatable, but the "Blacks shifted because of how the Democrats were voting" reasoning seems to be liberal mythology and Democrat propaganda not supported by the actual historical facts. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights act was supported by 82% of Senate Republicans vs only 60% of Senate Democrats, and in the House it was supported by 82% Republicans vs 63% of Democrats. If Blacks were really deciding party affiliation by who voted how, they would have instead, by this reasoning, gone even more majority Republican. They didn't. Instead they went to the very party voting against them. Why?

I maintain that the Great Northern Migration over Democrat controlled railroads from agricultural work in the South to skilled labor in factories in the North that were (and still are) controlled by the Democrat Party was the larger factor in the party change over.

The cities that the migration flowed to like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. were all effectively one-party cities already controlled by the Democratic party. All of these cities have only elected Democrats as Mayor for generations going back. If you look at older rust-belt Democrat enclaves like Pittsburgh, that's true even back to 1934. Party registration is public information that anyone can request from the Voters Registrar office. Employers and union hiring halls did (and still do) regularly pull these lists and pay attention to party registration during hiring. You either registered as a Democrat voter, or were left out in the cold. While union power has been greatly diminished compared to the past, even today AFSCME, IBEW, NEA and SEIU contributions go almost exclusively to Democrats.

Meanwhile, unlike their northern brothers, Blacks that remained in the South still tended to vote Republican, with the trend seeming to change only with the Reverse Migration of the 1990s of skilled northern black labor following jobs to new car factories and other manufacturing jobs being built in the South for its lower cost of living advantage and lack of strong labor unions. They had been trained at work to only vote Democrat in the North, and when they relocated, they continued these habits.

Looking at actual voting records, there isn't a very good correlation between how the parties were actually voting and how Blacks were registering and voting. But looking at the already existing political control of cities where Blacks were migrating to, I do see a high correlation, and I continue to see a high correlation today. People generally vote where they live.