This is the last Jay Nordlinger post. I suspect what's going on here is a chasm between different Ways of Knowing, but this anecdote that he passes on is just bizarre:
So, my husband is black, I am biracial (white/Korean). Here is my three (homeschooled) children's experience of life: All their black and Korean relatives are voting for McCain (security, taxes, marriage, and abortion). All their white relatives are voting Obama (well-meaning, misguided liberals). At least half the Republican families they know are black homeschoolers.
What exactly does this mean? The myth that the proportion of Republicans decreases as you go up the wealth ladder is in wide circulation. But no one is pretending that non-whites, on average, are more likely to be Republican than whites. Yes, there are black Republicans, and some non-whites lean Right (I do myself), but as a whole American conservatism is white, while liberalism is multicolored. Not that there's anything wrong with this, it's just how it is.
Of course, Nordlinger is right that there are stupid people who simply think every rich person is a Republican, and that every non-rich person is a Democrat, who engage in gross impressionistic generalizations. The irony here is that these are statistically illiterate people. They are extrapolating from their own impressions in an unscientific manner. Two wrongs doesn't make a right.
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"Two wrongs doesn't make a right." Naughty boy.
I defy the stereotypes. I'm in my twenties, white, household income under 30,000 with an awful limited health plan. My formal education tops out at high school grad. I'd be pegged as a Democrat or at least an Obama supporter.
Not so much. I consider myself a Libertarian and vote Republican. These year I am voting against Socialism tomorrow as much as for McCain.
It seems that there may be something else of interest here:
"At least half the Republican families they know are black homeschoolers."
Yes, this is a single person's observation based, on a small sample probably sharing additional characteristics. On the other hand, sometimes important phenomena can be identified from just such observations.
This could indicate the existence of more extensive disillusionment about the public education system among Black Americans than has been realized, especially among those who have more respect for education and may be more educated themselves.
Home schooling is an immediate way to gain control of a child's education, whether to increase the academic content or to achieve other goals. For the effort required to start a charter school or successfully campaign for vouchers, a parent could educate two or three kids right away, rather than waiting years and years for change in the system.
If this whole move of Black families to home schooling, and perhaps also to the GOP, holds on a larger sample, it could suggest some alternative campaign and educational strategies.
If this whole move of Black families to home schooling, and perhaps also to the GOP
yes, but remember that "home schooling" started as a left 1960s counter-culture movement which later was picked up by the christian right as a way to resist "the sysem." IOW, i doubt home schooling "makes" people conservative in the way owning a home or having a lot of wealth does in a causal manner (that is, both these invest people in the "the system").
I think Ta-Nehisi Coates said he was home-schooled because his dad was a radical.