Let’s ditch the idea of the ‘black vote’
I long took for granted that US opinion polls break down respondents into white people, black people and Hispanics. But I’ve come to look askance at this convention. Reporting on political views by race now seems perverse. It implies that a citizen’s primary identity is grounded in skin colour, and it reifies a way of thinking about the American people that is regressive, divisive, inaccurate and downright un-American. I was reminded of this recent point of annoyance last week when the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana congressional map that none too subtly contrived to create an additional majority-black district. (The district in question drizzled and blobbed diagonally from one northern corner of the state to the far southern one like a trail of ink on blotting paper.
