Okay, okay, I know absolutely nothing about Harold Ford's "dating preferences". In fact, I'll go further. I have never heard any rumors about Harold Ford's "dating preferences." No wait, I'll go even further. I don't even care about Harold Ford's "dating preferences."

What I do care about is the ill-tempered and noxious suggestion that attending a party at a Playboy Club is sufficient grounds at least among black women for denying their vote to a black candidate for the U.S. Senate. In fact, I refuse to believe that black women (or black men) would be that petty given the issues that black Americans in Tennessee and elsewhere in this country are facing.

The commentator at Booker Rising takes a small statistical fact and attempts to inflate it into a categorical principle. Citing the finding that "undecided folks who saw the ad broke 2" to "1 in favor of Mr. Corker" might seem convincing but we can't judge its validity in terms of the behavior of black female voters unless we know how many black females in Tennessee who were both eligible to vote and intended to vote in this election were still undecided at the point in which this ad was released.  Further, we would still have to survey a statistically significant sample of black women voters to determine if the ad had any effect whatsoever on their voting preferences. 

If the commentator at Booker Rising either does not know or cannot access this information then this purported claim as to the behavior of black female voters is slanderous and false. If hearing news about Harold Ford going to a party at a Playboy Club would turn a voter against him then that voter was just looking for an excuse to justify what that voter was going to do anyway.

I have no reason to believe that black women are that petty or destructive to the black polity.

PT:

I knew that one would force your hand. I don't believe it either. I think it's one of those unicorns...something that looks like it ought to be possible but just doesn't exist.

ubstu:

I think there will be some variance. It would be good to know where, since folks really ought to be looking for their votes too,

I'm just pretty sure the variance ain't here. 

The very first time I saw the ad, I thought exactly what shay has expressed. This ad is going to piss off more than a few southern Black women. Since the esteemed assemblage on dis'heayah thread hardly qualifies as a wading pool of deep knowledge concerning the southern Black female psyche, I'm far more inclined to take Shay's word for it than any of your'n.

Shay has asserted that low Black female turnout in Memphis and Nashville cost Ford the election. Well, Ford lost by 50,000 votes. There are a few more than a million Black folks in Tennessee, and we can guess what portion of that total is Black, female, and eligible to vote.

At this juncture, the numbers would appear to be lining up in Shay's favor, your naysaying and poohpoohing nothwithstanding...,

Shay has asserted that low Black female turnout in Memphis and Nashville cost Ford the election.

Yes, but Shay provides no data that would verify this claim or boost this anecdotal inference. You can't assert that Ford's loss was due to his having pissed off black female voters unless you can provide data to support this assertion. Where is the data?

I expect that data will be forthcoming here before too terribly long..,

I have no reason to believe that black women are that petty or destructive to the black polity.

PT,

methinkst you protest a bit too loudly given Ford's clear cut membership in the skinfolk politician fraternity which included Steele, Swann, and Blackwell, a polity which in my humble estimation gave very little indication of representing Black interests.

beyond this, I heard similar rumblings concerning Ford and that ad hereabouts, and as quiet a little secret as it's kept, Misery was a confederate state and retains many southern tilting sensibilities. I believe Shay had strong anecdotal indications supportive of her assertion about the ad's effect.

we needn't even go into the church lady dimension of the thing, which also might have played a role. Ford's professed fondness for football and girls in defense of his playa persona - probably didn't wash with the ladies on the usher board(s)...,

"...esteemed assemblage on dis'heayah thread hardly qualifies as a wading pool of deep knowledge concerning the southern Black female psyche..."

CN, I have come to expect much more from you than statements of this sort. The psyches of southern black females is not an issue before this body of folks. Let's not try to change the subject here. I know a great deal about the behavior of voters. All I'm asking is: show the data. If Booker Rising and it's commentators can't show the data then they should stop talking until they get the data.

My personal feelings about Harold Ford are irrelevant. If a study is done showing that a statistically significant number of undecided black women voters in Tenessee decided to vote for Corker because they thought Harold Ford preferred Miss Ann's lovemaking then I'll believe it.  Until that time folks saying otherwise are just talking smack.

Exit polls posted at CNN show Ford received 42% of the white female vote and 91% of the non-white female vote. He also got 95% of the "black" vote.

Admittedly, these numbers say nothing about those "black" or "white" females who did not vote. But I'm with my political guru PT on this one until someone can present some numbers that indicate otherwise.

The percentage of "black" votes going to Ford's campaign indicate to me the African American community was fully engaged and supportive of bruddahman. But I wouldn't have voted for the bitch, tan or no tan. As far as I'm concerned he's just another Tomass Clarence in democratic drag.

CN, I have come to expect much more from you than statements of this sort.

just imagine my shock when I saw you include Ford as a politician even peripherally relevant to the Black polity..,

I have no reason to believe that black women are that petty or destructive to the black polity.

sitting out a Ford election is a discretionary exercise in personal taste having little enough to do with the polity beyond skin deep novelty..,

Admittedly, these numbers say nothing about those "black" or "white" females who did not vote.

Tennessee is a very conservative state. How did Gay Marriage fare there at the ballot box? 80% opposed!!! Shay's expression of personal distaste for young master Ford doesn't strike me as atypical. Bruh'man shoulda sowed them wood pile wild oats a loooong time ago, gotten that out of his system, and exercised a WHOLE LOT MORE situational awareness..,

Young master Harold would've been so much more senatorial with a good woman backing his play..,

ROTFLMBAO!!!!

Not if he had gone to that Playboy party.

If Black women turned away from him because of the blonde in the commercial, imagine their reaction to it if he was married to a Good Black Woman. 

Shay's expression of personal distaste for young master Ford doesn't strike me as atypical.

Do you find gatamala's position atypical? 

Boy, the cussin' on here! Anyway...

First of all, I never said that the black female turnout was low in the race. That data has not appeared yet. My argument is that whatever the stats show, the turnout may have been even HIGHER among black women (who comprise the majority of Tennessees voters) had Ford not been symbolized as a chaser of white bimbos. In such a tight race, even a few thousand folks not going to the polls (or choosing to leave the slot blank) can cost a candidate.

Nor did I argue that black women voted for Corker as a group. In fact, over the past couple of weeks I have argued that the ad's intent was not only to galvanize white male reaction in favor of Corker, but to dampen black female enthusiasm for Ford. As such, it may the first well-known ad to simultaneously play on these two groups' anxieties on one issue: black male-white female unions. Yet the overwhelming majority of the ad's critics only focused on the white male portion of the equation.

How many black women - who could have perhaps reversed that slim lead of 48,495 votes that Mr. Corker possessed at the end of this political race as of this morning - did not turn out to vote or left the ballot for this particular race blank because they were turned off by what they saw in the ad? I do assert that if Ford had taken a page out of the playbook of Sen. Barack Obama - who is married to a Black Pearl type - instead of chasing white bimbos, we would be calling him **U.S. Senator-Elect Harold Ford** right now. His impulsiveness overrode his political sense (why is he attending a Playboy party, when he is a black man who knew he would launch a Senate bid in a state like Tennessee)?, and it cost him - and Black America - another U.S. Senate seat last night. The RNC ad race baited him, but he made it easy for them to use such political ammunition in the first place by allowing his love for white women to override his political sense.

P.S. And like Gatamala, I was also offended by how the lone black woman in the ad was portrayed...as she symbolized black voters in the ad. I commented on it on my blog a couple weeks back, and was seemingly one of the only folks to pick up on how flighty black voters were portrayed in said RNC ad.

I guess my point is that if he had a genuine Good Black Woman in his life he would not have had the need to go to a Playboy party.

Way too many happily married men in the topless bar for me to accept that.

He got 91% of the non-white female vote...in practical terms it's hard to improve on that.

Her position is probably not typical of certain segment of the church going crowd.  If Ford's behavior regarding his trip to the Playboy party kept him from mobilizing support amongst all segements of his African American base to the maximum degree, it is certainly not going to induce a large number of black women voters to purposefully sabotage his chances of winning.  Also, even if he did win the race and became an important African American "first", would black folk have looked to his centrist leanings and decided that this form of leadership represented the best available concerning their future?  I would guess not; but then again it is not like they are going to vote for Corker because Ford falls short of resembling Adam Clayton Powell.  Just some thoughts of mine for other people to chew on and consider.          

I don't know Shay, I can't see going to the Playboy Club being the tipping point for very many sisters.

You're right about how the group of folks whose reactions were reported was tightly defined. I believe that's because the ad was targeted. I think opinions of members of the target group were sought.

But how targeted ads affect non-targeted folks is an interesting question.

just typical east coast urban, which means;

1. doesn't go to a Black Baptist church,

2. doesn't consider the dominant Black mortician family's seignurial choices as a regular part of the grist in her local social networking mill,

3. prolly not 1950's color struck like many Tennesseans...,

I've got evangelical in-laws in Knoxville, and have had many and sundry women friends from Memphis -Nashville-Knoxville - lo these many years - and like I said from the word go, I found Shay's commentary reflexively unsurprising.

you get caught tucking bucks out this way, you gonna sleep on the couch for weeks and get all manner of cold shoulder abuse. let it be a church going sister with lots of ego invested in that game, and you could get your nuts cut.

you best believe that the folks who concocted that ad knew exactly what its effect would be on Black women in Tennessee as a target group, it had been primed for maximum aversive yield across dual constituencies..,

racism in the east and racism in the south are predicated on completely different operational objectives. in the south, they don't care how close you get as long as you don't get too big, in the east, they don't care how big you get, as long as you don't get too close.

young master Harold came very close to getting too big....,

"...just imagine my shock when I saw you include Ford as a politician even peripherally relevant to the Black polity..,"

We can't lose sight of the fact that our brothers and sisters in Tennessee consider Ford to be a major component and player in their political affairs. No matter how distasteful we find this to be we can't simply dimiss their slice of reality and then still hope to make common bond with them. Harold Ford won over 70 percent of the vote in a five way race in the Democratic primary election for the Senate nominee. A whole lot of black Democrats like him. We just have to be cognizant of that fact.

but you've gotta admit that a whole helluva lot of experimentation was underway in this process just past..., given my level of trust in my feelings and instincts, what Shay had the audacity to write about was one of my top-of-mind reactions to that frikkin ad.

I think it was a brilliant piece of subversive memetic engineering...,

and I strongly encourage you to explore it virtually in the Black conservative blogs and lists, and more specifically and concretely in local Black conservative social and political enclaves.

Black men and women have already been socio-economically divided, and in this barbarian culture, from the outset of that bifurcation, our pop-cultural preoccupations have been systematically specialized along gender lines...,

First of all, I never said that the black female turnout was low in the race. That data has not appeared yet. My argument is that whatever the stats show, the turnout may have been even HIGHER among black women (who comprise the majority of Tennessees voters) had Ford not been symbolized as a chaser of white bimbos. In such a tight race, even a few thousand folks not going to the polls (or choosing to leave the slot blank) can cost a candidate.

I meant that black women comprise the majority of Tennessee's BLACK voters, of course.

By the way, does anybody know if Ford actually has a reputation for chasing white women? I don't mean dating one or being involved in a long term relationship with one. I mean chasing white women. 

I can state from experience that a brother can be tagged this way just because he was seen in the company of a white woman. Some folks in my hometown laid this jacket over my shoulders because some prominent and influential older sisters saw me one Friday night with a white woman (who they also knew) at a gas station.

What they didn't know is that we were at the gas station on a mission for a black female elected official who had arrived at a fundraising event so inebriated that her car had run out of gas in the middle of the block where the party was being held. My friend and I decided to be good samaritans and we got a gas can from our host and drove to the nearest gas station to get some gas for the sister because she was way too drunk to drive.

We got the gas and drove back to the party. We put the gas in the sister's car and moved it out of the middle of the street. Much later that night a brother and I drove the same sister to her home. She rode with me and he drove her car because she was even drunker than she had been earlier. (She was never nasty or abusive just drunk.) Then we made sure that she got safely into her building and we said good night. All of us did what we did because it was the right thing to do.

My punishment for doing a good deed was for the sisters who saw me at the gas station to  start spreading rumors that I was having an affair with a white woman. I am of the opinion that brothers and sisters cannot escape these kinds of charges if they are out in the world doing their thing and trying to take care of business. A certain level of necessary cosmopolitanism is always resisted and seen as threatening by members of one's tribe.   

Will black women today mobilize against the associations made between Ford and his attendance at Playboy parties or has the African American community become so divided along gender lines due to the effects of our barbarian culture, to use your words?

but even more sage and on point than they were 100+ years ago when they were written.

The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such communities the distinction between classes is very rigorously observed; and the feature of most striking economic significance in these class differences is the distinction maintained between the employments proper to the several classes. The upper classes are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a degree of honour attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to warfare. If the barbarian community is not notably warlike, the priestly office may take the precedence, with that of the warrior second. But the rule holds with but slight exceptions that, whether warriors or priests, the upper classes are exempt from industrial employments, and this exemption is the economic expression of their superior rank. Brahmin India affords a fair illustration of the industrial exemption of both these classes. In the communities belonging to the higher barbarian culture there is a considerable differentiation of sub-classes within what may be comprehensively called the leisure class; and there is a corresponding differentiation of employments between these sub-classes. The leisure class as a whole comprises the noble and the priestly classes, together with much of their retinue. The occupations of the class are correspondingly diversified; but they have the common economic characteristic of being non-industrial. These non-industrial upper-class occupations may be roughly comprised under government, warfare, religious observances, and sports.

I don't know Shay, I can't see going to the Playboy Club being the tipping point for very many sisters. You're right about how the group of folks whose reactions were reported was tightly defined. I believe that's because the ad was targeted. I think opinions of members of the target group were sought. But how targeted ads affect non-targeted folks is an interesating question.

Prometheus, I argue that black women were a target group of the ad. Perhaps a secondary target group to that of white men, but a target group nonetheless in order to dampen black support for Ford in a tight race. I'm not convinced that black women were a non-targeted group in that ad, as it is no secret that many (if not most) black women have anxieties about black male-white female unions. I'm surprised that more black pundits haven't picked up on this angle re: the ad.

I'm surprised that more black pundits haven't picked up on this angle re: the ad.

I'm not a member of the black punditocracy but I thought about the various ways the ad could cut when I saw it the first time. I just assumed that black women could see the move for what it was and short stop one of its more subtle and invasive intended effects, which was to reinforce ties of tribal loyalties and blood purity among whites and to play on black folks own sense of tribal loyalties by causing their sexual anxiety tickers to go into overdrive. 

Prometheus, I argue that black women were a target group of the ad. Perhaps a secondary target group to that of white men, but a target group nonetheless in order to dampen black support for Ford in a tight race.

I missed the whole concept, but it's definitely a possibility both were targeted. Still, 91% indicates it didn't have a huge impact.

I figure Ford had made all his connections before the ad came out.

The ad's effect was real.  Of that I have no doubt.  But the ad's effect was likely weak among black voters, who would NOT have been agnostic on this race.

Where Shay gets it wrong in playing armchair political scientist is in her prescription of what Ford should've done.  Instead of shying away from the Playboy Party, what he should've done is startingly simple: He should have called the ad out for what it was, in certain terms.  He does this it causes the undecideds to go toward him--not wanting to be seen as falling for the racist okeydoke--rather than away.

For interesting reading on this issue check out THE RACE CARD by Tali Mendelberg. 

But quiet as its kept, I'm happy he lost.  I don't agree with his politics at all. 

First off...why should Harold Ford's personal and private sexual affairs be your or my or anyone else's business in the first place??  He is a single man, and as such, has the right to date whomever he damn well wishes....as long as he is open and honest about it. 

Secondly....I'd say that his pandering to the Far Right and to cultural conservatives and his proclivities to boost his religious faith did more to undo his campaign than any trip to a Playboy Super Bowl party or his affections for White women...if anything, the controversy over the NRSC ad actually boosted his campaign and garnered him sympathy that his political grandstanding did not deserve.

If a few Black women decided to hold his sexual proclivities against him, then that's their issue....but I'd say that Harold Ford was basically a weak candidate from the beginning who happened to benefit from the national anti-Bush wave and almost pull off an upset in spite of himself. Avoiding Playboy parties or having faked photo-ops with Black women would not have saved him one bit.

Besides....the traditional antipathy of conservative Southern Whites for electing even right-wing Blacks to position of statewide power has held true regardless of political ideology.  Ask Bobby Jindal of Louisiana when he faced conservative White Democrat Kathleen Blanco for the governorship there....and Jindal didn't have any of Ford's history or weakness.

In the end it was Tennessee's traditional conservatism -- and Eastern Tennessee White conservatives coming back home in defense of Bush -- which carried the day for Corker over Ford. A more progressive, more humane Democratic candidate would have probably done just as well or better....but that would require a bit more soul searching than bashing a Black man for his personal sexual practices.

This Black progressive will hold out for something much better, thank you very much.

Anthony Kennerson
Lafayette, Louisiana

his politics militate very strongly against any possibility of his having even considered calling the ad out. As a DLC posterboy, Ford was the Democrat party's leading experiment in deracinated candidacy.

On all fronts, the deracinated politician ploy failed. Net of the scrubs, Blackwell and Swann, Steele and Ford did their level best to deracinate themselves in a competitive context which was itself never deracinated.

Materialism/assimilation and morality/identity are the ends of the spectrum that will be exploited for political advantage here..,

Will Ken Mehlman speak in two years to African American women's groups about the absence of morals among young black men using references to statements made by Bill Cosby?

Most precipient, as the class war divide is already well established - it's just not being explicitly worked politically, yet. Cobb maintains a fairly constant barbarian cultural melody and rather openly hammers along these lines. Nowhere so openly as in his Coalition of the Damned refrain.

His alignment of the criminal justice/prison industrial system domestically, and the now provably failed neocon foreign policy in the middle-east - seems like a future state philosophical blueprint for the materialist monoculture. In a nutshell, it asserts that social justice issues ought take a back seat to the proven exceptionalism of the west, with its democratizing and equilibrating free markets.

I'm not a fan of the materialist monoculture (barbarian culture) because it is grossly inefficient and has shown itself highly conducive to immorality.

"his politics militate very strongly against any possibility of his having even considered calling the ad out. As a DLC posterboy, Ford was the Democrat party's leading experiment in deracinated candidacy."

I don't disagree but one of the many questions raised by Ford's campaign is to what extent the black polity should expend any of its precious political capital on a black candidate if that candidate is either reluctant or fearful of addressing controversial issues that entail race.

KSpence is right. Ford should have called the ad for what it was but I suspect that he and his handlers decided that they did not want to raise the spectre of race because it might cost Ford some votes. If a black candidate, especially one running in the South, shies away from racially tinged issues how much support can the black community expect to receive from that candidate on issues involving race if that candidate is actually elected? 

Maybe, just maybe, this is too high of a price for black voters to pay just to see a black person in the Senate or the White House.  

Maybe, just maybe, this is too high of a price for black voters to pay just to see a black person in the Senate or the White House.

Seen't in the comments at DellGines;

At this point there are 40+ black elected Democrats in the House. Other than for a blatant racist appeal in Tennessee by the Rethuglys, there would have been 2 black Democrat Senators, instead of just one. The Rethuglys did the same thing to Kirk in Texas back in 2002.

This election functionally firewalled the Rethugly Party into the states of the old confederacy (look at the map of blue and red in this election). With a focus on extremist views on God, Guns, and Race - the Rethugly Party stopped being the party of Goldwater, and has become the philisophical sucessor to George Wallace and the Dixiecrats who split from the Democrat Party because of race.

Because of that philosophy, the Rethugly base will not turn out for a black candidate. Michael Steele their last elected poster-boy, was elected in Maryland as a Lietenant Governeor behind a white conservate Republican in 2002 - in a state where there is no seperate ballot for Gov and Lt Gov.

This election the three heralded black Rethugly candidates lost, and lost big . Steele lost by 10%, Swann by 22%, and Blackwell by 26%. Steele was able to swing less than 20% of the black vote in his home County, Prince Georges, with Cardin picking up 75% of the black vote statewide. The white vote in Maryland split almost exactly 50-50, meaning black voters put Cardin in office.

Deval Patrick, the new Governor of Mass, won 80% of the black vote, and over 55% of the white vote. Blackwell in Ohio won less than 20% of the black vote, and 40% of the white vote.

“Black” Rethuglys, like their white bretheren don’t come from the black community, have no ties to the black communiy (indeed they are “selected” by white Rethuglys), support policies which are in opposition to the black community - and when elected, do nothing to build relations with their black constituents.

As such, we are stuck for the immediate term with the Rethuglys being the white conservative southerner’s Party…

And the Democrats representing everyone else.

We have several things working in our favor. First, statistically, this was the last election the Rethuglys could have won in this country, without broadening their appeal to be inclusive of minorities. The Presidency hinges on 6 large population states - Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, California, Florida, and Illinois. 5 of the 6 are now in Democrat hands - meaning a Republican candidate must sweep all the other states to win the Presidency. Statistically, it’s almost impossible. By the 2012 election, the Rethuglys will be confined to a band of states running from South Carolina to Texas, and Utah.

So… The first move isn’t up to black folks…

It’s up to the Rethuglys.

By 2012, the Democrats could have 5 black Senators, and 60 black Congressmen who will be writing the laws, as well as a number of Hispanic elected officials…

The Rethuglys, unless things significantly change…

Will have none, and be the minority party in Congress.

All politicians are opportunists. The issue is whether they have any talent or not. Harold Ford, Barack Obama and Deval Patrick are all talented. The business they are in runs more on productive truth as opposed to revealed truth, which is why opportunism is seen as a virtue and truth telling is viewed as a vice in electoral politics. Hypocrisy is a trait that all of the successful characters acquire in their pursuit of power and public reknown. (Do you recall Michael Corleone's response to the Nevada senator during the first communion party in the Godfather, Part II?)

Political immorality is detectable and in some cases is flagrantly displayed, albeit usually not intentionally. Nonetheless, I would be hesitant to charge a black elected official with being immoral on the basis of their reluctance to speak out against racism. I consider, for example, Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana to be immoral no matter how much he talks about racism and its influence on American society.  

I consider, for example, Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana to be immoral no matter how much he talks about racism and its influence on American society. 

Jefferson is simply a criminal..,

Nonetheless, I would be hesitant to charge a black elected official with being immoral on the basis of their reluctance to speak out against racism.

As a professional and pragmatist, you can ill afford the luxury of my hardcore moralist stance.  But that's where I'm at on the subject. If you reflect back on it PT, you prolly spotted the evolution of my stance a looooong time ago in discussions here on the porch. I'm thinking about attempting an explanatory manuscript that further expounds on my racism as immorality thesis...,

cnulan... how do you respond to Rice's statements that compare our supposed attempts to bring democracy to the Middle East to the African American freedom struggle in the United States and the distortion of history that this entails?

ROTFLMBAO!!! She got that cover story inside, outside, and upside down, didn't she? We obtained the freedom to participate more fully in the consumerist society because that made economic and foreign public relations sense when the HWIC's stopped and thought about it. The violent neoconservatice spasm in the middle east is about imposing the consumerist monoculture on Iraq, while simulataneously taking the strategic high ground relative to that ocean of Iraqi oil.

The democracy thing was some old backwards racist garbage. She needs to stop the amateur hour storytelling and simply reframe the issue in terms of the actual U.S. National Security interest. Will those permanent bases, the Kurdish partition, and other long term measures ensure continuing U.S. access to that oil on which 26 million brown people happen to sit? At the end of the day, it’s that oil that is critical to the continuing maintenance of our way of life, nice car, nice house, access to sufficient diversions that we can amuse ourselves to death. Everything else is merely conversation and just-so-storytelling so that the American masses can pretend to be moral and upright.

More importantly, (because whatever happens to the Iraqi’s doesn’t really matter a damn to Americans) will this criminal expropriation prove adequate to the cause of giving the U.S. a sufficient tactical upperhand and base of operations from which to destabilize Iran? Because those 70 Million Persians are sitting on the other big deposit of OUR oil. Manifest destiny never dies, it just multiplies….,

Because if our current foreign policy can be linked to the rise of our barbaric domestic policies--and I think it can--than her comparisons in this regard undermine any effort to confront the reality of our domestic situation within the proper historical context.

Of course it can and I've spoken to it in no uncertain terms.

See, from where I sit, Mdm. Dr. Rice is a glorious success story in all the ways in which Cobb extolled. Frankly, she's an archetype, and an exemplar of the soul-less kneegrow success story which is creeping, creeping, creeping into the tactical arsenal of divide and conquer politics being crafted as we speak for deployment in the political theatre against Black folks.

So far, it appears only to be working on rather weak-minded folks...,

it will also be interesting to see if conservatives try in the future to divide the black vote along the lines of gender.    

Ubstu34, why, in your estimation, have Black women enjoyed comparatively vastly greater success than Black men in integrating themselves into the cultural and economic life of America? 

Some more numbers to consider for the tea leaf readers out there...

According to exit polling reported by CNN, Corker received 61% of the "white" male vote. He also received 12% of the "non-white" male vote, and 9% of the "non-white" female vote. This seems to me a more important number. Corker received more votes from "non-white" males than he did from "non-white" females. "Non-white females gave Ford 91% of their vote versus "non-white" males who gave him 85% of their vote. I think this factoid undermines the theory that "black" women ran away from Ford because of that racist ad. The question that needs to be asked is why did more "non-white" males back Corker than "non-white" females? Were "black" males offended that Ford went to a party at the Playboy club?

African Americans comprised only 13% of voters, Latinos 1%, and Others 1%. African Americans gave 95% of their vote to Ford. "White" voters, who comprise 85% of voters, gave 40% of their votes to Ford.

Corker received 927,343 votes. Ford received 877,716. Fifty-one percent of Ford's vote came from females (477,635). Corker received less female votes (48%, or 445,124). Ford also received 63% of the votes of unmarried women as opposed to Corker's 34%. But he only got 44% of married women's votes to Corker's 55%. These numbers cut both ways in terms of the impact of the "Ford failed because he is a playa" argument.

According to census data dated July 1, 2005, there are approximately 323,708 eligible "black" female voters in Tennessee. If every black woman of voting age in Tennessee voted for Ford would the outcome have been diffierent? Possibly. But Ford lost because white Protestants (61%) and Catholics (55%), and folks in overwhelmingly white Eastern Tennessee (59%) voted against him in significant numbers. 

I seriously hope that black women are sharp enough to see the predatory nature of that ad. I DO understand the politics of skin tone and sexual relations in this country, I started learning those lessons around 6th grade.

I seriously hope that black women are sharp enough to see the predatory nature of that ad. I DO understand the politics of skin tone and sexual relations in this country, I started learning those lessons around 6th grade.

Please enumerate some of the gender faultlines in our community that comprise vulnerabilities ripe for political exploitation?

I think you're crossing up types of politics...like when I was working on Wall Street I got sick to fucking death of hearing people say we had to accept bullshit for "political" reasons.

And just a suggestion, but when discussing fault lines and such, everyone would benefit more from our volunteering what we know than from challenging folks to see if they know what we know.

Booker Rising is a conservative site? Because this sounds like the same nonsense that is used against women voters in general... "Women vote on looks, on personality, on emotion, on hairstyles, blah blah blah", in other words, everything but the issues. Some right wing women even use such beliefs as a basis for wanting the 19th amendment repealed (not that I am saying these particular folks do, but still... it's all part of the program).

I don't know any Southern Black women well (at least none that are still in the South) but I doubt most are any sillier than the rest of us. And I imagine that, being in the south, and being confronted with a racist, manipulative ad, they'd be even more inclined to show up and vote for the person being targeted in the ad, in solidarity or anger or whatever, even if that particular politician and his platform wasn't their favorite. And even more so if they felt they were the that the other side was attempting to manipulate.

Of course, I also wouldn't blame anyone who decided to just stay home out of general disgust for Ford's conservatism.

What black men with full access to them doesn't?

I don't.  Old vestiges of that ethnies as species quirk die hard....,

Booker Rising is a conservative site?

I think you're crossing up types of politics...like when I was working on Wall Street I got sick to fucking death of hearing people say we had to accept bullshit for "political" reasons.

I'm not crossing up anything. The present political environment with its tactical emphasis on candidate deracination very clearly suggests that "accepting bullshit" is a priority for kneegrows seeking to be acceptable to whitefolks in order to curry their votes and obtain political office.

And just a suggestion, but when discussing fault lines and such, everyone would benefit more from our volunteering what we know than from challenging folks to see if they know what we know.

Don't confuse my methodical interogatory with testing folks. I have my own opinions of course, but I'm very interested in knowing the opinions of some of the women who have commented on this thread;

1. Please enumerate some of the gender faultlines in our community that comprise vulnerabilities ripe for political exploitation?

2. What requirements should be stipulated for Black political leadership to minimize these vulnerabilities?

3. Are Black women intrinsically better suited to engage the body politic in America at this stage of its collective psychogical development?

Don't confuse my methodical interogatory with testing folks. I have my own opinions of course, but I'm very interested in knowing the opinions of some of the women who have commented on this thread

Okay. 

Blackprof has now joined the fray;

the question of whether a particular individual “feels” or “believes” that the anti-Harold Ford ads were racist or not racist is irrelevant. The questions are whether the ad moved the needle three percentage points, and whether it did so in a way that was out of bounds.

My question is, how to you know if it's out of bounds or not without checking what you feel or believe? We don't have an actual gauge with which we can measure how racist this or that statement is (how many hair stood up on the back of your neck?).

We have to work with our feelings and beliefs...not doing so is like ignoring your dashboard when you drive. Merge your feelings and beliefs with your knowledge and experience and you have a sound basis for judgement. Frankly, it's the only sound basis...leave out any one of those elements and you tie one limb behind your back.

An engaged or married Harold Ford wouldn't have had this commercial lobbed at him.

I almost hesitate to disturb such innocence.

A guy call a number from his office, got a wrong number. The wrong number happened to be a phone sex number. Guy hung up, the taxpayers got charged about a buck and a half.

In this just-past election, said guy was accused by his Republican opponent in a campaign ad of calling phone sex lines on the taxpayer's dime.

Ok, maybe they still would have tried the commercial, but if Ford had a woman by his side, with a ring on her finger, and better yet, a bun in the oven, he could bat those green eyes of his, talk about how Jesus had led him to this wonderful woman, and how grateful he was to have found this wonderful (BLACK) woman to share his life. And add in a few lines about misspent youth and past sin. You know Ford, he could have spun it well.

The fact that he had nobody by his side, gave credence to the White man and Black woman, that he COULD want the White woman. Having a Sista by his side would have knocked a lot of that out. Would definitely have blunted it.

Here's the thing.

He got 91% of non-white women to vote for him. Ourstorian posted that WAAAAAY upthread, and as I said then, that about wraps the whole argument. Apparently the number of Black women so affected by the commercial was vanishingly small.

I just can't worry about it. Anyone that was convinced Ford is a bad man by that ad would just hate him worse for cheating on a good woman.

"Ok, maybe they still would have tried the commercial, but if Ford had a woman by his side, with a ring on her finger, and better yet, a bun in the oven, he could bat those green eyes of his, talk about how Jesus had led him to this wonderful woman, and how grateful he was to have found this wonderful (BLACK) woman to share his life. And add in a few lines about misspent youth and past sin. You know Ford, he could have spun it well."

Expectations of this sort are one of the major reasons politicians grow cynical and contemptuous of the people who vote them into office. This is pure kitsch!