A lot of people have been talking about how the black percentage of a state's population is inversely proportional to Obama's share of the white vote. But these graphs show that that isn't precisely true. In the Midwest, West, and Northeast, more black people go with more liberal nonblack people. It's only in the South that whites vote conservative when there's blacks around. Of course, there are so many black people in the South that when you lump all the regions together, the national effect just looks like the South.
I think the biggest takeaway point from these graphs is that government policy really has a big effect - places where black people have always had legal equality are places where nonblack people don't mind black people. Most of this country is just not very racist.
The flip side of that, unfortunately, is that something is still very wrong with the South. Despite a century and a half of policies aimed at cracking white Southern racism, that diseased culture ha proven remarkably resilient. I am not a cultural relativist - I think things like racism drag a whole people down. And it's becoming clearer to me that Southern racism will only really be "gone with the wind" once massive immigration works its magic.
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