Political attitudes about race prove we’re still living in a tribal world

By David McElroy · October 15, 2012

When actress Stacey Dash posted an endorsement of Mitt Romney on Twitter last week, it should have been no big deal. But because Dash is a minority (black and Latino), she was attacked by other blacks for not supporting Barack Obama. The strong implication is that blacks have an obligation to stick together to support a fellow minority.

Dash’s experience prompted some articles asking whether it’s racist for blacks to support Obama in such high percentages, just because he’s black. (Here’s a conservative black woman writing about the issue.)

Is it racist for black to support Obama for being black? Well, duh. Of course it is. Is it racists for whites to oppose him because he’s black? Duh. Of course it is.

The photo above was taken Friday at a Romney rally in Ohio. A charitable interpretation of the shirt might be that the wearer just happens to support Romney for policy reasons, but the shirt is just a humorous attempt to show his support for his candidate, who happens to be white.

But does any sane and honest person believe that?

I don’t see a lot of difference between the two candidates when you look past their rhetoric, but some people do. For a large chunk of those people, it’s the party label that means the most. Many whites would honestly still support the Team Red candidate even if he were black and the Blue candidate were white. And many blacks would support the Team Blue candidate even if the Red candidate were black.

But there are a lot of people — on both sides of the racial divide — for whom race is clearly an issue.

I’ve listened to groups of blacks discussing the election and it’s been clear to me that they supported “Barrack” — they all seem to know him by first name when I listen in — because he’s “one of us.” Because he’s black. And I’ve been among groups of white people who clearly hate Obama because he’s black. They might disagree with a white candidate who holds exactly the same positions, but they have special hatred for Obama, because he’s “one of them.”

Human beings are tribal. We split into groups based on whatever differences we can find. We fight over stupid things. It seems to be wired into our genes.

I’ve talked before about the fact that we don’t live in the “post-racial” fantasy world that so many people want. I don’t think we ever will be, because many people will always find an excuse to hate someone else. If our skin color were uniform around the world, they’d just choose some other factor. The issue isn’t skin color. The issue is “us vs. them.” The issue is finding a way to force “those people” — whoever they are — to live the way we believe they ought to live.

I hate the racist attitudes that I see from both blacks and whites in politics, but I have trouble getting as indignant as some people do, because I don’t think it’s a part of human nature that can change. We’re tribal beings who are going to find reasons to hate each other and fight each other. We’re going to justify our hatred of one another, by “proving” that the “other side” is wrong and evil.

But that’s just justification. The truth is that humans just want to hate others and fight other groups and try to control one another.

It might be a depressing way to look at humanity, but I think it’s a realistic thing to understand about a fallen world. This is just who we are. The best we can hope for is for some of us to decide that we don’t have to live that way. Sadly, I think those of us who refuse to engage in the tribalism of the day — whether it’s skin color or language or religion or whatever — are always going to be in the minority.

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Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

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