“Black solidarity” is indeed harder to explain. It may reflect a morally conservative attitude on the part of some blacks; it may be proof that left-wing folks are anything but immune to ingroup bias, at least in some circumstances; or it may be that what we take to be “black solidarity” does not reflect a true ingroup in the moral and cognitive sense, but a mere coalition or bloc based on shared interests, which is a fairly common feature in modern politics.
I don’t think it’s that hard to explain. A sufficient explanation would simply be the salience of skin color leading to stereotypes and action based on it: for example, during slavery, even if all sorts of ethnic groups with dark skin had nothing at all in common with each other it would still be a good idea to form a ‘Black’ identity just to coordinate opposition to slavery; if they were going to be treated as a single homogenous group, then they might as well strive to make themselves a homogenous group as far as fighting the treatment goes. (Alternate example: if there were pending legislation to execute everyone with brown eyes and you have brown eyes, you’d better quickly find all your fellow brown-eyes and hand all your money to a brown-eyed organization to fight this legislation in every way possible.)
Such a ‘reaction’ explanation of group identity also handily explains observed voting patterns of blacks for Democrats in shares upwards of 70 or 80% - it may not so much be that they really find themselves in agreement with the Democratic platform in every respect, it’s just that black-related issues are really important to them. IIRC, blacks tend to strongly disagree with the general Democratic population on some issues like gay marriage.
(Of course, I could be wrong about all of this; maybe it’s already been investigated thoroughly and these explanations debunked. It’s not an area I read much in.)
Yes, that’s essentially what I mean by “shared interests”. In this case, the lack of white “solidarity” (in a political sense) is easily explained by the observation that whites’ political interests are not at all homogenous.
Of course, if policy is allowed to discriminate among races (and this is in fact the case) that might create homogenous interests where none existed before; however, my guess is that some minorities would still coalesce along race-based lines even if such policies weren’t a factor.
Yes, that’s essentially what I mean by “shared interests”.
I thought you meant something more like pre-existing conditions or contexts, for example, the shared interest of everyone who holds fixed debt in keeping inflation low or everyone who owns land on secure property rights.
What I thought was interesting and different about the black example was that this ‘shared interest’ could be forced on groups that previously shared no interests by a sufficiently powerful group which decides to treat the previously different groups as the same group—in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don’t think it’s that hard to explain. A sufficient explanation would simply be the salience of skin color leading to stereotypes and action based on it: for example, during slavery, even if all sorts of ethnic groups with dark skin had nothing at all in common with each other it would still be a good idea to form a ‘Black’ identity just to coordinate opposition to slavery; if they were going to be treated as a single homogenous group, then they might as well strive to make themselves a homogenous group as far as fighting the treatment goes. (Alternate example: if there were pending legislation to execute everyone with brown eyes and you have brown eyes, you’d better quickly find all your fellow brown-eyes and hand all your money to a brown-eyed organization to fight this legislation in every way possible.)
Such a ‘reaction’ explanation of group identity also handily explains observed voting patterns of blacks for Democrats in shares upwards of 70 or 80% - it may not so much be that they really find themselves in agreement with the Democratic platform in every respect, it’s just that black-related issues are really important to them. IIRC, blacks tend to strongly disagree with the general Democratic population on some issues like gay marriage.
(Of course, I could be wrong about all of this; maybe it’s already been investigated thoroughly and these explanations debunked. It’s not an area I read much in.)
Yes, that’s essentially what I mean by “shared interests”. In this case, the lack of white “solidarity” (in a political sense) is easily explained by the observation that whites’ political interests are not at all homogenous.
Of course, if policy is allowed to discriminate among races (and this is in fact the case) that might create homogenous interests where none existed before; however, my guess is that some minorities would still coalesce along race-based lines even if such policies weren’t a factor.
I thought you meant something more like pre-existing conditions or contexts, for example, the shared interest of everyone who holds fixed debt in keeping inflation low or everyone who owns land on secure property rights.
What I thought was interesting and different about the black example was that this ‘shared interest’ could be forced on groups that previously shared no interests by a sufficiently powerful group which decides to treat the previously different groups as the same group—in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.