Comments on Mr. Bob's Blog Spot: Candorville

Well, I voted against it and I am black. All of m...

2008-11-27T22:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I voted against it and I am black. All of my LA friends and family did too, so they said. However, a "religious school" near here had signs up telling people to vote "for" it.

I agree completely. My experience is that minoriti...

2008-11-19T20:49:00.000-08:00

I agree completely. My experience is that minorities divided into their own communities do not easily bridge the gap to other minority communities often. Part of my point is that we in the people-who-love-people-with-the-same-parts-as us group need to do more community outreach and education. To fight lies like the ones propagated by the Yes on 8 campaigns to voters, and dispel common prejudices that don't get challenged enough.

However, I will take an aside for a moment and mention how glad I am that you feel safe posting critiques, especially mathematically and factually based ones, on my blog Mr. Keith. ;0)

If this were anybody else's blog, I wouldn't dare ...

2008-11-19T14:10:00.000-08:00

If this were anybody else's blog, I wouldn't dare post a comment about such an inflammatory topic.

But since it's the blog of Mr. Bob, I feel safe.

I agree that once stats (right or wrong) are out there people are going to run with them, and of course they're desperately looking for a scapegoat to explain this unfortunate event, so I also agree that we have to be skeptical and cautious when we interpret such data.

That said, the article at "Daily Kos" needs a rebuttal. Irrational casting of doubt on well-established statistical methods does more harm than good. In particular, it's very common for people to bash the idea of "random sampling" (as the article does) when in fact only random sampling provides accurate results. Grrrr!

Remember prop 8 passed by a very narrow margin. Of course you can therefore pick nearly any religious, ethnic, or cultural group and say, "if group X have voted differently, Prop 8 would not have passed." So imo, that's a red herring.

The thing that's shaking people up here is the surprise at the voting patterns (regardless of if they really were pivotal in the contest). Oppressed people assume (incorrectly) that other oppressed people will be eager to join their movement for equality. Regrettably, this assumption has repeatedly been shown to be faulty.