Slavery was still legal in Delaware at the start of the Civil War. They were one of four such states not to secede (the others being Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland).
Those states also officially banned slavery *after* the South, also tossing in West Virginia and Tennessee (since TN surrendered) by about two years. Of course some people probably ignored the leader of what they considered another country passing a law...
I was thinking it's probably mostly Richmond. I haven't spent a lot of time around Virginia Beach but I thought it was more diverse than that. I grew up in the NoVA DC suburbs and while some neighborhoods there have a lot of African Americans it's also an extremely diverse place. My college classrooms often looked like meetings at the UN, and high school was similar.
yeah, NoVA is super diverse. There's someone from every race up here. I think the majority of African Americans in Virginia are from the Hampton Roads area and Richmond.
That and a lot of areas along the NC Border like Danville, Brunswick County, Mecklenburg County, and a few other counties along the VA/NC line. Roanoke City also has quite a few.
Once you go west of Roanoke though there's barely any
The sad thing is that VA has now been taken over by Yankees and blue voters from up North. They keep voting for bad ideas, and then move out and vote for them in again in other states.
These are many of the same voters that are subsidizing red Virginia. No matter how you put it, Loudoun, Fairfax, Prince William, and Henrico pay far more in taxes than they receive. Next time, be grateful for everything blue Virginia has given you.
Not really surprising, to be honest. After the civil war, most blacks stayed in the South. Some did move North. Detroit, for example, back in the early 1900s, saw an increase in the black population.
There was the Great Migration which brought many blacks to northern industrial cities, but...like, when slavery ended it wasn't as if the freed slaves suddenly got wealth and mobility. Sharecropping and Jim Crow segregation led many to stay because they literally couldn't afford to do anything else.
The difference used to be much more stark. In 1880, the population of South Carolina was 60.7% black. In northern states, there were hardly any black people at all. This all changed during the Great Migration between 1916 and 1970.
Interestingly, I think I've heard that many Northern black people are starting to move back South, especially to big cities like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, etc. I don't know the details though so correct if I'm wrong.
Delaware was my first guess after the six or so that I knew for sure were right. I have no idea why. It just popped into my head. "I'll try this...oh, wow. So probably Maryland and Virginia too?...oh, nice."
I'm white, but growing up in a majority African-American city in Georgia (Atlanta), I never knew until I was around 12 years old that the United States is majority white. I was shocked when I found out! Haha
Cuotak wasn't implying you have to vote Democratic to "be black." The fact is that black Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic, so a state with a larger-than-average share of black voters might lean more democratic. According to Mississippi Today, top-line Democratic candidates get at least 88% of Mississippi's black vote, going up to as high as 95%. The answer to cuotak's question is that white voters still make up about 59% of the Mississippi electorate, and they are overwhelmingly conservative. (In fact, Donald Trump's share of Mississippi's vote in 2020 was...59%). It is true though that many "deep red" states have sizeable black populations. It's simply that the white populations are so close to uniformly conservative that their vote will continue to reign.
So people do in fact vote by race; nothing has changed down there. Like you said, 59% of the vote went conservative, 59% of the electorate is white; blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic (95%)...So from all that, we can deduce that down south Democrat is the Black party, Republican is the white party....and both sides, especially the Rs, make sure that concept is in the minds of all the electorate...(it helps the Rs more because they have the numbers). What are the statistical odds that nearly every white person is Republican; even in places like Utah and Montana at least 10% of whites will vote Blue.
Down South, race reigns...so all white people know, that if at least 10% of the white electorate votes Blue, the Dems would control, and with the Democratic party overwhelmingly Black, that will mean Black politicians. So they vote accordingly. This is mostly true for federal and statewide races; that big dynamic is inconsequential locally why you tend to see some white Ds still.
I’ve heard that 90% of white Mississippians vote republican and 90% of black Mississippians vote Democrat. There’s more white than black Mississippians so it ends up republican.
Not all black people are democratic you know, and not all white people are republican. In my opinion it is absurd to classify any one race as a certain political party.
We can read statistics and identify general trends. Saying that black people are statistically more likely to be Democratic is not saying that all black people are Democrats. In my opinion it is absurd to conflate reaching an obvious conclusion based on clear data with making classifications about an entire race.
I agree that it isn't accurate in all cases to assume race = political party affiliation. But it is almost always the case. Unfortunately many voters vote based on their race without even knowing where their chosen candidate stands on all of the issues. Voters in general, regardless or race, are mostly uninformed anymore. Facebook and Twitter (among other social networks) have become the American public's primary source of information on candidates unfortunately.
Once you go west of Roanoke though there's barely any
Down South, race reigns...so all white people know, that if at least 10% of the white electorate votes Blue, the Dems would control, and with the Democratic party overwhelmingly Black, that will mean Black politicians. So they vote accordingly. This is mostly true for federal and statewide races; that big dynamic is inconsequential locally why you tend to see some white Ds still.