John Payton

(Controversy surrounds the role of African Americans in the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that overturned a California Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriages. John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, says African Americans are getting a raw deal.)

Here we go again.

African-American voters constitute only 6 percent of the California electorate.  Yet, we hear that Proposition 8 in California, the ballot initiative that overturned the decision of the California Supreme Court that marriage was a fundamental right that extended to all couples, straight or gay, succeeded because of Black voters. 

There are reports, based on exit polling, that some 70 percent of the African American voters in California supported Proposition 8, compared with much lower numbers for white voters or Asian voters or Latino voters.  

But here’s the thing: Proposition 8 passed by a margin that exceeded any impact traceable to African-American voters.

If the exit polling data is correct – and there are conflicting reports that put the number of African-Americans who supported Proposition 8 at closer to 57 percent — then a majority of the African-American community supported Proposition 8. 

Nevertheless, given their limited electoral impact in California, scapegoating the Black community for its passage deflects attention away from other actors and away from the underlying issues that are a cause for concern for all Californians, not just those who are for or against same-sex marriage.

LDF filed a brief in the California Supreme Court that urged the court to do what it ultimately did – find that marriage is a fundamental right available to all people.  We did that because we are very sensitive to fundamental rights and believe that you cannot say that some people have them and others do not.  And, we have last week filed a writ in the California Supreme Court making the argument that the California Constitution requires more than a simple majority vote to strip away a fundamental right from a minority group. 

The loss of a fundamental right is not a black issue or a gay or lesbian issue.  It is an issue for everyone. When one group is threatened with the loss of a fundamental right, we are all threatened by that potential loss.

A couple of months ago, there was a parade of stories about how the collapse of the U.S. financial system was caused by the irresponsible actions of black people who bought homes beyond their means and whose default on the mortgages they used to buy those homes had resulted in the financial meltdown. This came from conservative columnists and news outlets and was quickly embraced by some conservative members of Congress.  Never mind that the actual numbers of African Americans who in fact had these “toxic” mortgages was quite small relative to the overall number of those mortgages. 

And never mind that many of these mortgage borrowers were themselves victims of predatory lending practices on the part of some of the country’s most prominent banks and financial institutions.  Simply stated, the idea that the U.S. financial system – indeed the world financial system – could be brought down by the poorest sector of the American population was preposterous.

In the current financial crisis, it should now be clear to virtually everyone that the cause of this was in the financial institutions themselves and in the failure of any governmental institution to conduct oversight.  In the case of Proposition 8, it should be clear that the reason it passed is not because African Americans voted for it, but that California voters voted for it.  It also should be clear that this measure’s passage is not just a loss for those who support same-sex marriage, but for all who cherish fundamental human rights.