Stephen Colbert: Guest Charles Blow

[Rhiannon12866]

Charles Blow Says That Without The Great Migration, America's Balance Of Power Would Be Different

Charles Blow, "The New York Times" op-ed columnist and author of, "The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto," describes how the balance of power in the U.S. government might have looked had the Great Migration of Black Americans to Northern states never taken place.




"Black Prosperity Is Not An Anomaly" - Charles Blow On What It Feels Like To Live In A Majority-Black City

Charles Blow, "The New York Times" op-ed columnist and author of, "The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto," moved to Atlanta after spending 25 years in New York City and he describes what it is like to be Black in a majority-Black city.

[yonder]

1. An excellent, insightful interview.

[Skittles]

2. Charles Blow is freaking awesome

I am a longtime fan; yes INDEED

[SamKnause]

3. I am always interested in what Mr. Charles Blow has to say.

He has my admiration and trust.

[niyad]

4. KNR

[misanthrope]

5. I like Mr. Blow's work

however, I feel he is sincerely misguided with this perspective. He grew up in a majority-Black city in Louisiana. He went to a HBCU. He moved north to a majority-white area and now has returned to a majority-Black city in Georgia. Of course he feels good about it.

Thing is, the rest of the South isn't Atlanta. The ATL is a bustling, thriving modern metropolis. A great deal of the South doesn't fit that description.

And even in the ATL, you don't think Black folks get anxious when they see blue lights? Jim Crow might not exist in code here anymore but that doesn't mean corruption doesn't thrive or that the attitudes have dissipated. One exceptionally close electoral run off in Georgia does not a steady trend make.

He pointed to Black public officials in various majority-Black Southern cities. What he failed to acknowledge are the predominantly white suburbs that encase those cities. The white folks didn't disappear, they just moved out of the city limits. And in Southern states, those lily-white, old boy networks control the state politics. Given the proper motivation, they would find ways to gerrymander Black citizens into as much irrelevancy as they could get away with.

From the white South's visceral reaction to Obama, I can already tell you what their reaction would be to such a "Reverse Great Migration." It wouldn't be pretty.

Pull Black voters from Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan to send them down South and what you would do is erase the razor-thin margins Democrats have in those northern states -- giving those electoral votes to the GOP -- and further disenfranchise those who moved South into overwhelmingly white states.