White liberals are much more extreme than blacks

Power Line:

I think almost everyone who pays close attention to politics understands that white Democratic leftists hold more extreme views than most black Democrats. Studies by prominent African-American scholars confirm this understanding. They also indicate that blacks now hold less extreme views than white Democrats as a whole.

Thomas Edsall summarizes the findings of these scholars, and some related polling data, in this article for the New York Times. He cites the work of Katherine Tate, a political scientist at Brown. She contends that starting in the 1980s:

[P]ublic opinion revealed a distinctive shift toward political moderation [among blacks]. The black opinion shift, I argue, is based on the transformation of African-American politics, away from radical challenges to the political status quo toward inclusive, bipartisan electoral politics.

The Democratic Party as a whole, however, is moving precisely in the direction of “radical challenges to the status quo” and away from bipartisanship.

Edsall says that contemporary polling provides evidence of moderation among black Democrats, at least compared to the views of white Democrats:

The poll data suggests a reversal of traditional roles. More conservative and more centrist Democratic whites were once the tempering force within party ranks. Now, on some of the most controversial issues currently under debate, African-Americans — who make up an estimated 25 percent of Democratic primary voters — have emerged as a force for more moderate stands as white Democrats have moved sharply left.

He cites polling by Public Opinion Research, which conducts surveys for The Wall Street Journal and NBC News. It found that the percentage of white voters describing themselves as very liberal or liberal is roughly twice as large as the percentage of black voters who do so. Conversely, the percentage of African-Americans describing themselves as moderate or conservative is almost twice as large as the percentage of white Democratic primary voters who describe themselves that way.

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With the fall in black unemployment, it is likely that blacks should be more open to Republican economic policies which have lifted them out of dependency and poverty.