Friday, February 08, 2008

Name that Meme   [John Derbyshire]

A meme with content along the lines of the following, is zipping around the blogosphere:

Barack Obama has been doing well (and presumably will continue to do well) in

(a) places where there are big numbers of black people

and

(b) places where there are very few black people.

In the (a) places, black voters will turn out for him in droves. In the (b) places, people feel little racial tension, will take the candidate on his merits, and be pleased by his uplifting rhetoric.

However, in places where the proportion of black citizens is big enough to cause tension, but not big enough to swing an election, the white majority will not support Obama, and he will do badly.

It's an interesting idea, and the numbers so far seem to bear it out. My question is, what do we call this meme? It needs a name. Steve Sailer offers "the 15 and 50 percent rule" — i.e. if the proportion of black citizens is below 15 percent, or above 50 percent, Obama will do well, but in the middle range he will not. That seems to me unacceptably cumbersome. Regardless of whether the meme proves to be true or not, we are surely going to hear much more of it. Can't someone come up with a snappier name?

02/08 09:51 AMShare