It’s one of the questions that I have heard the most from readers during the 17 years that GetReligion has been open for business: Why do you write so many posts — over and over — about the same errors and blind spots in mainstream news coverage of religion?”
Come to think of it, I have heard that question more than a few times from GetReligion writers.
Well, there are several reasons for this. We tend to write posts over and over when:
(1) The subject of these stories is really important in national or international news.
(2) The error, or the religion-news “ghost” we see, is really obvious and important.
(3) These errors are being made by journalists who are not religion-beat pros (think political-desk folks covering stories linked to religion). This points to the need for newsroom managers to hire more religion-news pros or to allow a religion-beat specialist to assist in reporting on topics of this kind.
So here we go again. The double-decker headline in The New York Times proclaimed:
Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas.
Democrats may need to rethink their strategy as the class complexities and competing desires of Latino and Asian-American demographic groups become clear.
If you have followed GetReligion for the past four years, you know that we have noted — many times — the rising importance of Hispanic evangelicals, including what appeared to be a strategic role in the 2016 election in Florida. There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando.
Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties.
Anyway, this latest Times story does deserve some praise for an accurate, and rare, use of “liberal” in a headline.
Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough. Here is an early summary of the facts in this totally faith-free feature, which focus on the failure of a pro-affirmative action push in California:
… (On) Election Day, the proposition failed by a wide margin, 57 percent to 43 percent, and Latino and Asian-American voters played a key role in defeating it. The outcome captured the gap between the vision laid out by the liberal establishment in California, which has long imagined the creation of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition that would embrace progressive causes, and the sentiments of many Black, Latino, Asian and Arab voters.
Variations of this puzzle could be found in surprising corners of the nation on Election Day, as slices of ethnic and racial constituencies peeled off and cut against Democratic expectations. …
“There’s more texture to California blue politics than you might think,” said Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run. “Identity politics only go so far. There is a sense on affirmative action that people resent being categorized by progressives.”
Obviously, this affirmative-action failure in California was not a religion story per se (as opposed to votes in the past on same-sex marriage and other moral issues).
However, that wasn’t the case with many other issues across America during this election year, including some trends at the top of the ballots. The bottom line: If journalists are looking for Latino, Black and Asian voters (and others) who keep swimming against the currents of identity politics, it really helps to look in churches (and synagogues in some zip codes).
Did the world-class political pros at the Times story come close to spotting this religion “ghost”?
Not really. Consider the following material drawn from reporting in Texas (the state where I grew up and started paying attention to politics):
Along the Rio Grande in Texas, where some Mexican-American families, known as Tejanos, have roots that extend back four centuries, the vote margins shifted dramatically in 2020. Latino turnout soared, almost entirely to the benefit of Mr. Trump. Although Mr. Biden obtained more total votes in the four counties of the Rio Grande Valley than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, his margins of victory fell sharply.
The reasons offered for these results include poor field organizing by the Democratic Party, the cultural conservatism of some older Tejano families. …
OK, I will ask: What, pray tell, does “cultural conservatism” mean?
Close, but no cigar. There was another near miss in this passage:
Many voters, too, worried that Mr. Biden and the Democrats would impose a new coronavirus-driven shutdown, with dire consequences for the many thousands who own and labor for small businesses. Prof. Omar Valerio-Jimenez grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and teaches history at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Several of his old friends and cousins voted for Mr. Trump.
“They faced this challenge: Do they continue to open our stores and restaurants and churches, which lets us pay our bills,” he said, “or do we quarantine and not have the money to pay our bills?”
When I talk/email with readers about this, the discussion almost always leads to another question: Why do newsroom professionals keep doing this, over and over?
That’s the question I have been trying to answer for 40 years or so.
Hang in there and be patient with us.