Day 8.5: District of Columbia

[memphis]

As several people have pointed out, the District is divided mostly into rich whites and poor blacks, both of whom vote heavily Democratic. However, they have vastly different reasons for the same behavior.
The whites who live in DC have chosen to live in a major urban area. The people who make such a decision are generally interested in the cultural things that a major city has to offer. Culture snobs tend to vote Democratic. In contrast the safety-freaks who have chosen to live in the exurbs typically vote Republican. You could question which came first, the chicken or the egg (geography vs. partisanship), but in both cases whites with the means to do so, self-select to live in places that fit their political pursuasions.
Blacks are an entirely different story. Although they tend to be highly religious, blacks are extremely suspicious of the white, evangelical base of the Republican party. They remember the Protestant segregation acadamies of decades past, and overwhelmingly identify the Democratic Party as the party of Civil Rights.  This rift in Chrisitianity along racial lines dates all the way back to slavery, when whites considered black Christians to be immoral and overly emotional (think of the style of the black worship service) vs. blacks who felt that Whites were not sincere about their Christianity because they preached "love thy neighbor" yet oppressed blacks openly and shamelessly. A remarkable fact about black voting is that there a no urban/rural divide as there is in other voting blocs.