Wanda Sykes: Out, Proud, and Pissed Off

Actress Wanda Sykes just became your Head Trucker's favorite comedienne. She came out last Saturday at the Prop 8 protest rally in Las Vegas with this up-front, in-your-face speech to the 1,000+ crowd:

You go, girl! "They pissed off the wrong group." You got that right. "We shouldn't have to stand here and demand the rights we should automatically have as American citizens." Amen, sister.

Local journalist Steve Friess caught an audio interview with Sykes immediately after her speech, which you can hear on his blog, Vegas Happens Here. In the interview,

Sykes also disputed the much-reported claim that 70 percent of black voters in California voted to ban gay marriage. Several prominent writers, including Dan Savage here, have railed against homophobic blacks. Wanda said the exit polls were wrong and admonished me, "Please stop spreading that 70 percent of African-Americans voted Yes on Prop 8 because it’s just not true."

What I say: Ms. Sykes is right. The infamous 70% figure is, as far as I can tell, based on one and only one exit poll done by CNN; one poll does not establish an absolute fact (you remember all the thousands of polls done during the presidential campaign?), and even more importantly, this one exit poll does not include the record turnout of early voters before November 4. So it is not, cannot be an accurate picture of all voters.

By comparison, the same CNN poll also purports that 82 percent of Republicans voted Yes on 8; so did 81 percent of white evangelicals; 64 percent of Catholics; 61 percent of mothers with children at home; 59 percent of suburban residents; and 54 percent of heterosexuals.

And of course, nobody is required to answer an exit poll; so even though I'm not a statistician, I realize these numbers reflect voters who selected themselves for the exit poll to some degree.

So does it make any sense to single out one particular group as the scapegoat for Prop 8's passage? Should we villify all Republicans, Catholics, mothers, and burb dwellers? Hell no, of course not. To do so would be to estrange the many people in those groups who did vote for equal marriage. Veteran gay-rights activist David Mixner has this to say about the subject:

Now in relationship to the African-American community, much has been made of a CNN exit poll that show 70% of that community voting "Yes On Eight". Dr. Fernando Guerra of Loyola's Levy Center for the Study of Los Angeles did a far more extensive poll than CNN and found that the 70% figure was way too high. The figure is closer to 57% (still not acceptable) but a long way from the 70%. Other models that I have been running in an attempt to get the facts and not the emotions show the latter a more likely figure.

The other data that appears to be emerging (BUT yet to be totally verified) is that African-Americans who early voted (which was a huge number) voted YES while those on election day voted NO. Remember we did not do extensive campaigning in many of the African-American precincts until the final week or so which was long after tens of thousands had already voted. Our campaign was slow to use Obama's opposition to Proposition Eight which he gave the day after the initiative qualified five months before the election.

So let's move on here, folks, and cut out the mudslinging and racism. Our job is clear: we have to meet, talk, educate, and campaign even harder now, and follow the example Obama has set of effective grassroots organizing. And now the queer community is fired up, ready to go! Next time it comes to a vote, we will win.

Yes. We. Will.

P.S. - California is still counting absentee and provisional ballots; final results will be released on December 9.