It is an uncomfortable issue for progressive white people to talk about. As the Democratic Party swings hard against charter schools, the racial divide is becoming painfully obvious. Black and Latinx Democrats support charter schools at much higher rates than white ones do. So what gives? Are suburban whites being insensitive to urban concerns? Probably. But there is another obvious point that needs to be included in the discussion.If you haven’t heard it already, you will soon. White Democrats who oppose charter schools will be accused of racial insensitivity, at best. As the Washington Post’s editors put it,

It’s easy to oppose charters if you are well-off and live in a suburb with good schools.

The racial divide in the Democratic Party on the issue of charter schools has been and will be painted as a simple urban/suburban divide. And there’s some important truth to that. However, we’d be silly if we didn’t also recognize the context.

Namely, for the past thirty years, on certain issues, Black Democrats have often been far more conservative than white ones. As just one example, take the issue of abortion rights. In 2018, just over three quarters (76%) of all Democrats supported legal abortion rights “in all or most cases.” Just under one quarter (21%) wanted abortion illegal “in all or most cases.”

No surprise here…

African American voters, however, tended to be much more conservative about abortion rights. Only 60% of African Americans supported legal abortion rights, compared to 38% who opposed them.

What does this mean? Not all that much, of course. Not all African-American voters are Democrats, though many are. And on plenty of other issues African-American Democrats do not skew more conservative than white Democrats.

When it comes to charter schools, however, we should remember that racial divisions within the Democratic Party are the norm, not an anomaly. If the issue of charter schools is shifting—AND IT IS—from one with bipartisan support to one with solely conservative support, we should not be surprised to find more conservative Democrats sticking with it. On many issues, including LGBTQ rights and abortion rights, non-white Democrats have always been more conservative than whites.

The racial divide about charter schools is just joining a party divide already in progress.