Pew breaks down the 2012 vote by race:
Blacks voted at a higher rate this year than other minority groups and for the first time in history may also have voted at a higher rate than whites, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data, election day exit poll data and vote totals from selected cities and counties.
Josh Marshall adds:
If you know the history of disenfranchisement in the African-American community, this is a pretty amazing milestone. I continue to think — and I’m not alone in this — that Republican sowed the wind with voter suppression tactics and reaped the whirlwind. Far from taking the edge off African-American turnout, which was the intent, it mobilized these voters to historic levels.
Kilgore provides more context:
Elections where African-Americans voted at higher rates than whites may be a brand new possibility at the presidential level, but not so much at the state and local level. I distinctly recall this happening in my home state of Georgia in 1998, producing a big pro-Democratic upset in a governor’s race with no African-American candidate present (significant increases in black turnout also helped Democrats win gubernatorial upsets in Alabama and South Carolina the same year—an entirely unexpected “Dixie Trifecta.”). What did happen in Georgia, however, was a late series of heavy-handed racially-tinged ads by a Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor, run by his consultant, a guy named Ralph Reed, that helped mobilize African-American voters. You know, sorta like the poorly disguised 2012 ads attacking “welfare” and “voter fraud.”
The Dish 