Third Rail
They just can’t stop touching it. Politico trots out polling that indicates that some people who hold at least one negative stereotype of blacks still plan to vote for Obama. Correct me if I wrong, but that pretty much means that holding stereotypes doesn’t a racist make.
Race has become the elephant in the room of the 2008 presidential campaign, with Obama’s prospect of becoming the first black president drawing some Americans closer to him while pushing others away. At times, the contest has slipped into a familiar dynamic of allegations of racism and outraged denial — but it’s also challenged some easy assumptions about race, racism and prejudice.
“What you see is it’s perfectly possible to hold a negative view of at least one aspect of African-Americans and yet simultaneously prefer Obama,” said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Racial feelings are not as cut and dried — not as black and white — as people often say.”
Franklin explored those contradictions in a large, national survey taken in mid-September, when the Illinois Democratic senator’s rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), led in many polls and the nation’s economic woes had not yet produced a deep crisis. The poll asked voters whether they agreed with the statement that “African-Americans often use race as an excuse to justify wrongdoing.” About a fifth of white voters said they “strongly agreed.” Yet among those who agreed, 23 percent said they’d be supporting Obama.
I’d add that a lot of whites and at least one biracial person use race as an excuse to justify wrongdoing. A lot of them are voting for Obama, and one of them is Obama. You may recall that he and a lot of other people explained that his pastor’s frothing bigotry had to be understood in the context of the black experience. That’s before we get to Obama’s own prejudices against small-town, gun-toting, religion-clingers. Politico’s singleminded approach to the subject is disturbingly almost … racist.
“This result is reasonable if you believe that race is not as monolithic an effect as we might easily assume,” Franklin said, noting that 22 percent of those who “strongly disagreed” said they’d be supporting McCain.
Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that there’s a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man.
OK, lacking meaningful facts, we’re back to anecdotes now. Racist Politico fails to address vast swaths of America that have indicated they voted for Obama because he’s a black man. Also neglects to discuss whether any voters harbor negative views of whites. The polling link posted by Politico, meanwhile, fails to include the polling data in question.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:45 pm on Saturday, October 18, 2008
2 Responses to “Third Rail”
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October 19th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Sadly, this is what I have come to expect from Politico and I therefore ignore it now. Politico’s attempt to serve up the same pap as the NYT or any of the other rags of that ilk is merely packaged differently as it tries to pass itself off as unbiased political coverage. The problem is that the all seem to have the same agenda of supporting Obama and Mike Allen and Ben Smith are often so giddy about Obama that they undoubtedly are having that Chris Matthews thrill going down their legs as well. Disapointing.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:10 am
For a more clear-sighted analysis see:
“No, Mr. Grunwald, Race Remains the Donkey in the Room”
at:
http://hl98.blogspot.com/2008/09/no-mr-grunwald-race-remains-donkey-in.html