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DEBATE: WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
Posted by: Laura J
Karma:
43
Barack Obama is ahead in the polls; however Democrats are nervously wondering about how much impact the “Bradley effect” might have. In 1982 Tom Bradley was polling way ahead of his Republican rivals. His eventual loss was put down to white voters not admitting their racism to pollsters. Will this affect Obama, or has America changed?
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WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
Racism is still a part of American society
Open racism may be less acceptable in society, but has racism really disappeared? It may no longer be acceptable to make racist comments in the media, or in public, but making a decision in the privacy of the ballot box is a very different matter. A recent poll found that a third of white Democrats and registered independents have negative views towards black people. This is clearly going to influence their vote.
American society has changed a great deal since 1982. The country has become much less racist – indeed, the fact that a black man is the Democratic party candidate for the Presidency (a concept that would be unthinkable in the 1980s) proves that race is no longer an issue for American voters.
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WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
Voters say that Obama’s race is a factor
Empirical evidence from Obama campaigners suggests that Obama’s race is a factor in whether people plan to vote for him. A Guardian reporter quotes Obama campaigner Kaitlin Decero, who makes campaign calls to residents of Pittsburgh, as saying that nineteen out of twenty calls result in a negative comment on Obama’s race. "Some people will say openly, 'he is a black', 'I do not trust him', 'he is an Arab', 'he is a Muslim', 'he was not born in America'. They use the 'n-word'. We just hang up."
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
Racial prejudice exists even when people do not think of themselves as racist
Even among people who may not think of themselves as racist, there are still lingering racial prejudices. Daniel Kiel, an academic at the University of Memphis, wrote in the Washington Post that in studies in which recruiters are confronted with identical resumes of white and black job candidates, white candidates are consistently rated higher than black candidates. The more qualified the candidate, the greater the difference in rating. White people are predisposed to view black candidates unfavourably.
(Stryker McGuire, ‘The Election Is Not in the Bag. Race Could Still Undo Obama,’ 12 October 2008, The Observer)
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
social desirability
The ‘Bradley Effect’ is when a non-white and white candidate go head to head and in the opinion polls it looks like the non-white candidate will when. However, when it comes to the election, people vote for the white candidate. It is because some voters tell the opinion pollsters that they are either undecided or will vote for the non-white candidate in order to conceal their racism, or to avoid perceived racism. This is because humans wish to be socially desirable and wish to be viewed pleasantly. This social desirability is still a factor today; the human condition has not changed. So the Bradley effect will take place.
This effect is a mere theory. Some people dismiss it altogether, whilst others hold that the Bradley effect has had a decline in impact post-1996. “Before 1996, the median gap for black candidates was 3.1 percentage points, while for subsequent years it was -0.3 percentage points”(1) This means that the difference between voting and polls for Black people is in decline. With the difference now -.03%, how can it be claimed that the Bradley effect is taking hold of this election.
(1) Daniel J. Hopkins (2008-10-04). "No More Wilder Effect, Never a Whitman Effect: When and Why Polls Mislead about Black and Female Candidates". Department of Government, Harvard University.
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WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
negative association
We have to remember that people associate things, they group things and people together. Obama is standing for President and he has a Black Muslim middle name. The fact that Obama did his best to hide this shows that he himself believes that this will have a negative impact on his campaign.In fact, the Bradley effect is likely to have double effect compared to any other election due to the fact that Obama is not only non-white but he also has Islamic connections.
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
“white guilt”
Maybe it will not be present racism that will influence the looming election but the racism of the past. People have cited theories of “white guilt”(1), whereby, people vote and support Obama because they feel guilty for the slavery that happened, it seems, so many years ago. Once again the fact that Obama is also a Muslim may mean that this guilt occurs twice, once for black slavery and once for Iraq which increases the likelihood of this having an effect on the election.
(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/20/race-south-election-obama
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
the sorts of people that would vote
Racism will undoubtedly figure in the coming American Presidential elections. There will be a higher turn out of white racists; no matter how slight their racism is, because they will not want to have a Black President. In turn, Black people will influx the voting stations as they will think that they need to counter such racist votes. Whoever wins the coming election will have won due to numbers. But the numbers will be distorted by racism.
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
He has chosen the Black race over the White race.
Obama does not descend from two black parents, he has a white mother. Despite this Obama has to some degree chosen to label himself as a Black candidate(1). White people may feel resentment at the fact that Obama has abandoned his white heritage and instead chose a Black identity.
(1) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article3273187.ece
This is ridiculous. Obama has not chosen an identity. He is merely stating what he is, physically. He is Black, if he gets voted in he will be a Black President, the first one. It is not as if he had a choice between being white or black, he has the skin tone of an African-American, regardless of who his parents are.
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WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
Too late, it already has
At least it's 'change' 'ey? The audacity of hope indeed, hope is a possibility, ie not real.
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
We don’t know what will be a factor in a national election
As a CNN polling analyst pointed out, there has never previously been a black Presidential candidate. Obama is breaking entirely new ground: he has already confounded all previous experience. We have seen the ‘Bradley effect’ occur only in local and gubernatorial elections – we have no idea what the effect of Obama’s race will be in a national election, when voters are focussing on very different issues.
(Keating Holland, CNN’s Polling Director, quoted in Jason Carroll, ‘Will Obama Suffer from the “Bradley Effect”?’ 14 October 2008, CNN.com)
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
The ‘Bradley effect’ may not even exist
There is some doubt as to whether Bradley’s defeat can be put down to race in any case. Lance Tarrance, the lead pollster for Bradley’s opponent George Deukmejian, has recently argued that so-called ‘Bradley effect’ was down to bad polling rather than racism. In other words, the polls were wrong when they showed Bradley in the lead. This would explain Bradley’s defeat without the need to resort to racism.
(Donna Brazile, ‘America is Ready for the Obama Effect,’ 16 October 2008, CNN.com)
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
Recent polls have not shown the ‘Bradley effect’
Polling in the last few years measuring the appeal of black candidates has largely been seen to be accurate – in the 2006 election for the Tennessee senate, black Democrat Harold Ford was shown to be behind by three points in the polls – the same amount by which he eventually lost. If this poll was accurate, it suggests that current polls on Obama are equally accurate. The Bradley effect no longer applies.
(Jonathan Freedland, ‘All Sides are Behaving as if Obama Has it in the Bag. And Yet, and Yet…’ 22 October 2008, The Guardian)
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
bad polling, not racism
Opinion polls always have a margin of error. It is for that reason that they are mere opinion polls and they do not get taken into account! Opinion polls are not worth the website they are typed on! They are unreliable and do not represent true voter opinions. Bearing this in mind it should not be a surprise that the opinion polls get it wrong sometimes! Opinion polls cannot take into account all of the people who vote, and so it is a matter of statistical sense that opinion polls may not be representative or accurate.(1)(1) http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/16/brazile.obama/index.html
WILL RACISM DECIDE THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS?
It's not the race, but what Obama stands for.
The problem with Senator Obama is not race, but the positions he stands for.He is known as one of the most liberal-leaning Senators in the US Congress, and increasingly we know that many of his friends had pretty chequered past histories (e.g., William Ayers and Tony Rezko just for starters). A lot of Democrats are crossing their fingers that the influence of Ayers and Rezko won't turn a potential Obama Administration into fiasco like what happened during the first two years of the Clinton Administration.
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