Oct. 12, 2008
A Matter of Race
Could Attitudes On Skin Color, Not Issues Still Decide The Presidential Contest? Experts Debate What Voters May Truly Feel
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When asked if race will affect a voter's decision, some say it is unavoidable, and that there are some voters who – issues aside – just aren’t ready to cross that racial divide at the polling booth. (AP)
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Play CBS Video Video Obama Heckler At Palin Event A man brought a stuffed monkey doll wearing an Obama sticker to a Palin campaign event in Johnstown, Pa. Realizing he was caught on camera, he passed it off to a child he didn't know.
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Video The 'Hussein' Name Game Attendees at a rally for the Republican presidential ticket discussed remarks involving the use of Barack Obama's middle name, "Hussein" by a speaker at the event.
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Photo Essay Barack Obama A look at the life and meteoric rise of the president-elect.
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Timeline Obama And Rev. Wright Key dates in the relationship between Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
It's the vexing issue hiding in plain sight.
"I know there are some people who won't vote for me because I'm black, and that's ok," said Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
Even as the economy seems to be in freefall, as Americans grapple with whether to vote for Obama, the first African American presidential nominee, or his Republican opponent, John McCain, it's a decision unavoidably colored by race, whether we like it - whether we admit it - or not.
When asked if race will affect a voter's decision, some say it is unavoidable, and that there are some voters who - issues aside - just aren’t ready to cross that racial divide at the polling booth.
Barack Obama, the son of a white American mother and a black father from Kenya, says his race is not an issue for him.
"I self-identify as African American. That's how I'm treated and that's how I'm viewed, and I'm proud of it."
But his race is an issue for some Americans.
"I don't want to say I'm prejudiced or anything, but for one, I'm not going to, I don't want to vote for a colored man to be our president," said one voter.
"There are a group of people who will never, ever vote for Barack Obama," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University, and an Obama supporter.
"On the other extreme there are a group of white voters who are beside themselves with excitement about the idea of being in a multi-racial coalition led by a black candidate,' she said. "Then there is the vast middle. That group of voters are really the people that the Obama campaign is worried about making sure that the strategy is one about policy, about issues, about positions and not about questions of race."
Joe Trippi, a Democratic political consultant and an analyst for CBS News, says that Obama is running to be America's president, "not African-America's president or White-America's president, but everybody's president.
"And any time he gets sidetracked into defending or bringing up race, it doesn't help him."
In fact, race is a political hot potato that burns anyone who gets close. When Hillary Clinton said she more than Obama appealed to "hard-working Americans, white Americans," she was accused of exploiting the racial divide. When Sarah Palin tells her crowds Obama doesn't see America like they do, she says she means he's an elitist. Others hear racial code words.
… as when he is referred to at GOP rallies as "Barack Hussein Obama."
And when Obama said Republicans were trying to make voters afraid of him - remarking that the Democrat "doesn't look like all the other presidents on the dollar bill" - the McCain camp accused him of playing the race card.
Dan Bartlett, former counselor to President George W. Bush, now a CBS News political analyst, says the McCain campaign knows the boundaries.
"They've learned the lesson from the primary process with Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton," Bartlett said. "And I think it's a simple lesson, that nothing really good comes out of even going up to the line, so to speak."
"But many whites thought the lines was crossed by the blistering language of Obama's former minister, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright - comments Obama said were not only wrong but divisive.
It forced the Senator from Illinois to tackle race in America head-on, in a speech last March in Philadelphia where he said, " I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union."
But that might be easier said than done.
For 10 years University of Washington social psychologist Anthony Greenwald has been studying "implicit bias," or unconscious attitudes. They don't control behavior, but they lurk in all of us.
(CBS)
"We find that 75% or so have this preference for white relative to black," Greenwald said.
What does that mean for the election?
"When voters are undecided, our test can pick up something that will predict how they will vote," he said.
David Sears, who studies polls at UCLA, has seen something similar. He calls it racial resentment - the belief of some whites that blacks complain too much, or don't try hard enough - attitudes they take into the voting booth.
"It turns out to be one of the strongest predictors of preference between Obama and McCain," Sears said. "I think there's reason to believe that Obama's not doing as well as a comparable white Democrat would do."
Still, Obama is ahead in the polls.
To Californians with long memories, it all sounds familiar. When Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley ran for governor in 1982, it appeared he was certain to become California's first black chief executive; the last polls had him up 10 points. Yet, he lost.
Joe Trippi was Bradley's deputy campaign manager.
"It was probably the most crushing defeat I've been part of."
"It gave us the term "the Bradley Effect" - the assumption that when it comes to black candidates, polls (or rather people who talk to pollsters) lie, fearing they'll be seen as bigots.
When Douglas Wilder ran for governor of Virginia in 1989 he was up 9 points, but squeaked to victory by less than one point.
What about Obama?
"The country has come a hell of a long way," Trippi said. "I think it's a mistake to think that there'll be any kind of big surprise like there was in the Bradley campaign in 1982. But I also think it'd be a mistake to say, 'It's all gone.'"
CBS pollster Kathleen Frankovic doesn't see it any more. In recent elections with black candidates - Deval Patrick's winning governor's race in Massachusetts, in Tennessee, Harold Ford losing his run for the Senate, both in 2006 - the polls were right-on.
"I really do believe that the so-called Bradley effect is an artifact of a certain place and a certain time," she said. "It's an artifact of the 1980s."
What's new? Frankovic says high-ranking blacks in the Bush White House have gotten Americans used to blacks in positions of authority.
Even pop culture has helped Americans entertain the idea of a black commander-in-chief.
Strong, successful black presidents in movies (Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact") and TV shows (Dennis Haysbert in "24") may have set the stage.
fictionalized media allow us to try things on for size.
UCLA sociology professor Darnell Hunt, who has done research on race and the media, says fictionalized media "allow us to try things on for size.
"The media are pretty good at normalizing things, and if people see it enough in the media, suddenly it seems like something that, yeah, this can happen."
But this is the real world, with real world issues: two foreign wars, and an economy in deep crisis.
So what do voters say?
"But we've never had a black president before, so … (shrugs her shoulders)"
"I hope that people will get past race and just figure out which one of these guys is most, would be the best candidate for this country. This should supersede race."
"I don't care if he's green, white, black or purple - it doesn't matter, if they can perform and do the job, it doesn't matter to me."
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 365 CommentsThe only fair and balanced aproach now is to devote the same number of minutes to the fear of many American voters of a president over 70 with serious health problems and an unqualified vice president. You played the race card, now play the age card.
two funny things.
One it''''s funny to see that the blacks in America are proven wrong about how "RACIST" America is.
Two it''''s funny to see how "RACIST" America still is when it comes to blacks voting for NOBAMA only because he is black.
Truthfully, like many black and non-black Americans, I''ll be voting for Obama because he''s the better candidate. Equally truthful; in past elections, I and millions of other African Americans have voted for the better and always white candidate, rather then not vote at all because neither candidate was black.
"I self-identify as African American. That''s how I''m treated and that''s how I''m viewed, and I''m proud of it."
Well duh! His father is a Kenyan and his mother is from Kansas. Who could be more literally African American? How else could you possibly "self-identify" yourself? Chinese-Greek?
I could not care less about his race. It''s that he makes Teflon Bill Clinton look like a rusty frying pan that gets on my nerves, and it would be interesting if the media held him accountable without the threat of the race card being dropped.
"I self-identify as African American. That''s how I''m treated and that''s how I''m viewed, and I''m proud of it."
Well duh! His father is a Kenyan and his mother is from Kansas. Who could be more literally African American? How else could you possibly "self-identify" yourself? Chinese-Greek?
I could not care less about his race. It''s that he makes Teflon Bill Clinton look like a rusty frying pan that gets on my nerves, and it would be interesting if the media held him accountable without the threat of the race card being dropped.
"I self-identify as African American. That''s how I''m treated and that''s how I''m viewed, and I''m proud of it."
Well duh! His father is a Kenyan and his mother is from Kansas. Who could be more literally African American? How else could you possibly "self-identify" yourself? Chinese-Greek?
I could not care less about his race. It''s that he makes Teflon Bill Clinton look like a rusty frying pan that gets on my nerves, and it would be interesting if the media held him accountable without the threat of the race card being dropped.
This blatant African American racism really has helped me to understand the super sensitivity I often hear noted by prominent African American people on the news when a white person makes what sounds, to me, like a harmless comment that I would never have interpreted as being racial. It is the black population that is being so very racial in its views, I think. I really had not realized this until I began seeing the staggering polling numbers.
"Overall, Obama is leading 53 percent to 43 percent among likely voters"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27155454/
This I find reassuring as the percentage of bigots does not appear to be all that impactful on the poll numbers.
Just like they make it about gender, age, disabilities, etc.
It''s an old tactic that they have used for generations.
Race IS an important issue, just like gender is, and everyone I know-- elite or not-- was talking about it before the media decided to report on it (because of a study from "elitists" I suppose at Stanford who found that Obama would be 6 points ahead of where he is now in the polls if he were white). It is relevant, stop whining and make a real point or you just embarrass yourself by pointing fingers and blaming others (like McCain and Palin have been doing.)
Posted by sbelknap01
That''s an interesting story!
I really don''t think Barack''s got anything to worry about so long as the economy''s in distress because a lot of people who have internal conflicts over voting for a black man probably know it, and will ponder that ''dilemma'' and will make a concerted effort to find a rationalization that for them makes their vote one of sort of a ''higher order''.
You see a lot of people doing the projection thing who''ll bring up the subject of race when race isn''t part of the discussion like they''re almost getting comfortable with their internal conflict and oftentimes they''ll say they''re voting for Barack because they''re not bigots.
So long as people are on some level making attempts to feel like their vote is sort of like of a higher order when they don''t tend to usually see themselves as living at a higher level than others, I think that''s a good sign they''re serious about following through . . .
I used to admire John McCain -- in fact, a few short years ago, I was fervently hoping he would be the Republican candidate instead of "W" -- but I now see that this maverick can be corrupted by the lust for power, just like all the rest of them.
Some of the stories on race seem to have as an underlying assumption that those who are Dems or Independents that are hesitant to vote for Obama are clearly harboring implicit hostility.
But Harvard''s got this test or one like it online and I''ve taken it a couple of times and guess what every single time I''ve taken it I''ve been race neutral (no preference for black or white over the other, NOT one of the 75%).
I think anybody who has the awareness and self-control to factor in any possible subconscious reactions to the candidates'' race, is also liable to have taken the time and effort to factor in the tactics Barack employs to get people to want to believe in what he''s selling despite evidence disproving his claims.
And I think when stories fail to hit the mark, it gives people who actually do unknowingly harbor hostility permission to not change. Because who are people who aren''t in touch with their own internal machinations to the extent that they''re imprecise to criticize the underlying beliefs of anybody else, you know?
It might be counterproductive I don''t know . . .
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