Sep 20 2008

Bigotry towards whites masquerades as reporting on race

Category: diversity,election 2008,multi-cultural,Obama,politics,race,racismharmonicminer @ 9:08 am

It will get worse before election day, as the Main Stream Media does it’s best to guilt everyone into voting for Obama even though they disagree with his policies and/or think his leadership and experience is lacking, just for fear of being called racist.

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks, many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.  The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004, about two and one-half percentage points.

Of course, “deep seated racisl misgivings” on the part of blacks will cause 90+% of blacks to vote FOR him, with a total margin greater than 2 1/2% of the vote.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents, voters Obama can’t win the White House without, agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.

There is no foundation established here to conclude that a voter will not select a particular individual just because the voter makes generalized observations about a demographic group. And the huge piece of missing information here: how would blacks respond to the same survey? We all know the stories of black cab drivers who won’t pick up young, male blacks at night. Are they bigots, too?

“There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean there’s only a few bigots,” said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.

This is risible. Does this political “scientist” think we aren’t smart enough to see the difference between a bigot and someone who makes specific observations about specific demographic groups? Is this supposed to mean that if a person sees any difference, on average, between various demographic groups, then that person is automatically a bigot? Let me invite Professor Sniderman to spend the night walking the street in some neighborhoods he may not frequent, and see what his experience is, and what he sees. Then we’ll give him this survey, and see what the result is. I’ll say this: he could walk back and forth all night in MY neighborhood, and not even get a curious glance.

The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush’s unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.

After all, it couldn’t be that the Left has simply fielded a weak, hothouse candidate, who can’t stand up to serious voter scrutiny, could it?

The findings suggest that Obama’s problem is close to home, among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.

When that same phenomenon was observed in the Reagan-Carter election, was it bigotry against blacks, too? Or was it just clear eyed voters seeing that their party had taken perspectives with which they could not agree?

Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren’t voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn’t vote for any Democrat for president, white, black or brown.

It’s nice to be noticed.

Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good things about blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites who see blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to vote for Obama.

Finally, deep in the story, we come to the line that undercuts the entire point of the report. No one really knows the numbers about what percentage of whites may have some negative opinion about blacks as a group, and will still vote for a black individual. It’s only speculation to assume the number who won’t is large enough to affect the election.

On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn’t be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites’ views.

Of course, the fact the blacks will vote “almost unanimously” for Obama isn’t evidence of any kind of racism.

Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independents away from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the poll indicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt that Obama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to vote against him because of that.

And even deeper into the story, another admission that the entire thrust of it is flawed. Of course, if this paragraph came first, there wouldn’t be a point in the inflammatory headline, would there?

Three in 10 of those Democrats who don’t trust Obama’s change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.

Still, the effects of whites’ racial views are apparent in the polling.

Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.

Hmmm… I wonder what it would be if there were no black racial prejudice?

But in an election without precedent, it’s hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.

Again, there is no real point to this report, as it continually admits… just down deep in the text, far enough from the headline that many people won’t have read this far.

The AP-Yahoo News poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassing behavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computer rather than talking to a stranger.

Other techniques used in the poll included recording people’s responses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, asking participants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks, measuring whether people believe blacks’ troubles are their own fault, and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks.

“We still don’t like black people,” said John Clouse, 57, reflecting the sentiments of his pals gathered at a coffee shop in Somerset, Ohio.

This is ridiculous.  No foundation is given for who John Clouse is, how representative he may be, even what his race is, what experiences he has had with other races, none of it.  The story simply includes one random quote from a person no one knows.  What journalistic acumen!  I don’t suppose there is a restaurant that is mostly frequented by black people where someone could be found to say, “We still don’t like white people,” is there?  Nah.

Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word “violent” strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with “boastful,” 29 percent “complaining,” 13 percent “lazy” and 11 percent “irresponsible.” When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.

Among white Democrats, one third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.

And, of course, the rest must be racists.  It couldn’t possibly be that they’ve evaluated Obama as an individual, and come to the conclusion he is a poor candidate, could it?

The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that “if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.”

Oh, my, if you believe blacks would be better off if they tried harder, on average, then you are surely a racist pig bigot.

Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn’t.

Those who don’t think blacks would be better off if they tried harder may or may not be bigots, of a different sort…  but they are certainly idiots.

Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks “intelligent” or “smart,” more than one third latched on the adjective “complaining” and 24 percent said blacks were “violent.”

Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they “try harder.”

Say it isn’t so.  Those pigs.

The survey broke ground by incorporating images of black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That test suggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with more than half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks than whites.

Be careful of that phrase “the survey broke ground”.  That means it used untried techniques, techniques not yet validated by corroborating social science methods, or even duplicate results applying the very same technique to other populations.  One HAS to wonder what results the same methods would turn up if they were applied to black voters, about white people.  Of course, that isn’t done, because it is not politically interesting to the “social scientists”, who in the USA are about 95% from the Left, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relative impact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact on people’s votes, including race, ideology, party identification, the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s backers.

Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton’s white backers plan to vote for McCain.

Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries, particularly whites with high school education or less, were motivated in part by racial attitudes.

The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

No word here about the margin of “interpretation error” in this story…  but it is enormous.

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One Response to “Bigotry towards whites masquerades as reporting on race”

  1. harmonicminer » More evidence the AP is in the tank for Obama says:

    […] already deconstructed this one here.  One other thought:  maybe this is an innoculation against Obama losing the […]

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