Photo taken from Choctopus.The Times recently published a series of interesting articles about the role that race is playing in the current presidential election.
Read this one and this one, but especially read this one by Adam Nagourney, which includes this passage:
Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman in Michigan, said he had become accustomed to whispered asides from voters suggesting they would not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black. “We honestly don’t know how big an issue it is,” Mr. Anuzis said. But Representative Artur Davis, an African-American Democrat of Alabama, said race was no longer the automatic barrier to the White House that it once was.
“There is a group of voters who will not vote for people who are opposite their race,” Mr. Davis said. “But I think that number is lower today than it has been at any point in our history.”
What’s interesting to me, and often goes unspoken, is that the “group of voters who will not vote for people who are opposite their race” may better describe black voters than white voters.
Granted, black voters often don’t have the choice of a black candidate to vote for. But consider what happened in this year’s Democratic primaries, when they did. Among black voters, Obama ran up lopsided victories against Hillary Clinton in almost every state. Here are some of the most skewed:
+ In Pennsylvania, Obama won 92 percent of the black vote and 40 percent of the white vote.
+ In Indiana, Obama won 92 percent of the black vote and 39 percent of the white vote.
+ In Illinois, Obama won 94 percent of the black vote and 62 percent of the white vote.
+ In Ohio, Obama won between 87 percent and 91 percent of the black vote* and between 34 percent and 44 percent of the white vote*.
+ In North Carolina, Obama won 91 percent of the black vote and between 33 percent and 40 percent of the white vote*.
*In some exit polls, race is paired with sex but not given as a total. In Ohio, for example, Obama did better among black women than he did among black men, and better among white men than among white women.
So in these states, several of which happen to be heavily contested in the upcoming election, more than 9 of 10 black voters voted for the black candidate, whereas anywhere from 3 to 6 out of 10 white voters voted for the black candidate.
These numbers are even more off-balance than the numbers on black-white TV viewing.
This also reminds me of the discomfort that white sports fans feel when they want to cheer extra loud for the one or two white guys on an N.B.A. team. Is that racist — or just voting your race?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Yea, it might not be “racist,” with the negative connotation. It may just be that the majority of voters choose candidates that they can relate to, and race is an easy criteria to say “this candidate is more like me than the other, therefore i’ll vote for him (or her).” Can we say the same statistics about women voting for Clinton in the primaries?
I am a white man. I WANT to vote for Obama. But I won’t. I think he will be a great President if elected, but I won’t vote for him because of his stance on the moral issue of abortion.
Of course, I wouldn’t vote for a white candidate that was as extreme in his support either.
It’s not Obama’s economic plan that bother me, though I don’t think it is ideal. It’s certainly not his race, as I imagine I would feel that I was quite enlightened if I could just cast my vote for Obama. It is a simple matter of a there being an issue which is a dealbreaker for me.
At the same time, I’m not sure blacks are voting much more strongly for Obama than they would for any Democrat. The test is to have a black man run for the Republican nomination…THEN let’s see how blacks vote. If they don’t change much, then it’s more about party than race. And if they do change dramatically, well, to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ll tell you why….
Just as if a Muslim was running for office, there would be a cultural disconnect that would prompt me not to vote for the guy. NOT because I’m afraid he might be a terrorist (OK, maybe I’d think he’d be a bit too lenient on them, etc.), but more because I would wonder whether we REALLY shared the same values.
Same with black vs. white. We are told, incessantly, that we are all just alike. We are not. There are clear cultural differences that, extrapolated by our minds, leads us to think there may be value differences, etc. And if we suspect someone might see things very differently than we do, we are concerned about having them represent us.
I don’t think that’s the case with Obama, but I imagine a lot of poeple wonder if his “activist” background means he sees America through very different eyes than others do.
But I sure would like to vote for him….
Cheering loudly for the white NBA player is more like an ironic cheer of “This guy is so bad, but I have to cheer for him”
As the “10 things you can’t say in America” author said, black people are undoubtedly more racist, and have fewer qualms about expressing those tendencies. That’s just another thing on which they are given a pass on.
New York Magazine ran an article that suggeseted a white voter who does not vote for Obama is racist.
http://nymag.com/news/features/49138/index1.html
So why isn’t a black person who won’t vote for McCain racist as well? Perhaps the situation should be looked at on the basis on income status, rather than race. Those with more money may be more likely to vote for the party with lower tax prposal, and those with less money may be more likely to vote for the party with the higher tax proposal.
Why are we voting for people that are “relatable?” Shouldn’t we be voting for those that are willing and CAPABLE to run this country as it needs to be run?
I am troubled by the seeming double-standard in regards to voting for one’s race, too. But I’d be far more troubled if either of the following were:
1) Obama wasn’t a truly exceptional candidate, with true leadership, intellect, and a genuine drive to unite Americans across all races and ideologies.
2) Obama weren’t the FIRST serious contender for a non-white president. I believe that there is extra utility in proving that a non-(completely)white person can be president–for all of us. It demonstrates something very hopeful about American democracy and the maturity of American voters of all races. I seriously bet that the people who refuse to vote for Obama now because of his race will be pointing to Obama’s election as proof of America’s greatness in a decade or so.
i’ve only been to a couple of nba games. a few years ago my friends and i attended a new york knicks game. we sat at the very top with a poor view of the players and the court. to entertain ourselves, we cheered during the garbage minutes when the token big white guy stepped on the floor.
(we’re all asian, fwiw, and crazy nba fans)
so it’s not about the race card, sometimes it’s just fun to chant at the top of your lungs, “DOL-EE-ACK!!” for Michael Doleac.
We are in fact also very hard on Yao and Yi Jianlian and we crap on them almost every chance we get. Sometimes people don’t want to be seen as voting for the race card.