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 
I think you have to take the historical dimension into account. With the exception of Jesse Jackson, this is the first time that any of these people have been able to vote for someone of their race. It’s fundamentally different for a white voter, who has always voted for white candidates, to discriminate against Obama. I’m not saying that I support voting for someone purely because of race, but you can’t ignore the historical context.
A bunch of NYT readers debating race. Which level of hell is this again?
There have been stories showing up, a couple in Politico and the CS Monitor I think, that there are racists who are saying something like “Normally I wouldn’t vote for a black guy but I just can’t vote for Republicans anymore.”
And white Americans in the NBA people root for as underdogs or ironically. As a Celtics fan it is ironically because the white player on the Celtics it is Brian Scalibrini.
I always wonder why people like Aaron get so bent out of shape about abortion, when we’re in two wars, have a whopping deficit, are trying not to go into a depression, and risk ruining the earth with climate change. Is abortion the most important issue? In the WHOLE WORLD?
Anyhow. I think Aaron actually did put his finger on it (instead of his foot in it) in another way:
“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 … because I would wonder whether we REALLY shared the same values.”
That’s the crux, isn’t it? We think people of a different culture (or race, which amounts to culture, since we’re genetically so similar), so we “other” them: THEY might not be like US.
And since we’re more familiar with/comfortable with people like us, we tend to vote for and hire people like us. So “we” don’t see that as racist, and people who can’t get jobs or who are ostracized because of all those decisions keep insisting we are.
I can’t find the poll right now, if I do i will post. Basically it showed that only 2% of black voters are voting for McCain while around 20% of whites were voting for Obama. This would seem to prove that blacks might be voting more for their race.
I did find the following.
2000 2004 2008
Whites Bush +12 Bush +17 McCain +7
Blacks Gore +81 Kerry +77 Obama +93
-Source:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/
I supported Mitt Romney in the primaries. Although I no longer call myself Mormon, I thought that past experience gave me a little more insight into his motivations. Voting based on race or religion is the same as buying stocks.
Nobody has perfect information, we just have to act based on what they say and have done in the past. The more familiar candidate (or stock) may or may not be the better bet in the long run, but that extra little bit of information we think we have that other people perhaps don’t is enough to get us on board.
Do you choose the basket that definitely has $10, or the basket that may or may not have $20? We are a risk-averse species, so choosing the candidate we know more about (or at least think we do) is safer. Information is power. Shared experiences (or the perception thereof) is information.
I wouldn’t vote based on race to a certain degree. If faced with two equally skilled and similar leaning candidates of 2 races, I might vote for the minority; just to shake things up. But if I had to vote between McCain and Lil Kim, I wouldn’t vote for her just because she was a black woman. For sure, I would NOT vote for someone from a religion that I found to be wacky–fundamental beliefs that differ from mine (i.e. we’re all aliens, dinosaurs hung out with men, dying from an infection because you don’t believe in antibiotics, etc.)–I couldn’t take them seriously, it would be a signal of poor judgment and logic. I know I’m not supposed to discriminate on religion, but I draw the line.
First, I think that these race dynamics must be taken into context. African Americans have a strong loyalty to the Democratic Party so if they were choosing between Hillary and Alan Keyes or even Jesse Jackson, I think they would vote for the white candidate. That they voted for Obama over Hillary is a testament to how compelling a candidate Obama is and how reassuring it was that whites voted for Obama in Iowa.
Second, we are all racists if we go by a literal definition rather than the traditional one. This means that we all, in some part or another, use race as one of many factors when making decisions. Humans have evolved to use stereotypes to make life easier — imagine if we had to analyze if something had four wheels everytime before we could know for certain that it was a car.
The only problem when we stereotype human beings is if we use race as the ONLY factor.